Officer, Southeast Asia Food Bank Incubator Program

Position: Officer, Southeast Asia Food Bank Incubator Program Job Type: Full-time Team: Programs Reports to: Director, Programs Location: Remote – Southeast Asia region

The Global FoodBanking Network (GFN) seeks to nourish the world’s hungry through uniting and advancing food banks. Founded in 2006, GFN connects food banking organizations in more than 40 countries that together serve more than 16 million people annually. We believe that food banks are an integral and viable solution in empowering the world to defeat hunger and change lives, while at the same time mitigating food waste and the environmental consequences of such waste.

In late 2019 GFN launched an Incubator program with the objective of accelerating the establishment and scaling of food banks in previously underserved regions. Incubator cohorts were established in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In Asia, the cohort consists of early-stage food banks in the following countries: Indonesia (x2), Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The GFN Incubator model consists of multiple components that provide a blended approach to supporting food bank development. This position is seeking a motivated individual to play a lead role in delivering two of those components to the Incubator food banks in Southeast Asia. Specifically:

1. Technical Assistance: To grow their impact, early-stage food banks need to scale up their capabilities in a wide variety of functional areas, from resource development (food and funds), marketing and communications, warehouse operations and logistics, client service, HR, IT, etc. Through in-house staff, expert partners, and other food banks, GFN can offer a broad array of technical assistance options to help food banks.
2. Financial Grants: Through the provision of strategic grants, GFN can make vital capital available to the food banks to support capacity building. Over the next year, GFN will be providing potentially transformative grants to some of the incubator food banks.

Responsibilities: This role will work exclusively with the six food banks in the Southeast Asia Incubator cohort to maximize the impact of the Incubator program, including:

• Forge strong relationships with the leadership and staff of the Incubator food banks through monthly calls and ongoing informal communications.
• Work with the food banks to develop and refine growth plans within the framework of their existing strategic plans.
• Identify the functional areas within each food bank that require growth and improvement and make recommendations on prioritization.
• Support the GFN Regional Director and Incubator Program Lead in developing customized technical assistance plans for each food bank
• Identify the appropriate resources and tools to deliver optimal assistance and suggest external resources to complement GFN’s in-house capabilities.
• Track the delivery of those technical assistance plans, assess the impact, suggest refinements to the approach, identify areas for further improvement.
• Guide the food banks on developing proposals for GFN grant money that are aligned to their growth plans.
• Track progress against those grants including collecting monthly collection of accurate, robust, and timely KPI data.
• Maintain the Incubator dashboard with up-to-date data and information and suggest enhancements to the dashboard tool to better illustrate the status of the program.
• Support other GFN staff in the development of donor reports and requests.
• Provide GFN management with early warning of any risks or issues which may affect meeting of deadlines or cause reputational risk to the food bank or GFN.
• Explore opportunities to foster a sense of community amongst the Incubator cohort through events, forums, technical tools, etc.
• Ensure that food banks follow up on any leads and introductions GFN makes to our multinational partners.
• Travel will be based on compliance with COVID restrictions.

Candidate Profile: Requirements:

• Must be based in Southeast Asia and in a location that will allow easy travel within the region.
• Minimum 5+ years of experience working in Southeast Asia (non-profit or corporate sector).
• 3+ years of experience in managing complex cross-cultural settings, demanding projects with multiple stakeholders that have, at times, competing interests.
• Ability to juggle multiple tasks, while thoroughly tracking all activities and follow-up actions.
• Proficient in the basic concepts of project management (planning, status reporting, risk, and issue management.)
• Proficiency in building positive, collaborative relationships with a variety of stakeholders.
• Excellent communication skills (written & verbal). English proficiency required.
• Capacity to understand the importance of data-driven decision-making but will analyze and verify data to ensure accuracy.
• Someone passionate about building / growing organizations and comfortable with how multi-faceted that is.
• Role reports to a manager in the US so must be a quick learner and self-sufficient, while possessing good judgment on when to escalate to management.
• Commitment to the mission of reducing world hunger through the advancement of food banking.

Preferred:

• Comfortable working across multiple cultures and time zones and be flexible (this is not a standard 9 – 5 role).
• Proven interest in international affairs, regionally and globally.
• Experience with Microsoft Office Suite and Salesforce.
• Experience working in nonprofits, supply chain management, and/or logistics would be very useful but is not required.