ABOUT NEAR

NEAR is a movement of local organizations with a bold ambition to shift power, resources, and decision-making to local actors across the Global South. NEAR’s vision is a world where local communities have the resources and agency to address the challenges that impact them. NEAR is a membership-based organization with more than 360 members based in four regions: Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East.

ABOUT THE CHANGE FUND

The Change Fund is NEAR’s flagship Solutions initiative: the only global pooled humanitarian financing mechanism fully governed by local and national civil society leaders and exclusively dedicated to resourcing locally defined and led humanitarian response. Launched in 2022, the Fund has disbursed approximately USD 6.5 million through 65 grants to organizations across 24 crisis-affected countries, with an average time from crisis declaration to disbursement of 16 days.

The Fund has reached a strategic inflection point. Four years of operation have proven the model. An independent strategic review completed in 2026 confirmed the Fund’s unique role and identified the key design issues for its next phase. At a Nairobi co-design workshop in April 2026, the Fund’s governance Oversight Body made four foundational decisions that define what the Change Fund will become: a federated governance architecture built upward from the community level; expanded eligibility extending access well beyond NEAR membership; a continuous and differentiated program spanning anticipatory action through emergency response to recovery; and a role as coherence architecture across the broader ecosystem of locally led pooled funds globally.

Significant multi-year funding commitments are now being secured to realize this vision. The Senior Change Fund Manager will be the operational leader responsible for taking the Fund through this transition – from proven proof-of-concept to a scaled, federated, and financially innovative architecture for locally led crisis financing.

POSITION PURPOSE

The Senior Change Fund Manager will manage the day-to-day operations of the Change Fund while simultaneously driving its strategic evolution and scaling. The person appointed will be expected to lead major institutional change – implementing the Oversight Body’s design decisions, building the operational and governance architecture for the Fund’s next phase, and positioning the Change Fund as a credible, well-governed, and well-resourced global mechanism.

The role operates under the supervision of the Solutions Director and in close partnership with the Oversight Body, which holds governance authority over all strategic and grantmaking decisions. The Senior Change Fund Manager’s relationship with the OB is one of the most important in the Fund: the role requires someone who can serve and strengthen the OB’s authority, bring rigorous analysis and operational support to its deliberations, and implement its decisions with skill and speed.

CORE OBJECTIVES

• Maintain and strengthen the operational excellence of the Change Fund while scaling annual grant volume from under USD 2 million to USD 20+ million.
• Lead implementation of the Oversight Body’s four foundational design decisions from the April 2026 Nairobi co-design workshop, delivering a detailed transition roadmap with clear milestones and accountability mechanisms.
• Build the federated governance architecture – community participation, Regional Bodies, and Global Council – from the ground up, ensuring governance quality and the OB’s authority are maintained throughout the transition.
• Expand access to the Fund through an eligibility framework that includes network partnership and consortium pathways, without compromising governance integrity or compliance standards.
• Evolve the Change Fund’s programming model from emergency response to a continuous, differentiated continuum spanning anticipatory action, rapid onset response, and recovery, with distinct trigger frameworks, eligibility criteria, and allocation logic for each, ensuring the Fund remains the most locally accountable financing option at every point along the crisis arc.
• Strengthen the Change Fund’s role as coherence architecture connecting national and regional networks, labs, and funds.
• Secure and steward the multi-donor capital base required for scale, co-leading major donor relationships and contributing to investment cases for bilateral and philanthropic funders.
• Ensure the Fund generates, captures, and deploys evidence as a strategic asset – feeding learning back into Fund design, donor communications, and NEAR’s broader influencing agenda.

SPECIFIC ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Fund Operations and Grantmaking

The Senior Change Fund Manager will manage the full operational cycle of the Fund, maintaining and strengthening the operational excellence that has made it distinctive.

• Manage the end-to-end grantmaking cycle: crisis monitoring, declaration preparation, application management, Secretariat review, OB facilitation, disbursement, and post-award monitoring and reporting.
• Maintain the Fund’s 16-day average disbursement timeline while managing a significantly larger grant volume as the Fund scales from sub-USD 2 million to USD 20+ million in annual disbursements in the coming two years and continues to scale in subsequent years.
• Develop and implement a principled risk posture for high-need, high-risk operating contexts, including sanctioned environments, in line with the Fund’s Governance, Risk and Compliance Framework.
• Oversee the Fund’s community participation and accountability systems – community scorecards, feedback mechanisms, and safeguarding provisions – ensuring community voice functions as the primary accountability relationship.
• Collaborate with the Enabling team to manage the Fund’s financial operations including reserves policy, multi-currency management, and the implications of the transition from Adeso’s fiscal sponsorship to NEAR’s independent legal entity.
• In collaboration with the Enabling team, ensure compliance with all donor reporting requirements, audit standards, and grant agreement obligations across a multi-donor portfolio.

Strategic Evolution and Scaling

The Senior Change Fund Manager will lead implementation of the OB’s design decisions – the most significant evolution in the Fund’s history.

• Develop and execute a detailed implementation roadmap for the design directions agreed at the OB co-design workshop, with clear milestones, resource requirements, and accountability mechanisms.
• Lead the design and phased establishment of the federated governance architecture – community engagement, Regional Bodies, Global Council – ensuring the structure is built from the ground up and reflects the Fund’s governance philosophy.
• Design and implement the expanded eligibility framework, including network partnership and consortium pathways, developing the due diligence and compliance standards that enable expanded access without compromising governance integrity.
• Operationalize the Fund’s evolution toward a continuous, differentiated program spanning anticipatory action, emergency response, and recovery – including developing the design, trigger frameworks, and allocation criteria for new program modalities.
• Position the Change Fund as a core node in NEAR’s emerging Networked Financing Mechanism, contributing to the coherence architecture that links national and regional networks, labs and funds into a global ecosystem.

Oversight Body Partnership and Governance Support

The Senior Change Fund Manager will serve as the primary operational partner to the Oversight Body, supporting its governance authority throughout the Fund’s evolution.

• Prepare and co-facilitate OB meetings – including weekly crisis monitoring reviews and grant allocation sessions – ensuring deliberations are grounded in evidence and the OB’s decision-making authority is fully exercised.
• Develop and maintain governance systems, policies, and documentation – including conflict-of-interest protocols, crisis declaration criteria, and allocation frameworks – keeping these current as the Fund evolves.
• Support the transition to the federated governance architecture, including the establishment of Regional Bodies and the Global Council, ensuring continuity of governance quality throughout.
• Manage OB member onboarding, development, and election processes in ways that strengthen the OB’s peer character and its connection to the grassroots level.
• Prepare high-quality analysis, briefing materials, and decision papers for OB consideration, ensuring OB members have what they need to exercise strategic leadership effectively.

Capitalization and Donor Stewardship

The Senior Change Fund Manager will contribute to securing and stewarding the multi-donor capital base required to take the Fund to scale.

• Co-lead relationship management for major donors including philanthropic and bilateral partners, ensuring high-quality reporting, proactive communication, and genuine partnership.
• Contribute to the Fund’s capitalization strategy – supporting the development of investment cases for new donors, and actively contributing to NEAR’s pipeline development with bilateral and philanthropic funders.
• Manage grant agreement compliance across the Fund’s multi-donor portfolio, including donor-specific reporting, audit requirements, and budget management obligations.
• Explore and develop innovative finance instruments for the next phase of the Fund, in collaboration with the Solutions Director, including blended finance and guarantee structures that could expand the Fund’s capitalization.

Learning, Evidence, and Systems Change

In collaboration with the Learning and Influencing Directors, the Senior Change Fund Manager will ensure the Fund generates, captures, and deploys evidence as a strategic asset.

• Oversee the Fund’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning architecture, ensuring learning feeds back into Fund design, donor communications, and NEAR’s influencing agenda.
• Lead or commission reviews and evaluations of the Fund, maintaining the culture of honest and rigorous self-assessment established by the 2026 independent strategic review.
• Produce annual learning briefs and evidence products that synthesise grant-level data, monitoring findings, and OB reflections – communicating the Fund’s performance and systems-change contribution to donors, members, and the broader sector.
• Represent the Change Fund in global humanitarian financing policy spaces, collaborating with the Influencing team to use the Fund’s evidence to advocate for structural changes in how humanitarian resources are governed.
• Contribute to NEAR’s comparative research on the global ecosystem of locally led pooled funds, in support of the Networked Financing Mechanism concept.

EXPERIENCE AND ATTRIBUTES

Candidates must demonstrate the following essential competencies. Strongly preferred attributes describe the profile of the strongest candidates.

Essential

• Mission alignment and values: Deep personal commitment to locally led action and the power-shifting mission of the Change Fund. Conviction that governance-based solutions – not intermediary-based ones – are the right response to local actors’ structural exclusion from the humanitarian system. Demonstrated ability to work in genuine partnership with governance bodies, supporting rather than substituting for their authority.
• Institutional and governance design: Experience designing governance structures for multi-stakeholder organizations or financing mechanisms, including policy development, process design, and documentation. Ability to manage governance transitions without disrupting operational continuity, ideally with specific experience with peer-elected, member-based, or community-accountable governance models.
• Fund or grant management: Proven experience managing a pooled fund, grants facility, or comparable mechanism end-to-end – including fiduciary oversight, compliance, disbursement, and multi-donor reporting. Experience in complex and high-risk contexts, including fragile and conflict-affected states. Ability to maintain operational rigour without sacrificing the speed and flexibility that distinguish the Change Fund. Experience with multi-currency portfolios and multi-jurisdictional sanctions compliance.
• Strategic thinking and change management: Ability to hold the complexity of a scaling process – managing immediate operational demands while driving medium-term architecture development. Experience leading major change processes including transition roadmaps, stakeholder engagement, and milestone-based implementation. Strong analytical capability across compliance, financial, governance, and policy domains. Comfort navigating uncertainty and iteration.
• Communication and relationship management: Excellent written and oral communication in English, with the ability to produce high-quality proposals, reports, board papers, and evidence briefs. Proven track record managing high-value donor relationships, with a focus on genuine partnership. Ability to represent the Fund credibly in global policy spaces while remaining accountable to the local leaders who govern it.
• Relational intelligence and collaborative leadership: Exceptional interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, with the ability to build genuine trust across significant differences of context, culture, power, and experience. Humility as a working practice: an instinct to listen before directing and to recognize that those closest to crisis hold irreplaceable knowledge. Ability to lead with confidence while remaining genuinely open to being wrong and creating space for others to lead. Experience actively redistributing rather than concentrating decision-making authority. Resilience and steadiness under pressure.
• Sector and contextual knowledge: Direct experience working in or with Global South local and national civil society organizations. Familiarity with the humanitarian financing architecture – including CBPFs, CERF, the Grand Bargain, and the localization agenda. Experience with anticipatory action, climate-responsive financing, or humanitarian-development-peace nexus programming an asset.

Strongly Preferred

• Innovative finance: Experience with blended finance, first-loss capital, guarantee structures, or parametric mechanisms in humanitarian or development contexts. Experience developing and presenting investment cases to bilateral or institutional donors.
• Languages and geographic experience: Multilingual capacity, particularly French, Spanish, or Arabic. Significant experience working in at least one of NEAR’s primary operating regions.
• Movement and network experience: Experience in or with movement-based organizations, member networks, or federations, with an understanding of how to lead a movement and manage an institution simultaneously.

WORKING RELATIONSHIPS

The Senior Change Fund Manager will work in close and regular collaboration with the following:

Solutions Director (line manager). Day-to-day supervision, strategic guidance, and representation of the Change Fund within NEAR’s senior leadership. The Solutions Director holds overall accountability for the Change Fund.

The Oversight Body. The most important governance relationship in the role. The Senior Change Fund Manager will work in close and continuous partnership with OB members, supporting their authority and implementing their decisions. This relationship requires trust, transparency, and genuine respect for the OB’s mandate.

NEAR Secretariat colleagues. Including Enabling, Influencing, and Learning colleagues, collaborating effectively across a remote, distributed team.

NEAR member organizations. As both the constituency the Fund currently serves and the source of its governance legitimacy, NEAR members are key stakeholders. The Senior Change Fund Manager will initially engage with members on grantmaking, eligibility expansion, and governance design.

Major donors and bilateral partners. Including philanthropic and government donors, with whom the Senior Change Fund Manager will manage active grant relationships.

How to apply

APPLICATION PROCESS

All applications should be sent to jobs@near.ngo with ‘Senior Change Fund Manager’ by 22 June 2026* on the subject line. The selection committee will review all applications as they arrive.

Each application package should include the following:

• Cover letter with the applicant’s current contact information and expected annual gross pay in USD (limited to one page)
• CV

*Depending on the volume and quality of applications received, NEAR may extend the deadline to 30 June 2026.

All applicants must meet the ‘Essential’ requirements described above. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted. Adeso is an equal opportunity employer.