Legal Counsel- Delhi
To apply for this role please send a copy of your CV and cover letter to recruitment@ciff.org, stating the job title in the subject of your email. Applications received after the closing date may not be reviewed. If a high volume of applications are received, the vacancy may be closed early.
About CIFF
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is an independent philanthropic organisation with offices in Addis Ababa, Beijing, London, Nairobi, and New Delhi. CIFF works with a wide range of partners seeking to transform and empower the lives of children and adolescents in developing countries, with the ultimate goal of solving seemingly intractable challenges to ensure all children and adolescents have the chance to survive and thrive.
CIFF aims to play a catalytic role as a funder and influencer to deliver urgent and systemic change at scale. Areas of work include empowering girls and boys to control their sexual and reproductive health to avoid unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion and HIV/AIDS; improving children and mothers’ health and nutrition; preventing low birthweight babies; eliminating deaths from severe acute malnutrition, nested within a more integrated approach to childhood development; and deworming efforts to break transmission for good. CIFF’s child protection work focuses on ending child labour and sexual exploitation by enabling an environment that reduces vulnerability of communities and increases protection of children. The organisation’s climate portfolio is driven by a vision of a climate-safe future for today’s children and future generations that also bear the benefits of cleaner air, energy security and sustainable jobs.
We are privileged, as a financially independent philanthropy, to be able to work in challenging areas that others can’t and we often elect to work on what can be controversial issues that others won’t. For example CIFF is pro-choice with respect to women’s reproductive rights along with the prioritisation of access to reproductive information and to contraceptive choices. It is imperative to the CIFF family, therefore, that prospective candidates are aware of the issues we work on and embrace all our programmatic work with fully open minds to the huge number of ways in which we seek to empower young lives.
CIFF places significant emphasis on quality data and evidence. For most of its grants, CIFF works with partners to measure and evaluate progress to achieve large scale and sustainable impact. The organisation is committed to sharing as much information as possible about what they and their partners are learning.
Founded in 2002, CIFF employs approximately 160 professionals globally. CIFF strives to couple business acumen and principles with development experience and best practices to transform the landscape for children. It seeks to be the gold standard in grant making and foundation operations.
With an increase in grant commitments and complexity of investments, an excellent opportunity exists for a lawyer to join the Foundation on a fixed term basis.
Reporting to the Deputy General Counsel, you will provide support on a wide range of matters, including the drafting and negotiation of agreements with grantee organisations and partners, conducting due diligence, advising on appropriate legal structures through which to provide funding and advising on governance and general compliance matters.
As part of a small legal team, you will have the opportunity to work in close business partnership with staff at all levels across the Foundation, developing effective working relationships and providing advice on a wide range of day-to-day matters.
This role will be primarily supporting the India office, and those who work with the India office in understanding the requirements of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (including recent amendments) and establishing the necessary processes, procedures and guidelines to ensure compliance. However, there will also be the opportunity to work more broadly across the organisation as part of the Legal team.
Key Components of the Job:
1. Contract drafting and negotiations with CIFF’s grantee organisations in children’s development and climate change, as well as related activities (monitoring and evaluation contracts, consultants).
2. Advising and supporting on governance and compliance issues.
3. Advising on FCRA compliance and related matters.
4. Managing external counsel in the provision of advice and training/know-how where appropriate.
5. Advising on appropriate legal structures for providing funding to grantees.
6. Conducting legal due diligence on CIFF’s proposed grantees.
7. Building and managing relationships with programme managers.
8. Supporting the Deputy General Counsel in maintaining an appropriate compliance framework to manage and mitigate legal risk.
9. Ad hoc legal advice on a variety of matters relating to programme issues, legal and regulatory concerns, programme governance issues, conflicts of interest, commercial contracts and consultancy contracts.
10. Willing to drive change, improve processes and generally make colleagues more aware of the importance of legal issues. Work with all aspects of a rapidly growing organisation.
Person Specification:
Excellent experience of transactions and corporate structures is required in this position and as a result, the role is well suited to corporate and general commercial lawyers. You must also be able to demonstrate involvement or a keen interest in the not-for-profit sector.
Regulatory, corporate governance, charity law and specifically FCRA experience would be helpful. You must be able to demonstrate strong interpersonal skills and flexibility of approach to respond to the demands of a small but growing organisation. This is a unique opportunity to move into the not-for-profit sector and be part of an organisation which truly makes a difference.
Qualifications and Experience:
1. India qualified solicitor with experience with a major law firm or in-house position.
2. Experience of a broad range of practical legal issues, including corporate, commercial contracts, regulatory issues, corporate governance and specifically FCRA.
3. Dynamic, willing to learn, self-starter, comfortable in a relatively unstructured environment with new and varied challenges.
4. UK and/or US not-for-profit sector exposure desirable.
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