Deadline: 22 August 2025
Purposeful is a movement-building hub for adolescent girls. We amplify girls’ voices, resource their resistance, build solidarity between and across girls’ movements, catalyse collaborative philanthropy and support innovation in grassroots programming with and for girls.
Our work is both global and deeply local. In Sierra Leone, we bring our work together into one integrated strategy, sparking a groundswell of girls who can access and imagine new possibilities for themselves and their communities. Across the world we support girls’ organising and activism through a girl-led participatory grant-making process called the With and For Girls Awards. No matter where we are, we work so that girls and their allies can access the resources, networks and platforms they need to
remake the world for themselves.
Purposeful is a proudly feminist organisation, with a strong intersectional power analysis. We pursue strategies that prioritise the collective liberation of girls. We are looking for team members who share our feminist ideals. We believe the best work happens in dialogue, and we value collective decision-making. We believe in celebrating success, amongst staff and partners alike.
We are looking for team members with a deep commitment to collaborative working, and who bring a sense of joy and humour to what can be challenging work. We pride ourselves on our diversity, the multiple languages we speak and places we live. We are all parents or have other caring responsibilities. We prioritise work-life balance, many of us have other projects and passions outside of Purposeful. As a team we prioritise opportunities for learning, sharing, and embedding different worldviews. We are looking for team members who thrive in diverse and cross-cultural contexts, and who bring passion, creativity and a thirst for learning to their work.
We are our partnerships. We are most proud of the shared vision we have built with our partners – rooted in mutuality, trust, and collaboration. After years of informal and formal support to the Sierra Leone Adolescent Girls Network, we are proud to be part of a growing ecosystem of organisations working with and for girls. We are looking for team members who will work tirelessly to rebalance power disparities in funder-partner relationships, acting as responsible stewards of resources of and for our movements.
- Job Title: Grants and Compliance Officer
- Reporting To: Director, Resourcing Resistance
- Collaborates closely with: Finance Team and Resourcing Resistance Team (including
Grantmaking Leads, Regional Leads) and Resource Mobilisation Team - Location: Remote, with some preference for London, Freetown, Cape Town or Nairobi
- Contract Type: Full-time
- Duration: 1 year
- Compensation: $24,000
CONTEXT OF THIS ROLE:
Purposeful’s grantmaking is rooted in a deep political commitment: to move resources boldly, ethically, and in service of feminist movements across the globe. As we grow, we are strengthening the systems that ensure our grantmaking is not only responsive – but also compliant, secure, and grounded in care.
The Grants and Compliance Officer plays a vital role in holding the back-end integrity of this work. This role ensures that the resources we move reach the right hands in the right way, through processes that meet Purposeful’s internal standards and the requirements of our funders – without compromising on our values. Sitting at the intersection of grantmaking, finance, and movement support, this is a highly detail-oriented role. The postholder will support the full life cycle of a grant – from due diligence and onboarding, through disbursement, to final reporting and audit readiness. Their work helps ensure we stay accountable to our partners, our politics, and the communities we exist to serve.
SCOPE OF WORK
- Grantmaking Due Diligence & Onboarding
– Coordinate the collection, review, and secure storage of due diligence
documentation from prospective grantees.
– Assist with risk screening checks and internal reviews in alignment with
Purposeful’s grantmaking policies.
– Prepare grantee onboarding documentation, including grant agreements and
orientation materials.
– Track submission of required onboarding documents (e.g., bank forms, MoUs,
safeguarding policies).
– Monitor and keep track of the grants due for payment.
– Respond to grantee and applicant inquiries and proactively update them on the
status of their grant awards. - Grant Compliance & Documentation
– Monitor compliance status of all active grants, flagging outstanding
requirements and follow-up needs.
– Ensure that compliance-related deadlines (e.g. reporting dates, grant
conditions) are met and documented.
– Maintain clean, well-organised, and accessible digital grant files, using existing
tools or systems (e.g., Google Drive, Netsuite, Salesforce, etc.) to ease retrieval
and generation of reports.
– Support internal checks to ensure that funds are disbursed in line with
compliance protocols and funding agreements. - Finance Coordination
– Liaise with the finance team to prepare and verify payment documents, banking instructions, and payment schedules.
– Support alignment between grant budgets and payment disbursements.
– Track the movement of funds across grants, ensuring appropriate documentation is in place for each transaction. - Donor & Internal Reporting
– Assist in preparing compliance-related sections of donor reports and internal grantmaking summaries.
– Track reporting obligations by donor or partner, and ensure all documentation is collected and filed on time, including any relevant country-specific compliance requirements. - Audit & Policy Support
– Prepare documentation for internal and external audits, including sampling,
document summaries, and data extractions.
– Assist in developing and maintaining internal tools (templates, checklists,
trackers) related to grant compliance.
– Contribute to ongoing improvements in Purposeful’s compliance systems,
bringing in lessons learned and audit feedback, and emerging regulatory or
legal considerations relevant to our work.
How to apply?
Please send your CV and a covering letter to applications@wearepurposeful.org
