FINANCIAL LEAD MASTERPEACE 

MasterPeace is a global, multi-award-winning, positive grassroots network of NGOs, social enterprises, partner organizations, active citizens and artists that make a difference locally; at school, in the streets and in the communities. From Kathmandu, Nairobi and Utrecht to Medellin. MasterPeace is active in more than 45 countries. Through a social franchise model we license local organizations as MasterPeace clubs.

The FInancial Lead of MasterPeace is responsible for leading the financial management of the organization.

The financial management includes planning, organization, control and monitoring of the financial resources of the organization to achieve its goals.

Location: Bulgaria

The financial management at MasterPeace achieves the following:

• Maximizes the efficient and effective use of the organization's resources.

• Enhances MasterPeace’s reporting to fiscal authorities and donors.

• Builds respect and trust among partners and beneficiaries.

• Strengthens MasterPeace’s competitiveness in securing increasingly scarce resources.

• Ensures long-term financial sustainability for the organization.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Financial Management

• Responsibilities:

  • Develop and implement financial policies and procedures aligned with strategic objectives.

  • Lead budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning processes across the organization and projects.

  • Raise and manage resources efficiently to support key activities.

  • Collaborate with leadership to ensure long-term financial viability, including planning to cover current and future expenditures, as well as incidental costs.

  • Provide strategic financial guidance to secure the organization's financial sustainability.

2. Financial Compliance and Reporting

• Responsibilities:

  • Ensure compliance with financial regulations, donor requirements, and legal obligations regarding revenue and expenditure management.

  • Prepare accurate financial statements and reports for both fiscal authorities and donors, improving transparency.

  • Coordinate audits, manage relationships with auditors, and strengthen internal control systems.

  • Update liquidity forecasts and monitor cash flow to maintain financial health.

  • Maintain up-to-date records to ensure reliable reporting and strengthen trust with partners and beneficiaries.

3. Operational Financial Management

• Responsibilities:

  • Oversee accounts payable/receivable, payroll, and benefits administration, ensuring legal compliance in financial transactions.

  • Manage financial details of contracts and agreements with co-applicants and third-party partners.

  • Provide financial analysis to support resource planning and decision-making at the project level.

  • Monitor and update liquidity schemes, ensuring that payments to suppliers and co-applicants are timely and accurately executed.

  • Regularly review and analyze the financial pipeline, updating the MP dashboard accordingly.

4. Project and Budget Management

• Responsibilities:

  • Oversee the creation, implementation, and monitoring of budgets at both the organizational and project levels.

  • Manage donor funds and ensure adherence to grant requirements, ensuring that funds are used effectively for their intended purposes.

  • Support project managers by providing financial data and analyses to improve budget and expenditure management.

  • Update financial forecasts based on project progress, including HR and Out-of-Pocket expenses, and coordinate payments.

  • Ensure revenue/expenditure management is efficient, optimizing the economic impact for the organization.

5. Risk Management and Financial Viability

• Responsibilities:

  • Identify, assess, and minimize financial risks to ensure the organization’s financial stability.

  • Regularly analyze revenue and expenditure forecasts, ensuring that the organization can cover both current and future expenditures.

  • Create cost-cutting strategies if liquidity forecasts fall below acceptable thresholds.

  • Ensure financial sustainability by securing adequate future revenues and reserves for incidental costs.

6. Stakeholder and External Partner Management

• Responsibilities:

  • Manage relationships with external partners (e.g., auditors, payroll service providers, tax authorities) to ensure compliance and accurate reporting.

  • Support fundraising and income generation efforts by providing necessary financial data and analysis.

  • Manage financial aspects of contracts, co-applicant agreements, and grant agreements, ensuring all obligations are met.

  • Engage with third-party partners to ensure that financial audits and external reporting requirements are completed efficiently.

7. Leadership and Team Management

• Responsibilities:

  • Lead, supervise, and mentor finance staff to ensure efficient financial operations.

  • Provide training and financial guidance to program and project managers to enhance their understanding of financial management.

  • Facilitate collaboration within the finance team to ensure smooth execution of financial responsibilities.

  • Lead discussions on monthly financial bookings, ensuring all teams are aligned on financial forecasts and liquidity.

8. Control and Audit

• Responsibilities:

  • Coordinate and support audits, ensuring all legal, donor, and internal requirements are met.

  • Maintain strong internal controls to safeguard organizational assets.

  • Prepare for regular board meetings, presenting liquidity and dashboard overviews.

  • Facilitate the creation of financial year reports, signed by board members and co-leaders, ensuring compliance with legal and audit requirements.

Requirements

•  Bachelor's degree in Finance, Accounting, or related field.

•  Professional certification (e.g., CPA, CMA) preferred.

•  Minimum of 5 years of experience in financial management, preferably in the non-profit sector.

•  Strong knowledge of non-profit accounting principles and practices.

•  Experience with grant management and donor reporting.

•  Proficiency in financial software and Microsoft Office Suite.

•  Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.

•  Strong attention to detail and accuracy.

•  Ability to communicate complex financial information clearly.

•  Experience in budgeting, forecasting, and financial planning.

•  Knowledge of financial regulations and compliance requirements.

•  Strong organizational and time management skills.

•  Ability to work independently and as part of a team.

•  Experience in managing audits and working with external auditors.

•  Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

•  Commitment to the mission and values of the organization.

•  Ability to handle confidential information with integrity.

•  Experience in developing and implementing financial policies.

•  Proven track record of managing financial risks.

•  Ability to mentor and develop finance staff.

Please Submit your CV and cover letter to info@masterpeace.org 

MasterPeace in a Cross-cultural World

As MasterPeace we are active in 40+ countries on 4 continents. Learning by doing and with tons of “gut feeling” we support the ambitions of changemakers cross cultures.

In our EU project SGA 2024 (co-funded by the European Commission), we discussed how we grow from “gut feeling” towards a way in which “the other” better understands our intention. It is our experience that working together and communicating effectively together with people from different cultures, with different backgrounds, different upbringings, and education, different habit patterns, customs, and rituals require extra attention. Especially in Operations where details matter, and where communication is an important part of the job. How we communicate is largely culturally determined by how we grew up, were brought up and educated in our early years. This is how we developed our personal communication preferences.

'Look at me when I speak to you,' my school teacher and mother told me. Punam from Nepal and Nikki from Japan, have never heard me say that. On the contrary. They are expected to lower their eyes down, when an adult speaks to them.

All these different cultural and habitual patterns in communicating, often produce a Babylonian confusion of speech. Even when you have agreed to have everyone speak the same language.

How fun and valuable it is then to discover together, where we differ, and how we can difference.

The Lewis Model and Culture Active are a wonderful and practical tool for this, which we would like to introduce you to. You can use it to discover your own personal communication preferences, and make a comparison with more than 100 profiles of countries worldwide. Take a look at the website https://secu

This is one of the helpful overviews.

 For more information, have a look at https://masterpeace.org/publications/ under the tab FILES.

Middle Income Trap and MasterPeace Role

Never waste a good crises is a known saying. That the word crisis come from the meaning of crossroads is not so well known. Let's dive into the crossroads that the World Bank shows in the great research paper (June 2024) on transitions in Middle-Income Countries.

The title of the report : Middle Income Trap” triggered me to write this article to discover the impact of their analyses on the strategy of MasterPeace Foundation and our licensed networks in 40+ countries

The 108 middle-income countries with incomes per capita between US$1,136 and US$13,845 aim to reach high-income status within the next two or three decades. When assessed against this goal, the record is dismal: the total population of the 34 middle-income economies that transitioned to high-income status since 1990 is less than 250 million, the population of Pakistan.

So, the key question is, what do societies in middle-income countries need to scale, what can we do as NGOs, and especially what can MasterPeace do to accelerate?

The World Bank Analyses relevant to the MP Strategy and ambition in brief:

Countries with weaker institutions and especially those with lower levels of economic and political freedom are susceptible to slowdowns at even lower levels of income:

=> MasterPeace works on positive action to engage youngsters as active citizens and boost democratic values. Our approach of using the Arts and Sports (“Artivism”) to bring youngsters and communities together is a proven best practice worldwide.

• Successful middle-income countries will have to engineer two successive transitions to develop economic structures that can eventually sustain high-income levels. The first transition is from a 1i strategy for accelerating investment to a 2i strategy focusing on both investment and infusion in which a country brings technologies from abroad and diffuses them domestically—a process broadly applicable to lower-middle-income countries. The second transition is to switch to a 3i strategy, which entails paying more attention to innovation—a process more applicable to upper-middle-income countries:

=>  Via our networks we are an enabler of knowledge transfers and build local capacity via our local teams and train- the trainer model on for example renewable energy as explained in our story as Driver of transformation in Cameroon “ https://masterpeace.org/bridge-builders-to-drive-transformation-in-cameroon/)

• Foreign trade and investment are in danger of becoming constricted by geopolitical tensions, and populism is shrinking the room for governments to act:

=> We believe in 8 billion talents. Based on our theory of change to ”engage, connect and empower” youngsters we are in 40+ countries the bridge builder that puts dialogue above judgments.

• Accelerating climate action will require large investments in infrastructure and regulatory reforms that may stall productivity

=> Our campaign #COOLeader (https://masterpeace.org/cooleaders/ ) and monthly webinars like # Cool Talks https://masterpeace.org/masterpeace-cool-talk-series/ are our way to address this immense challenge.

• To reward merit, middle-income countries can upgrade their talent pools, select efficient learners, and tap the productive power of women

=> We believe in abundance and tap into the 8 billion talents. Via our train-the-trainer approach in youth work and education, we work on quality education and gender equality. In 2023 our 400+ projects involved 295.000 direct and 1 million + indirect participants. Numbers to be proud on and encouraging to continue and double our impact

MasterPeace COOLeaders inclusive business platform – a global program in association with Ecociate

Recently, I attended a one-day conference on “Inclusive Growth - Impacting Agriculture and Food Systems” organized by Ecociate, a partner organization of MasterPeace. MasterPeace was one of the partner organizations of the conference, and it also had UN -ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific), among other notable and vital institutions, as one of its main supporters. This conference was held at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi on June 20, 2024. The conference focused mainly on the opportunities, challenges, and support systems relating to agro-based start-ups that have an approach that goes against the mainstream business practices in sourcing chemical-free produce to adopting more climate-friendly agricultural methods, fair pay to farmers, and ensuring gender equality. It was an intense conference with many sessions focussing on specific Inclusive Growth aspects. Ecociate has been mentoring start-ups who are engaged with Inclusive Business and it was encouraging to see that many of these start-ups have been successful in raising investments. Some of them are indeed running at a profit at early stages. Many such start-ups were awarded at the end of the conference and they shared their first-hand experience in running such a business, which was quite inspirational.

As a follow-up to the conference and learnings from Ecociate’s 18-month-long inclusive business coaching program, Ecociate decided to launch the Inclusive Business Ecosystem Network (IBEN)[1] to bring together stakeholders and ecosystem players from different spectrums and build an enabling environment for the growth of inclusive businesses, which can support smallholders and other marginalized communities at scale while being sustainable and profitable.

MasterPeace & Ecociate have been working together for some time to design meaningful solutions for marginalized communities. MasterPeace has decided to join the IBEN platform with Ecociate to strengthen its agenda of inclusive growth further by supporting inclusive businesses in the agriculture and food sector and developing leaders for this sector.

The MasterPeace COOLeaders is a global program that seeks to motivate and provide the necessary tools to people to catalyze them into being change makers towards a paradigm that focuses on integral development in material, cultural, and spiritual spheres. The objectives of IBEN Platforms, align well with the objectives and activities of MasterPeace COOLeaders, thus, both of these initiatives have decided to work together in their efforts to support vulnerable and marginalized communities.

COOLeader is one who cares about herself/ himself (in terms of mental, physical, economic and cultural state), others, the place, and works towards economic sustainability while at all times working towards restoring and regenerating our natural ecology. One remarkable feature of MasterPeace COOLeaders program is its extensive deployment & support for arts (visual & performing), design & music to mobilize and to bring about & embody the desired change.

We believe that Inclusive businesses run by COOLeaders, can be the driver of this kind of change-making as it fosters healthy values, just and contribute positively towards the ecology and make places and societies safe and happy places to live in by contributing to the Triple Bottom Line (People, Profit & Planet). Encouraging inclusive entrepreneurship is a great way to address the unemployment problem around the world, which is the cause of poverty and conflicts. At the same time, we can ensure that development doesn’t come at the cost of the natural ecology and doesn't destabilize the well-being of future generations. These businesses have the potential to be disruptors by challenging the status quo and driving for policy changes, and steering towards equilibrium or middle grounds. MasterPeace with its network of clubs in 45 countries, which are largely working in marginalized areas will work together with IBEN to support the inclusive business around the world. This, coupled with Ecociate’s long years of expertise and network in this field, make us confident that we would be able to make a substantial impact on the improvement of human conditions and the natural ecology

However, starting and sustaining such a business does have extra layers of complexities and its learning curve. This coming together of MasterPeace and Ecociate through IBEN platform will help to shorten the learning curve by providing the start-ups with support in sourcing from certified farmers, connecting them to impact investors, allowing them access national & global markets, research and knowledge-based institutions and connects them with other business services like innovative branding, meeting statutory requirements, etc. We also intend to work with the governments & other stakeholders to improve agroecology.

The mission of IBEN is to enable more than 1000 Agribusiness and enterprise and impact the lives of 1000000 farmers by 2030 around the world. We look forward to your co-operation to make our efforts successful so that we can look a future with better quality of leadership, inclusive development and ecological harmony.

If you would like to join the IBEN platform and become COOL Inclusive business leaders or would like to know more or some ideas for change, please connect with sudipta@masterpeace.org.

Annexure-1

Genesis of Inclusive Business Ecosystem Network

The Inclusive Business Ecosystem Network (IBEN) has emerged as a response to the demonstrated need for a cohesive and collaborative platform that supports inclusive and impact-focused agribusinesses.

Ecociate has been working with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) under the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Inclusive Business Support Program in India and the ASEAN region. Through this initiative, we have worked closely with a meticulously selected cohort of 19 agribusiness companies, providing them with customized coaching and support to help identify and integrate inclusive business opportunities into their core operations. Throughout the program, these companies devised a range of solutions, from delivering digital and physical technologies to smallholder farmers, to adopting gender-inclusive practices, ensuring fair prices for farmers, and promoting sustainable agriculture and dairy management practices. These efforts have led to significant enhancements in productivity and income for smallholder farmers, with a notable impact on women farmers.

The program underscored the substantial benefits of bringing together a cohort of inclusive businesses alongside development sector players such as NGOs, community institutions, bilateral programs, and relevant government agencies. This collaborative approach creates extensive opportunities for learning, partnerships, and mutually beneficial engagements that amplify grassroots impact. This experience revealed the necessity of establishing an enabling ecosystem and policy environment to support and incentivize inclusive businesses to harness their full potential. In response to these insights, we engaged in extensive discussions with cohort members, the UN-ESCAP team, and other relevant stakeholders. This collective dialogue led to the consensus that forming a network-based organization would be pivotal in creating ground-level impact by uniting inclusive businesses and other stakeholders on a single platform. This shared vision has culminated in the formation of the Inclusive Business Ecosystem Network (IBEN).