Company Profile

Lively Minds, an award-winning NGO, is partnering with Ghana Education Services (GES) to roll-out an innovative, early childhood development programme. We are hiring in Ghana to support our exciting plans to scale the programme to 60 districts, in 8 regions. To find out more about our programme, please visit www.livelyminds.org.

Job Description

We are looking for a Ghana Finance Manager to support the development and implementation of a sustainable scale strategy and to ensure our financial management is robust and sustainable as we go through this period of rapid growth.

The Finance Manager will manage admin officers in country offices and ensure Lively Minds is compliant with financial protocols by consolidating financial reports and submitting to the International Finance Manager, developing systems and policies, training staff and working with auditors to ensure accountability. 

Key responsibilities for the role include: analysis and budgeting; staff management; financial accountability and reporting. The Finance Manager will report to the Ghana Country Director with some line of sight by the International Finance Manager.

This is a unique opportunity to be involved in prioritising spending towards the most impactful projects for a small charity during a period of scale in this newly created role.

MAIN DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 

Recording, Reporting and Budget Preparation

• Coordinate and oversee accurate financial record keeping and reporting, ensuring targets are met;
• Support the International Finance Manager in preparing monthly, quarterly and annual reports to the Senior Management Team and Board of Trustees to review changes in income and expenditure;
• Provide information for annual audits, interacting and liaising with auditors
• Prepare annual budgets and reconciliation for projects;
• Manage the organisation’s banking system and collation of receipts;
• Maintain a finance risk assessment to feed into the Risk Register;
• Support Int’l Finance Manager to create the budgets, financial information, documentation and materials for funding proposals;
• Support Int’l Finance Manager to coordinate the provision of information for feeding into financial reports for funders, ensuring mechanisms to track and report against restricted income are robust.
• Support in selection, negotiation, and invoicing of subcontracts, consultants, rental agreements, etc.

Team Management and Governance

• Nurture a positive working environment and promote/champion the financial practices, policies and objectives across the entire team;
• Actively manage the performance and build the capacity of direct reports through training, coaching, holding 1-to-1s, setting performance goals, appraisals, developing new policies and practices, ensuring robustness of financial documentation
• Where necessary interview, recruit and train staff and/or contractors
• Oversee payment cycles and cash management systems, overseeing transitions to new financial systems
• Interact and liaise with the Senior Management Team, attending audit committee and financial risk committee meetings where required
• Ensure that the Statutory Accounts for all entities are prepared: ensuring internal information is collated and provided, external auditors are instructed and deliver to standard.
• Ensure Lively Minds Ghana compliant with tax, regularity and legal requirements (e.g. payroll, tax, NGO registration, insurance, registrations with regulatory authorities)
• Support HR function: ensuring practices, policies and procedures are in place (particularly related to finances, expenses, allowances) and all legal requirements are complied with; pay reviews and benchmarking exercises are conducted; payroll managed
• Maintain asset register and support procurement process.

Financial Management

• Ensure that Lively Minds Ghana’s financial systems, policies, procedures and internal controls and audits are robust, compliant and support current activities and future growth;
• Lead and coach admin officers in country to maintain and deliver operational excellence & financial rigour, closely monitoring the operating and financial reports against plans and budgets;
• Lead monthly financial reviews and oversee timely production of monthly, quarterly and annual financial reports;
• Work with the International Finance Manager to ensure processes and controls are in place to oversee the day-to-day operation of financial systems and resources, including cash flow monitoring, bank reconciliations, invoicing, banking, petty cash and payroll, stock control;
• Manage purchasing and procurement activities including supplier management and ensure value for money Open/maintain bank accounts and liaise with banks.

Support to Government and Strategic Development

• Support the development of financial systems so that direct financial support is provided to local government partners and they are able to take on responsibility for and account for programme budgets;
• Work with programmes team to build the capacity of local government partners in financial management, procurement, and budgeting so that they will eventually be able to fund and sustain the Lively Minds programme themselves;
• Support the work at national government to identify ways to integrate the programme into and fund it from existing budgets and budget cycles;
• Support in the development and strengthening of robust cost models (including sensitivity analyses/stress testing) to guide decisions around the pace and rate of scale, staffing & resource requirements, ensure value for money and maximise cost efficiencies.

Required Skills or Experience

Essential skills and qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience managing budgets, forecasting and financial control, ideally at a management level.
• Professional accounting qualification (ACCA, CIMA or equivalent)
• Experience of managing people
• Financial modelling and Intermediate Excel (V-Lookups, Pivot Tables etc.)
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral)
• Wide experience of working with auditors and managing grants and donor reporting.

Desirable skills and qualifications:

• Experience working with remote teams.

Behaviors:

To succeed in this role, you will need:

• to be detail oriented with a passion for quality results. You must be able to filter and analyse complex financial data with a high level of accuracy and produce flawless financial reports
• to be business-minded. In order to spread our impact, we need you to help us secure sustainable income, gaining the support of government, funders and key stakeholders
• to be a leader. You will need to role model professionalism, determination & resilience, a growth mindset, and passion for the work and be a role-model of our organisational values.
• to be actively involved in delivering growth; as a small charity, we need you to be adaptable, with the ability to advise on strategic finance matters, as well as being hands-on when necessary
• to have a good understanding of statutory compliance and be on top of changes. You must have a constant ear out for potential changes in legislation related to related to finances, expenses, allowances and opportunities that Lively Minds can feed into.
• to be an excellent collaborator. You must have experience liaising with professional specialists responsible for risk management and co-ordinating financial records, reports and controls. You will need to be able to work well with both international and local team members and with those in various positions professionally (above, in-line, and below you) as well as use your own initiative.
• to be a self-starter. You must be comfortable working with limited supervision and managing a complex and varied workload. You will need to be target-oriented and results-driven, with excellent organisational skills and the ability to prioritise your time effectively for efficient implementation across multiple projects.