Finance and Administration Manager - Lively Minds

We, Lively Minds are looking for an experienced Finance and Administration Manager, that has experience managing the finance function, managing others and of donor reporting. You will work closely with the Ghana management team to contribute to our exciting scale up plans.

About us

Lively Minds is an award-winning NGO working to get pre-schoolers in rural Ghana & Uganda school-ready. Over 250 million children under 5 years globally do not get the early childhood care and education (“ECCE”) they need, leading to poor health, poor education, lost life opportunities and poverty. 

We believe that one of the main barriers to ECCE is that parents in remote resource-poor villages lack the information, education and aspiration to provide basic and affordable opportunities for their children. We have developed an innovative behaviour-change programme that empowers marginalized, poorly educated mothers to run educational Play Schemes for pre-schoolers and to provide better home-based care, using cheap local resources. 

These are exciting times for Lively Minds. In Ghana, we are finalising a partnership agreement with Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service (“GES”) to integrate the programme in to the national kindergarten system and to support them to scale it in Northern Ghana reaching approximately 4000 kindergartens and 1.1 million children. In Uganda we are in 3-year period to test and position our programme for scale. Over this period, we will support district and sub-county officials in Mayuge District to deliver the programme across all eligible communities in the District (approximately 420 communities).  

About the role 

We are looking for a Ghana Finance and Administration Manager to support the development and implementation of a sustainable scale strategy and to ensure our financial management is robust and sustainable as we go through this period of rapid growth. The Finance and Administration Manager will manage the Finance and Admin officers in country offices and ensure Lively Minds is compliant with financial protocols by consolidating financial reports and submitting to the International Finance Manager, developing systems and policies, training staff and working with auditors to ensure accountability.

Key responsibilities for the role include: analysis and budgeting; staff management; financial accountability and reporting. The Finance Manager will report to the Ghana Country Director with some line of sight by the International Finance Manager.  

This is a unique opportunity to be involved in prioritising spending towards the most impactful projects for a small charity during a period of scale in this newly created role.

About you 

You will have a minimum of 5 years’ experience managing budgets, forecasting and financial control, ideally at a management level. A Professional accounting qualification (ACCA, CIMA or equivalent) is essential, as is experience of managing people. You will have a Wide experience of working with auditors and managing grants and donor reporting.

Financial modelling and Intermediate Excel (V-Lookups, Pivot Tables etc.) is also essential with a strong understanding of local financial regulations/laws. The ability to uphold and enforce financial protocols and demonstrate utmost accountability is essential for the role.

Compensation: Starting salary of 108,202 GHS per annum, medical insurance for employee only

Contract status: Fixed term contract for two years