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APPOINTMENT OF

Chief Executive Officer

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IntroductionAPPOINTMENT OF CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

At Send a Cow we want to see a confident and thriving rural Africa where communities and families have the hope and the means to secure their own futures from the land. Over the last 28 years, we have been developing an innovative model now recognised by participants, partners and institutional donors as being highly effective.

Send a Cow is seeking the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer to help us strategically chart our future, to lead a passionate and highly professional team, to dramatically stretch our reach, and to continue evolving our organisation to best steward our responsibility, our gifted human resources and our donors’ faithful trust.

Send a Cow, with an annual income of over £7m, delivers directly managed programmes in 7 countries in Africa. We have a clear mission, well-developed and highly impactful programme expertise, an excellent international team, a devoted Group Board, robust finance and funding models, and a thriving professional culture full of aspiration.

This is an exciting time to join us and there is a huge need for our services. Please do consider whether you might invest your passions and gifts to lead Send a Cow as we help more of Africa’s most marginalised people have the confidence, knowledge and skills to thrive.

“Developing Africa’s breadbaskets depends on improving the productivity, profitability and sustainability of smallholder farmers. This army of small producers - the majority of them women - grows most of Africa’s food. And they do so with limited government support, minimal resources, poor quality seeds and a lack of fertilizer to improve the quality of their soil. They also now have to cope with the emerging impacts of climate change.”

“Empowered, smallholder farmers can lift their communities out of poverty and help make Africa the world’s breadbasket.”

KOFI ANNAN

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Our visionA confident and thriving rural Africa

Our missionTo give communities and families the hope and the means to secure their own futures from the land

In the last 28 years we have reached one million people. That’s 28 years working hand in hand with families in Africa to develop a package of support that is culturally appropriate and understood. It works because we first instil confidence in people, an ‘I can do it’ attitude that ensures that on receipt of livestock and training, they quickly thrive. It works because it focuses on farming and families, uses locally available resources and established community structures and isn’t rushed. The result is confident people in control of their own land and of their own futures.

When our founding farmers sent the first cows to Africa they did so as a practical way of expressing their Christian faith and this heritage lives on in our values today. We are proud that some of our founding farmers are still working with us, helping families in Africa, farmer to farmer. Their knowledge and experience has proved invaluable, helping us grow into the practical, innovative charity we are today, helping families in Africa to work their way out of poverty for good.

We are now supporting more than 300,000 people every year across seven African nations. We have six boards: Group (to which this role reports) UK, USA, Kenya, Uganda and Lesotho.

Send a Cow has, since its founding, worked with people of all faiths and none. We pursue our charitable objectives in accordance with these principles and values. We do not evangelise or proselytise. We strive to be an equal opportunity employer and celebrate the breadth of understanding we have in our staff team in matters of faith.

We are driven by a sense of injustice that rural Africa is not confident and thriving. We believe it should be and can be with appropriate support. We know we cannot work everywhere and do everything, but where we do work we use the following values to guide us:

‘What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God’ Micah 6v8

HOPE MEANS FUTURE

About Send a Cow

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Our Current ContextWe are an organisation with conviction, ambition and courage.

We are a values-led organisation and take a trust-based and relational approach to all aspects of our working life. Our staff team values and lives out both humility and authority. Our work is done with confidence, excellence and delivers change, but we are humbled by the immense achievements and inspiring dedication of our programme participants, mindful of the work left to be done and the potential for Send a Cow to evolve and innovate our programmes in order to better serve the inspiring ambitions of rural communities across Africa.

We seek a relational leader who will join us in seeking to live out our core values:

INTEGRITY. Act with honesty, fairness and honour; treating all cases with impartiality and transparency, and with no discrimination or compromise of the truth.

STEWARDSHIP. Take a long-term, multi-generational view to the wise use and care of all social, economic and environmental resources - time, talent and treasure.

ACCOUNTABILITY. Build self-reliance in all our partners, organisations, teams and individuals to ensure clarity of roles, so all accept responsibility for their actions, decisions and policies.

This is a time of growth increasing our profile, refining our service approach and growing our reach through strategic partnerships.

We seek a CEO who will anticipate strategic challenges and opportunities. The CEO will catalyse the discussions needed to define and deliver a strategy that will deepen our impact, access new funding, grow our team and stretch our reach to work with over a million people each year.

The inspiring example of our programme participants is a challenge to us. We believe they require Send a Cow to be similarly open to doing whatever it takes to continue experimenting and evolving in order to be an excellent service available to millions more across Africa.

“A way has to be found to enable everyone to benefit from the fruits of the earth” Pope Francis, Address to the Food and Agricultural Organization, June 2013

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Our ApproachWe are a capacity-building and not a “hand-out” organisation. We are asset-based and not needs-based, helping communities see the wealth of their own context and name their own hopes and dreams for their families and communities. Our approach helps communities develop confidence and hope. This new mind-set enables them to use what they have creatively, stewarding Send a Cow’s training and resourcing, and establishing a new and sustainable economic trajectory for themselves, their families and their communities.

Our programmes will take on different dimensions appropriate to location and community needs. Our primary operating model is to deliver our highly effective programmes directly but at times we deliver our work in consortia.

Our core programmes follow this three-stage approach:

1. Gender and Social Development People are central to all we do – we will continue to work with smallholder farmers, retaining our current focus on women. Through stronger needs assessment where appropriate at a community wide level, we will broaden the focus on marginalised people within a local context to incorporate youth, thereby addressing shared needs with tailored projects.

3. Enterprise Development A new area of thematic coordination that will develop over the five years to strengthen the support to all of the interventions linked with the market, value addition etc. This will promote local food systems, where food producers receive a fair value for their surplus, with control in their own hands.

2. Farming Systems A resource management strategy that achieves economic and sustainable agricultural production to meet the diverse requirements of the farming household, while preserving the resource base and maintaining high environmental quality. This will build on our work of livestock placement and improved homestead gardening, ensuring that the whole farm is incorporated into one system of management.

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Role DescriptionThe Chief Executive Officer leads the Send a Cow team. In conjunction with the Group Board the CEO sets the organisation’s vision, strategy and plans and is responsible for their implementation and delivery. The CEO reports to the Group Board of Send a Cow and the Group Senior Management Team report to the CEO.

We are seeking a CEO able to bring courageous and inspiring leadership to our work. The CEO will drive for excellence, have a servant-hearted authenticity and a management style that leads through empowering the team around them to act innovatively, strategically and boldly.

It will be the particular responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer to lead us in four key areas:

Vision and Strategy• Inspire and lead the whole Send a Cow group, both in the UK, US and in Africa, by enhancing, refining

and developing a clear and compelling vision and mission.

• In conjunction with the Group Board, develop Send a Cow’s organisational strategy.

• Uphold and further develop Send a Cow’s approach to rural development in Africa, ensuring the delivery of high quality programmes.

• Ensure that Send a Cow’s mission can be delivered on a long-term, sustainable basis, through encouraging appropriate innovation, creativity and impact as well as revenue growth.

• Evaluate progress against strategic objectives, growing our culture of transparency, accountability and high performance, maintaining unity of Group Board and staff as we own successes and failures together.

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People • Demonstrate, develop and promote Send a Cow’s values and

Christian ethos.

• Inspire staff, partners, volunteers and donors to see their valuable role in delivering our mission and strategy and enable them to do all they can to see Send a Cow’s work flourish and grow.

• Manage the Group’s senior team including setting annual objectives, motivating and reviewing performance.

• Report to the Group Board on the organisation’s performance through a monthly dashboard and through quarterly meetings.

• Set and maintain the organisation’s policies in conjunction with Group Board.

• Foster strong connectedness between fundraising offices, head office and country offices in Africa, visiting regularly and deepening relationships with our international team and partners.

• Develop and empower the Group Senior Management Team, ensuring that they have the resources necessary to excel as a leadership team and in their roles as team leaders.

• Ensure that the Group Senior Management Team and the Group Board assess and respond to Send a Cow’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks, keeping up-to-date with relevant trends that will impact our work.

Growth• Promote and represent Send a Cow externally, developing its

public profile and reputation as a provider of programme quality and impact.

• Build strong relationships with Send a Cow’s existing donors and contacts.

• Actively extend and diversify Send a Cow’s income base through developing new geographical markets and new approaches to fundraising.

• Develop effective collaborations and partnerships with other organisations.

• Identify and pursue networking opportunities, particularly within the NGO community to promote the Send a Cow approach to development.

• Initiate and develop close relationships with institutional donors, influencers within the INGO sector, sister agencies and the private sector.

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Organisational Development and Stewardship • Develop the appropriate governance models, infrastructure and business plans to deliver Send a Cow’s

mission and growth ambitions.

• Lead a culture of innovation and ambition to grow financially, to work in more countries, to work in new ways, and to work through new technologies.

• Empower leadership and cultivate strong managers, regularly consider and review staffing structures, and recruit and appoint staff to ensure we are best placed to deliver excellence.

• Conduct regular staff surveys and lead team meetings to facilitate unity as one organisation with one mission.

• Ensure that Send a Cow has adequate policies and procedures in place to evaluate and manage financial, operational, market positional, reputational and other risks, and to ensure compliance with all legal and regulatory requirements.

• Assist the Group Board by providing sufficient information from, and engagement with, the Group Senior Management Team enabling the Group Board to regularly assess effective delivery and evaluate the management of risk.

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Personal AttributesThe Group Board believes that character and behaviour are as important as competence, and that it is important for the CEO to have, develop and model a number of personal attributes.

The Group Board believes that Send a Cow will be best led by a Chief Executive Officer who is:

• A practicing Christian who sees a clear connection between their personal faith and the work of rural development in Africa.

• An outstanding leader who exercises leadership as a clear expression of Send a Cow’s core values.

• Humble and cross-culturally sensitive to enable a supportive culture where others are built up in their gifts and leadership qualities and where the team is greater than the sum of its parts.

• Aspirational and motivational. Robust to tackle challenging subject matter, harness the capacities of diverse stakeholders, stay the course, and maintain an atmosphere of resilience and hope.

• Creative, adaptable, mentally agile, and excited by change.

• A listener and a learner, passionate about people and leading a diverse workforce.

• Wise and articulate in discerning global trends that will impact Send a Cow’s work.

• Excited by and confident to lead change and growth.

• Emotionally intelligent, self-aware and authentic.

• Living a can-do attitude and demonstrating initiative.

• Responsible and accountable.

• Professional and applying rigour to delivering excellence.

• Careful with people and money, valuing every contribution as important.

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How to ApplySend a Cow is working with Macaulay Search to make this critical appointment.

Send a Cow will offer a competitive salary for the post. The role will be based in our head office in Newton St Loe, near Bath.

Applications should be sent by email to sendacow@macaulaysearch.com and must be received by the 7th of November 2016.

Your application should comprise:

• A mandatory covering note of not more than two pages outlining your motivation and relevant experience for the role. This covering letter should also include the names of your three references. Please note – these references will not be contacted until late in the process and with your prior agreement. The names and details of your references will be held in strictest confidence.

• A full CV, including educational and professional qualifications, a full employment history showing the more significant positions, responsibilities held and relevant achievements.

First interviews will be held in our head office on the 28th November, 2016.

Second Round Interviews will be held in our head office on the 13th December, 2016.

The successful candidate will be expected to take up the post of Chief Executive Officer as soon as is reasonably possible.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this opportunity and to learn more about the work of Send a Cow.