Chief Financial Officer

Splash is partnering with Shortlist Search (Shortlist.net) to recruit this role.

ABOUT SPLASH:

Splash is a global nonprofit organization founded in 2007, headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA. Since 2007, we have completed more than 2,500 projects that serve over 1.2 million children each day. Currently focused on cities in East and Southern Africa, Splash delivers the clean water, clean toilets, and dignified menstrual health resources that every child deserves through comprehensive water, sanitation, hygiene, and menstrual health (WASH-M) services and behavior change programs across 100% of a city's public schools.

Our vision is global impact without Splash, made possible through partnerships with national governments, co-creation with local communities, and replication far beyond our day-to-day involvement.

In 2019, we began testing and refining Project WISE (WASH in Schools for Everyone), a cost-effective and replicable blueprint designed to reach 100% of public schools in fast-growing, complex cities in partnership with local governments and community leaders. In five years, we achieved our goals in Ethiopia and India, and we began our next phase of expansion in East and Southern Africa in 2025.

Our Core Values: People First | Quality | Honesty | Joy | Learn from Mistakes.

Splash values the unique skills and experiences everyone brings to the organization, and we are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and qualified applicants for employment. To learn more, please visit splash.org.

POSITION OVERVIEW:

We are seeking a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to lead our global financial strategy, compliance, risk oversight, and long-term sustainability. Serving on the global management team, the CFO will partner closely with the CEO, Board, and country leaders to build the financial architecture required for government-partnered scale, blended finance, and multi-country expansion.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

Financial Strategy, Sustainability, and Blended Finance

• Lead the development of Splash's long-term financial strategy in alignment with organizational growth, government partnership, and impact goals.
• Help Splash build a more sophisticated capital strategy that distinguishes between philanthropic funding, catalytic capital, government co-financing, donor-funded infrastructure, technical assistance, and long-term public ownership.
• Own the financial impact of program changes, tracing how new operational standards or models affect costs, budgets, and donor agreements.
• Partner with the CEO, Development team, and program leadership to assess how different funding sources can support different needs across the organization.
• Help answer existential financial questions regarding long-term sustainability, such as how national scale work is sustained beyond initial philanthropy and what happens financially after Splash exits a country.
• Support financial modeling for government co-financing, donor match requirements, phased implementation, working capital needs, and long-term sustainability.
• Advise the CEO and Board on tradeoffs related to scale, risk, unrestricted reserves, cost recovery, donor restrictions, and country-level financial exposure.
• Lead scenario planning and financial modeling for multi-year growth, including delayed disbursements, foreign exchange exposure, government payment timing, implementation shifts, and funding gaps.
• Build financial models that incorporate inflation, foreign exchange exposure, country-specific cost assumptions, and implementation timing so multi-year budgets are realistic and decision-useful.

Global Financial Management & Reporting

• Oversee global budgeting, forecasting, cash flow management, and financial reporting across Splash's US and international operations.
• Maintain full ownership of core financial operations, US GAAP compliance, clean audits, and internal controls across all entities.
• Ensure timely, accurate, and decision-useful reporting for the CEO, management team, Board, Finance Committee, donors, and country teams.
• Strengthen financial dashboards and analysis so country, regional, and global teams can track burn rates against activities, deliverables, restricted donor budgets, and implementation progress in real time or near-real time.
• Manage organizational cash flow, reserves, restricted and unrestricted funding, and liquidity planning.
• Partner with Program and Development teams to ensure budgets, forecasts, and donor reports accurately reflect implementation realities.
• Support budget modeling for new opportunities, including overall project budgets, donor-specific restricted budgets, match or co-financing assumptions, cost recovery, and implementation timelines.
• Ensure grant budgets, cost recovery, indirect cost allocation, and donor reporting are disciplined, transparent, and aligned with Splash's operating model.

Government Co-Financing and Public Finance

• Support the design and financial oversight of government co-financing arrangements, including contribution models, annual workplans, budget alignment, and fund-flow options.
• Help shape government finance conversations by assessing how public budgets, co-financing deals, and sovereign debt impact our strategic direction and fundraising.
• Help assess the financial implications of government-funded implementation, direct government procurement, contractor payments, cost-share commitments, and delayed public disbursements.
• Partner with country teams to ensure government co-financing commitments are financially realistic, well documented, appropriately accounted for, and monitored.
• Support financial analysis related to public-sector ownership, operations and maintenance, and the long-term transition of responsibility to government systems.
• Bring practical understanding of the risks and realities of operating in low-income settings, including public finance cycles, procurement constraints, documentation gaps, currency exposure, and varying local accounting capacity.

International Compliance, VAT, Tax, and Risk

• Ensure compliance with US nonprofit requirements, donor regulations, accounting and audit standards, and relevant international financial regulations.
• Oversee financial operations across multiple countries and entities, including registration, statutory compliance, local audit requirements, payroll, tax, banking, and accounting practices.
• Manage VAT, withholding tax, recoverability, exemptions, and other country-level tax issues that affect donor budgets, infrastructure delivery, and local contracting.
• Lead the annual audit process and manage relationships with external auditors, tax advisors, legal advisors, and other technical consultants.
• Maintain strong risk management practices across global financial operations, including internal controls, segregation of duties, fraud prevention, procurement controls, and documentation standards.

Systems, Controls, and Operational Discipline

• Build and maintain strong financial systems, policies, processes, and internal controls that support a growing global organization.
• Strengthen financial technology, reporting tools, data integrity, and cross-country accounting processes.
• Build and enforce the accounting and reporting architecture needed to track restricted funds by donor, project, activity, deliverable, country, budget line, and spending status.
• Strengthen budgeting, forecasting, financial controls, cost documentation, and approval processes so they are clear, efficient, and scalable.
• Ensure finance processes support procurement, contracting, and implementation without making finance a bottleneck.
• Drive a culture of financial accountability, transparency, and timely decision-making.

Team Leadership and Cross-Functional Partnership

• Lead, mentor, and strengthen Splash's global finance team.
• Build financial capacity across country teams and non-finance leaders so budget ownership is distributed and disciplined.
• Partner closely with Program, Development, Operations, and country leadership to align financial resources with program delivery and organizational priorities.
• Translate complex financial issues into clear, practical guidance for colleagues who are not finance specialists.
• Serve as a trusted partner to the CEO, Treasurer, Finance Committee, and Board.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Typically 15+ years of progressively senior financial leadership.
• Deep expertise in US nonprofit finance, including US 501(c)(3) operations, US GAAP, IRS reporting, audit requirements, and board governance.
• Significant global finance leadership experience in an international nonprofit, NGO, foundation, development finance institution, or other mission-driven organization operating across multiple countries.
• Strong knowledge of international financial management, including IFRS (and IPSAS where relevant), donor compliance, grants management, restricted funding, audits, internal controls, statutory compliance, procurement, VAT/tax, multi-currency operations, and financial risk management.
• Demonstrated ability to lead financial strategy, planning, forecasting, financial modeling, and multi-year, multi-country budgeting in complex operating environments.
• Hands-on experience working in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, or Southeast Asia, is preferred.
• Experience supporting government co-financing, public-private partnerships, infrastructure financing, development finance, or blended finance is strongly preferred.
• Proven ability to work effectively with Boards, Finance Committees, CEOs, and senior leadership teams.
• Master's degree in Finance, Accounting, Business, Public Administration, or a related field preferred. CPA, MBA, or equivalent professional qualification strongly valued.
• Advanced proficiency in Excel, financial reporting systems, accounting platforms, grant management tools, and financial reporting and analytics.

Originally posted on Himalayas