Head of Development, East Africa at SankuPHC

What is Expected of You


You will be responsible for building and leading a high-performing Development function across East Africa, with end-to-end responsibility for fundraising, donor stewardship, communications, and team performance. The role enables fundraising success through leadership and organizational excellence, with a strong focus on building the operational systems and team capability required as Sanku enters a new phase of rapid scaling.


How You'll Deliver Impact


Lead, coach and develop the East Africa Development Team (a team of 5 and growing, across major donor fundraising, grants, and communications), setting clear priorities, ensuring high-quality on-time delivery, and building a culture of accountability, rigor, and collaboration.
Design and improve fundraising systems, processes, and tools, including CRM, reporting dashboards, and AI-enabled workflows, to drive consistency and team productivity.
Contribute to development strategy in collaboration with the CEO and senior leadership, translating priorities into operational plans with clear accountabilities and timelines.
Support and enable the team to retain and deepen relationships across Sanku's existing $10M+ portfolio of strategic institutional and philanthropic funding partners, identifying upgrade and renewal opportunities and building the pipeline discipline to deliver growth as per strategy.
Oversee the full grant and major donor lifecycle, from prospect research and proposal development through budgeting, submission, compliance, reporting, renewal, and in-country visits and site trips.
Oversee Sanku's production and distribution of donor-facing communications and content: impact reports, donor updates, presentations, website content, social media, and other external materials.
Ensure Sanku is well-represented at donor meetings, partner events, and conferences, matching the right team members to the right opportunities and supporting them to get the most out of each engagement.
Monitor team and portfolio performance through KPIs and pipeline reviews, identifying bottlenecks and driving continuous improvement.
Provide support to the CEO and senior leadership on selected transformational funding opportunities (i.e. $10M+ gifts and grants) as needed, while keeping the team's core portfolio, systems, and delivery on track.


What We Are Looking For


5 - 8 years' experience leading Development, Business Development or Partnerships teams, within the NGO, Social Enterprise or International Development Sector.
Bachelor's Degree in a relevant field.
Experience building and managing teams of five or more, including direct reports who themselves manage staff or lead workstreams.
Comfortable operating in a fast-scaling environment, with experience building or professionalizing a development function rather than just running an established one.
Excellent leadership, coaching, and cross-functional collaboration skills. Experience securing funding is desirable, but success leading development operations and teams is essential.