Hiring a Business Development Manager - Marketing for Acumen Fund

Acumen Fund is a global non-profit venture capital fund, focused on supporting the delivery of critical services - water, health, housing, energy - at affordable prices to the four billion people earning less than four dollars a day in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Over the past seven years Acumen Fund has approved more than $40 million in investments in enterprises that have helped create more than 20,000 jobs; protected more than 15 million East Africans from malaria; provided hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers irrigation systems that can double crop yields; delivered medical care to hundreds of thousands of Kenyans; and given one million people in more than 200 Indian villages access to safe drinking water.

Through our investments we address problems of poverty using market based approaches, demonstrating that there is a role for patient capital, intensive management assistance, and knowledge sharing at the base of the pyramid.

Acumen Fund's Business Development team is responsible for raising philanthropic capital for Acumen Fund and for managing relationships across our extended community of Partners (donors), Advisors and supporters.

We are looking to hire someone with a strong marketing background and significant online experience to help both accelerate the growth of our current community of ~20,000 "Friends of Acumen Fund" and improve our engagement with and offerings to that community. Ultimately, you will be accountable for generating a significant revenue stream ($1M+/year) from this community, doing so in a way that is consistent with Acumen Fund's brand, positioning, and core values.

The successful applicant will have the experience, analytical skills, leadership qualities, and persuasive capacity to help us refine our positioning and messaging so that we can more successfully and more actively engage a broader community in our work. (And, as a starting point, we are totally, completely uninterested in anything involving the words "direct mail" or "spam filter.")

So, you're either a super-duper marketer who knows how to use online tools, or you're world-class with online tools and also have got some great marketing ideas. If you're neither of these things, this job probably isn't for you.

Candidates for the Business Development Manager role should have a passionate commitment to Acumen Fund's mission of solving the toughest problems of poverty, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and excellent ability to execute.

A proven track record of managing successful high-impact marketing campaigns and a demonstrated fluency with web 2.0 tools and social media platforms is a must.

We are looking for a creative thinker with an analytical mind who can push the envelope while also monitoring, measuring, and proactively responding to metrics.

You also need to have strong interpersonal skills, excellent verbal and written communications skills, good judgment, and the ability to manage and deliver projects independently and proactively in a fast-paced environment.

Additionally, qualified candidates will likely have the following attributes:

- Undergraduate or Graduate degree with 5-7 years of work experience - non-profit and/or international experience a big plus
- A good listener, but then willing to stand up and break with what we've done in the past
- A storyteller who is a modern, post TV industrial complex marketer
- Creative, out of the box, risk-taking, passionate, decisive
- Willing to work with uncertainty and able to build real passionate followers
- An ability to communicate effectively with senior management and be persuasive
- Skill in balancing listening and leading; and moving seamlessly between the two.
- Enthusiasm for Acumen Fund's mission and business model, and respect for the organization's core values: equity, fairness, diversity, voice, participation, knowledge, creativity, humility, audacity, generosity, accountability, and respect
- A good sense of humor (seriously)

Applications are due by March 4, 2009

FIRST, please answer the following six questions in a Squidoo lens. Use any combination of text and online content (e.g. images, making or showing us a video you're created, linking us to a website etc.) as part of your application.

Be creative!! This is a great chance to show us what you can do. Please keep your answers brief (~250 words is a good guide).

(If, for privacy or other reasons, you feel strongly that you do not want to create a lens, applications in other forms - a private blog page, etc. or even a Word doc - will be accepted, but please explain why you didn't create a Squidoo lens in your cover letter.)

1. Tell us about a tribe you've built. How did you do it?
2. Describe an experience with a product, company, or organization that was delightful. What made it so?
3. To tweet or not to tweet, and why?
4. Tell us about your five favorite blogs. What makes them must-reads?
5. When have you changed someone's mind? How did you do it?
6. What should we have asked you that we didn't ask? Now answer the question.

SECOND, send us an email to marketing@acumenfund.org with the subject line: Business Development Manager - Marketing. Make sure to include your resume, cover letter and the URL to your Squidoo lens in the email.