Finance Officer

Position Overview

Educate!, an award winning non-profit social enterprise, is looking for a self-driven, highly enterprising, and enthusiastic candidate to fill the Finance Officer - Maternity Cover Position (1) in Uganda. The successful candidate will join our high performing Finance Team.

Educate! prides in creating impact and spreading this impact to thousands more youth across the Country. The Finance Officer will be reporting to the Senior Finance Officer, The Finance Officer is responsible for Posting all finance transactions into QuickBooks. Maintain detailed records of supporting documentation for all payment transactions. Follow up on advances with all managers before the close of the monthly report. Any other tasks assigned from time to time.

About Educate! 

Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined. 

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent. 

Educate! prepares youth in Africa learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by: 

1) introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary, and 

2) delivering livelihood bootcamps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.

To date, more than 250,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, and Kenya, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 250 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows. 

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Big Bang Philanthropy,  #startsmall, Generation Unlimited, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year. By 2025, we aim to scale our annual reach by 4x and measurably impact over 400,000 new youth. 

Performance Objectives

• QuickBooks Posting (50%)

• Staff Advance Management (20%)

• Enforcing Controls and compliance (20%)

• Record Keeping (10%)

QuickBooks Posting (50%)

• Preparing journal vouchers.

• Entering all journal entries in QuickBooks by the 2nd working day of the subsequent month.

• Reconciling ledger accounts.

• Produce weekly transaction posting reports.

Staff Advance Management (20%)

• Monthly preparation of “Unclosed” staff advances report shared with concerned staff.

• Reconciling staff advance accounts.

• Follow up on staff to bank all unused funds.

• Advising the Finance Manager on staff refunds due to over-accounting.

Enforcing Controls and compliance (20%)

• Ensuring that all staff accountabilities are in line with the updated Common Cost.

• Flagging any policy compliance issues to the Finance Manager for action.

• Supporting the Finance manager with other finance administrative tasks as may be assigned from time to time. 

Record Keeping (10%)

• Ensuring that all payments are fully supported by requisite documentation before filing.

• Maintain detailed and traceable records of supporting documentation for all payment transactions and journal vouchers.

Qualifications and Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Finance and Accounting  with at least one year’s experience working in a busy finance environment.

• At least 2 years experience in development work (NGO, Schools, Youth related work, Volunteers/Interns, School Practices, Church,Social Enterprises.

• Strong accounting background with hands on experience making double entry transactions.

• Proficiency with MS Office Suite, with excellent MS Word and Excel skills, Power point, Email, google drive etc

• Excellent interpersonal and written communication skills

• Must have knowledge in Finance and Account reconciliation, Double entry

• Thoroughness when accomplishing tasks and paying attention to detail

• Systems oriented, high integrity,Record keeping,

• Experience in multitasking in a fast – paced environment, set priorities, work independently as well as thrive a team.

• Fits our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here

What Is Educate! About? 

We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

• We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We never forget that Educate! exists to impact youth. We are purpose-driven. We obsess over impact daily and if it doesn’t lead to impact, we want nothing to do with it. We prioritize interacting with and listening to youth. We design and manage the organization to ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences that youth value. 

• We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results. When we know what needs to be done, we do it. We don’t wait to be asked and we don’t stop at what is asked of us. We look for solutions as much as we identify problems.

• We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded. We know there is always another way and we are excited to learn about it. We continuously look for resources of all kinds from multiple disciplines. We try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.

• We are One Team, Many Views - We say what we think while treating each other well. We believe that all people have the same inherent value and that diverse ideas and open dialogue fuel excellence. We constantly strive to create an environment where everyone can and does express themselves freely. We support and respect each other as people and colleagues. We act as one team: We prioritize the organization's mission and goals over team or individual goals.

• We have the Startup Mindset - We will always keep innovating to grow our impact. We aspire to be game-changing. We never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.” We question the status quo in our industry. We move fast and embrace change to move towards our long-term vision. We’re not afraid of failure. We interrogate anything that slows us down. 

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. 

Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community.  In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team. 

Child Safeguarding: Educate! is committed to child-safe/youth-safe recruitment, selection and screening. Our recruitment and selection procedures reflect our commitment to the safety and protection of children in our programs. The successful candidate will be required to provide a satisfactory Certificate of Good Conduct as a condition of employment. We reserve the right to decline to offer employment to an individual or terminate an employment contract with an employee that may pose a risk to children and youth.