Program Manager

Program Manager. Colombo. Posting Date: 01/16/2025. Deadline: 02/14/2025

Role Title: Program Manager

Contract Type: Regular

Reporting To: Associate Director, Open Society Network Grants OR Managing Director, Open Society Network Grants

Program/Department/Unit Name: Programs

Location

Colombo, Jakarta, Seoul

Team Name: Open Society Network Grants

Open Society Network Grants

The vision of Open Society Network Grants is to lead the field of philanthropy in nurturing co-creative partnerships with a range of actors across different fields. The impact we seek in the world is for people to experience greater equity, human rights, and justice as a result of stronger ecosystems that are more responsive and effective at: promoting equal humanity and dignity; imagining democracies of the future; reshaping global governance; and informing the future of humanity.

Open Society Network Grants partners are close long-term partnerships with groups around the world, key to upholding the organizations values in the spaces where they operate. These groups may be large or small, organizations or movements, urban or rural, but in their diversity, their missions and values align with our own. They form a trusted “network of networks” for promoting rights and dignity; democratic participation; advancing equity; and embracing transformative ways of envisioning the future across geographies, themes, and approaches.

Role Purpose

We are seeking a full-time Program Manager, based in Colombo, Jakarta or Seoul, who brings substantial experience working with civil society and social movements, to join the Open Society Network Grants team.

This role will report to the Associate Director, Open Society Network Grants and will work as part of a globally dispersed team, alongside other Program Managers and Administrative Officers.

Key Responsibilities

As Program Manager, Open Society Network Grants, you will:
- Implement portions of the strategy for Open Society Network Grants, under the guidance of the Managing Director and Associate Director and in close collaboration with members of the Open Society Network Grants team.- Conduct research and systems analysis and utilize trends to understand movements and organizing, current and potential actors, and leverage points for new forms of activism, and translate these into impactful future areas of work.- Identify new and transformative networks and partnerships that foster future-thinking and future-facing actions and actively seek out partners featuring emerging voices and novel ideas that will frame desired futures anchored in open societies ideals.- Work closely with internal programmatic and operations teams to select, engage, and sunset Network Grants partners, and to pursue areas of alignment and collaboration.- Help create and advance a culture of learning within the Open Society Network Grants that enables the assessment of organizations and refinement of criteria guiding their inclusion in the Open Society Network grants portfolio, over time.- Represent the organization in philanthropic and other public fora.- Guide and inform the organizations approach to grant making.

Key internal relationships

Staff in programmatic teams, including Program Managers, Directors, and Managing Directors; staff in Operations Departments, including Grants Management and Office of General Counsel.

Key external relationships

Grantee Partners; Peer Philanthropies- Educated to a degree-level (or equivalent)- Significantly demonstrated relevant experience and expertise working with civil society groups, including social movements, and with the private sector in more than one area of focus and geography to advance rights-based strategies and campaigns. Lived and professional experience within government, international, private, or non-governmental organizations, in more than one focus area and geography, is an asset.- Proven experience working to develop strategies and budgets, improve grant making processes, and learn from program implementation as well as proven experience incorporating advocacy, communications, strategic litigation and other tools into grant making processes.- Proven experience working collaboratively in one or two regions in Asia as a skilled and respected strategist advancing activism and organizing, including through addressing systemic challenges as well as demonstrable evidence of promoting systems solutions by bringing together seemingly incompatible fields or areas of work.- Demonstrable evidence of having supported civil society coalition building through leading partnerships of seemingly disparate actors, including germinating, and seeding new ones.- Experience of managing a portfolio of stakeholder relationships, including core partnerships, balanced across a range of attributes- An excellent knowledge of English.- Knowledge of other languages, appropriate to the locations and focus of the work of Network Grants, would be an asset.What we offer- Exceptional opportun