Jobs and Internships

Department: ACTION Secretariat

Status: Full-time

Location requirement: Washington, DC

Salary: $65,000–$74,000

ACTION is an international partnership of advocacy organizations working to mobilize resources to treat and prevent the spread of tuberculosis (TB), a global disease that kills one person every 20 seconds. ACTION’s underlying premise is that much more rapid progress can be made against the global TB epidemic by building support for increased resources for effective TB control among key policymakers and other opinion leaders in both high TB burden countries and donor countries.

For more information about ACTION, please visit www.action.org.

Position Description

Reporting to the ACTION Secretariat Director, the Advocacy and Impact Manager is responsible for leading the Secretariat’s work in support of the ACTION partnership strategy on giving children a healthy start in life with focus on nutrition, guiding accountability strategies and tactics across the ACTION partnership to achieve cross-cutting impact, and supervising staff. The Advocacy and Impact Manager supervises a Senior Associate and may supervise other staff as the ACTION Secretariat evolves. Together, the Advocacy and Impact Manager and his/her staff ensure that ACTION makes an impact on global nutrition and child health policy and resource mobilization, maintains a coherent and effective accountability advocacy portfolio, and acts as a leader and resource in global civil society coalitions, and helps attract and maintains funding for this work from foundation grants.

The Advocacy and Impact Manager is accountable for ensuring ACTION meets its strategic plan and grant-funded objectives in the “Healthy Start” pillar of nutrition and child health advocacy portfolios, driving a portfolio of accountability advocacy across ACTION’s strategic framework, including by maximizing the impact of scorecards or other accountability tools, and providing leadership on supporting advocacy champions and steering broader coalitions. The Advocacy and Impact Manager contributes significantly to ACTION strategy and works closely with the Program Development Team to provide the team with evidence of impact and best practices of interest to donors; through collaboration with colleagues overseeing multilateral bank work, the Advocacy and Impact Manager also helps link ACTION’s World Bank engagement, particularly on nutrition, with other ACTION and RESULTS advocacy towards the World Bank on ECD and human capital financing.

Responsibilities

1. Advocacy Portfolio Leadership
   • Facilitates strategy development for the ACTION partnership’s “healthy start” portfolio with focus on the nutrition advocacy portfolio
   • Provides oversight and guidance on ACTION’s child health and vaccines portfolio
   • Provides strategic and tactical guidance to ACTION partners’ nutrition advocacy activities
   • Coordinates, with the support of other staff, partnership-wide joint advocacy activities, including annual nutrition scorecard, as well as workshops and trainings
   • Works closely with ACTION Director on budget decisions within nutrition portfolio
   • Represents the ACTION Secretariat or Partnership on boards, technical working groups and steering committees, in external-facing events and meetings, and develops and maintains high-level relationships in the nutrition community
2. Accountability Tool Oversight
   • Leads on accountability tools for nutrition and on strategy development for ACTION’s accountability work across issue areas and drives this ongoing work, working closely with the other ACTION issue leads, partners and ACTION communications staff
   • Conceptualizes or consults on scorecard products and other accountability tools, to ensure tools fit into a coherent and consistent advocacy agenda on accountability
   • Works with other ACTION Secretariat team members to link ACTION’s accountability advocacy to broader equity objectives
3. Supervision of staff
   • Advises ACTION Senior Associate on coordination and day-to-day management of partner activities in the issue area(s) of leadership, including workplanning, reporting, and information-sharing
   • Manages a Senior Associate focused on child health; mentors and advises the Senior Associate and guides Senior Associate’s objectives and performance in coordination with ACTION Secretariat Director, other ACTION Leadership Group members, and RESULTS senior policy team

The responsibilities listed here are not exhaustive and may be revised/revisited periodically.

Qualifications

The successful candidate will have a college degree in a related discipline as well as proven success in coordinating across multiple teams and with international partners. S/he will have a strong interest in supporting the development goals of the organization and will also have the following:

• Demonstrated expertise on the global health landscape, particularly nutrition or child health
• Commitment to multi-stakeholder advocacy strategy development and execution
• Ability to work effectively in coalitions
• Previous experience working internationally, particularly in a developing country, or within an international network or secretariat
• Ability to work effectively across cultures, time zones, and work styles
• Strong writing and verbal skills in English; Additional languages used in ACTION partner countries (especially French, Japanese) a strong plus
• Presentation and meeting facilitation skills; Experience conducting training sessions preferred
• Undergraduate or Master’s degree (Master’s degree preferred) in a relevant field such as health/science policy, international relations, political science, economics, sociology, social sciences, nonprofit management etc. and 5-7 years of experience driving advocacy and/or policy work; international advocacy experience strongly preferred
• Ability to travel internationally periodically up to 4-8 weeks of the year
• Detail-oriented to build structures and systems necessary to support delivering on ambitious goals and strategy .
• Proficiency with basic software programs required.
• The ideal candidate will be self-motivated, strategic, creative, and able to work comfortably both independently and as part of a team.
• Ability and willingness to manage up and across teams to meet deadlines and drive priorities forward.

How to Apply

Applications will be reviewed as they arrive, and interviews with qualified candidates will be scheduled immediately. Please send cover letter, writing sample and resume to [email protected]. Please include “Advocacy and Impact Manager” in the subject line of your email.

Duties listed are subject to change based on interest and organizational needs. This internship is unpaid and requires at least a 3 day/week commitment for 2.5 months or more.

Position description:

#1: Collaborate on strategic planning for both legislative strategy and grassroots expansion of RESULTS in the U.S.

• Participate in weekly U.S. Poverty team meetings and help strategize on our U.S. Poverty Campaigns. This may include message development, grassroots expansion planning, and legislative/advocacy planning.
• Participate in weekly staff meetings and other staff gatherings.
• Attend briefings, conferences, and other meetings on behalf of RESULTS and providing the U.S. Poverty team with notes and recommended strategies from such meetings.
• Set up lobby meetings with members of the intern’s congressional delegation to urge action on our campaigns, and perhaps with other Hill offices where RESULTS has a presence in the district/state.

#2: Provide support to RESULTS volunteers via existing system of conference calls, weekly action alerts, and e-mail newsletters. Activities may include:

• Write and edit U.S. Poverty Weekly Updates, Outreach Actions and Monthly Actions, U.S. Poverty Campaigns background webpages, action alerts, blogposts, and other written communications.
• Provide materials requested by RESULTS volunteers to assist them in their campaign work.
• Assist in planning and producing monthly webinars (first Tuesday of every month).
• Participate in occasional evening training calls with our grassroots network.
• Possible participation in generating media coverage that is supportive of our campaigns. This may include submitting letters-to-the-editor and opinion pieces, helping plan and organize issue-specific conference calls for editorial writers and other journalists, writing and editing background materials for media campaigns, contacting media outlets and providing them with necessary information, as well as supporting RESULTS volunteers in their efforts to generate local media.

How to apply:

Applications will be reviewed as they arrive, and interviews with qualified candidates will be scheduled immediately. Please send cover letter, resume, two writing samples of any length, and your availability (days and times) to [email protected].

RESULTS is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, disability, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. For more information about RESULTS, please visit our website at www.results.org.