Senior Associate, Finance, Digital Impact Alliance

Position Overview

The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a global alliance to enable the digital ecosystem to deliver greater scale, efficiency, and social impact as it creates more inclusive digital economies in emerging markets. Working with partners, DIAL generates evidence of what works through a series of demonstration projects, distils insights and tools to promote scale-up and replication, and provides mechanisms to encourage knowledge sharing, collaboration, and co-investment throughout the ecosystem.  

 DIAL is funded through a collaboration among the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and hosted within the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C. 

 The Finance Associate will play an important role in fostering sound financial management by ensuring that all expenses meet internal and external standards, supporting budgeting and financial forecasting, submitting and tracking payment requests, preparing monthly, quarterly, and annual financial reports, and responding to audit information requests from UNF Finance and Contracts departments.

Essential Functions

Financial Operations (50%) 

• Process all expenses from team members and vendors and ensure that they align with donor compliance (including US Government, multi-lateral and private donors) and UN Foundation expense policies.
• Partner with supervisor to manage core donor spend and cash balances.
• Work with teams to help identify appropriate coding for invoices and expenses and review reports on a monthly basis to ensure accurate coding. 
• Review and process invoices from vendors, partners, and grantees.
• Manage reports around outstanding invoices.
• Develop full reporting knowledge of Financial Edge to create and maintain reports for quarterly reporting to donors and DIAL Board and the annual report. This includes being comfortable with reviewing the general ledger and preparing corrective entries as necessary.
• Work closely, and in collaboration with, the UNF Finance team to maintain accurate financial information.
• Adhere to UNF-wide accounting and budget policies and tracking methods.
• Support the UNF finance team with any related Audit requirements.
• Coordinate time allocation process on a monthly basis, including allocations that go across multiple programs and multiple donors

Budgeting and Financial Forecasting Support (50%) 

• Facilitate annual and mid-year budget development processes and budget review meetings.
• Work with program teams and Senior Director, Programs & Operations to compile annual budget for Board approval and mid-year budget review.
• Prepare monthly budget-to-actual reports.
• Assist Program Management team to develop, maintain and monitor budgets as they relate to different projects and third-party contribution agreements.
• Run “what if” iterations of different budget scenarios.
• Prepare accurate forecast models to help project cashflow needs and identify priorities. 
• Track contracts and grants related to specific budgets. This includes consultant contracts, contributions agreements and grant agreements to feed into cashflow modeling.
• Assist Senior Director, Programs & Operations with preparation of quarterly and annual financial reports for DIAL donors and Board.
• Respond to ad hoc donor requests for budget information and analysis.

Selection Criteria

• Bachelor’s degree required, preferably in accounting, business administration, finance, or related field.
• At least 4 years of relevant experience.
• Strong analytical skills coupled with expert level Excel/budget software skills and the ability to self-review work for reasonableness and accuracy. 
• Proven ability to learn financial systems and develop custom reports.
• Previous experience preparing operating and program budgets and budget-to-actual reports. 
• Familiarity with NGO/non-profit reports including income statements, balance sheets and cashflows preferred.
• Prior experience with Financial Edge, Salesforce and SmartSheet preferred. 
• Prior experience in financial reporting to multiple donors, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) preferred
• Detail oriented, problem solver. 
• Desire to support non-finance staff on expenses, budgeting and work planning issues.
• Ability to work under pressure and handle stress.
• ​Ability to meet regular attendance/tardiness policy.
• Ability to work from Washington, DC.
• Please note this position will require an Excel assessment as a part of the recruitment process.