Entrepreneurship Incubator Program Director

The Foundation For Tomorrow; Charlotte (NC); On-site; USD 17,000 - 19,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

Staff development fund

Communication allowance

Job summary

The Foundation For Tomorrow invites a Program Director to build and lead a new entrepreneurship incubator at the Community Learning Centre in Usa River, Arusha Region. The role oversees a multi-cohort program, guides participants through idea validation, market research, and project development, and connects ventures with mentors, workspace, and local networks.

You will shape curriculum, select participants on merit, and ensure ethical safeguarding and inclusivity across the program, with a

Qualifications

• Minimum five years in entrepreneurship, startups, business development, social enterprise, or nonprofit leadership.
• Direct experience founding, building, or leading an organization or venture.
• Experience facilitating training, workshops, or programs for adults.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor or coach individuals over time.
• Practical command of financial management: budgeting, cash flow, pricing, and preparing accounts that a lender, funder, or auditor will accept.
• Direct experience registering or running a legally compliant entity in Tanzania.
• Strong written and verbal communication in Swahili and English.
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the Arusha region.
• Willing to undergo safeguarding checks.

Responsibilities

• Lead the entrepreneurship incubator at the Community Learning Centre and manage its operations.
• Oversee cohorts of founders, nonprofits, and social enterprises, guiding them through incubation tracks.
• Build partnerships with local banks, funders, and the business community, and measure outcomes.

Job description

Program: Entrepreneurship Incubator, a program of the TFFT Community Learning Centre

Location: TFFT Community Learning Centre, Usa River, Arumeru District, Arusha Region — full-time, on-site

Reports to: Managing Director

Direct reports: None at appointment

Salary:4,000,000 - 4,500,000 TZS as a basic salary per month

Other benefits: Health insurance, staffprofessional development fund & communication allowance

Contract: Two years, renewable subject to funding and performance, with a six-month probationary period

Cohorts: One cohort in year one; two per year thereafter subject to review. 15–20 participants, in relationship with the incubator for 18 months

Languages: Fluent Swahili and English, written and spoken

Organizational Overview

The Foundation For Tomorrow (TFFT) is an International Non-Governmental Organization (Reg. No. I-NGO/R1/0071) committed to providing quality, inclusive education and psychosocial support to orphaned and vulnerable children in Tanzania. TFFT envisions a world where all children contribute to society as active and empowered citizens free from exclusion, disadvantage, and vulnerability.

For twenty years, TFFT has worked on the principle that education changes a life only when the whole person is supported: skills alongside confidence, agency, and community. The TFFT Community Learning Centre in Usa River is where that work now extends beyond the classroom, housing the Lenore Madden Library, the Computer Lab, Literacy lab, Teacher Training program and now an incubator for the people building Tanzania’s organizations and businesses.

The Opportunity

TFFT is opening an entrepreneurship incubator at the Community Learning Centre, and we are hiring the person who will build it and lead it.

African entrepreneurship is central to the continent’s prosperity, and the barriers in the way of it are well understood: funding, support services, skills, infrastructure, and administrative friction. Tanzanian innovators are the people best placed to tackle the root causes of poverty in their own communities. What they lack is not insight but access. The incubator exists to remove those barriers for a specific group of people, one cohort at a time, and to create fair and sustainable employment in the process.

It is for founders and builders across the Arusha region: people starting nonprofits and community organizations, people building purpose-driven companies, and people starting businesses that will employ others. They sit in one cohort together, because the cross-pollination between those three groups is one of the most valuable things the program has to offer, and they follow tailored tracks where the work genuinely diverges, on legal structure, financial model, and fundraising against revenue.

A cohort of fifteen to twenty is admitted and stays in relationship with the incubator for eighteen months. The first six are intensive: idea validation and cohort formation, organizational design and market research, then building and validating a real pilot or first product, pitch and funding preparation, and a public Launch Day at the Community Learning Centre in front of TFFT’s community, local partners, and the Arusha business world. The year that follows is accompanied by growth, with continued access to workspace and resources at the Centre, coaching, mentors, and the introductions that turn a launched venture into a surviving one. After that, alumni remain in the network permanently and come back to mentor the cohorts that follow.

It is free to participants, and selection is on merit and commitment rather than ability to pay. Most incubators in Tanzania are concentrated in Dar es Salaam and focused on tech startups. This one is in the north, it treats nonprofits and social enterprises as equals alongside businesses, it offers depth and individual coaching rather than co-working space and events, and it is built on twenty years of TFFT’s relationships in this community. Those are advantages to press, not gaps to apologize for.

The ambition is not modest. TFFT intends this to become a leading champion of entrepreneurship in Tanzania, and to put Tanzanian innovators in front of the global networks, markets, and investors that rarely find their way to Arusha. What exists today is the framework, the building, the donor network, and a board that wants this to work. The curriculum, the mentor pool, the partnerships, the financing routes, and the relationships that make any of it real are what this job is for. The Program Director will also be the person best placed to see what the design gets wrong, and is expected to say so and change it.

What TFFT Is Committed To

The Director has real latitude over how the program works and how it evolves. A small number of things are settled, because they are why TFFT is doing this at all:

• Open to all three. We welcome nonprofits, social enterprises, and job-creating businesses alike. Every model holds equal value in our eyes, as our core focus is championing locally led development.
• Access is on merit. The program is free to participants.
• Women are served at parity. Gender equity is designed into selection, outreach, mentorship, and scheduling from the first cohort, not added later. TFFT’s target is a minimum of half of each cohort being women, and the Program Director is expected to build a program that actually reaches it.
• The whole person, not just the venture. TFFT’s approach has always been that confidence, identity, and community matter as much as technical skill. That belief should be visible in how this program works.
• A cohort, not a course. Participants build alongside each other and stay connected afterwards. The alumni network is the long-term point of the whole thing.
• Grassroots solutions to real problems. The ventures we back should address something their founders understand from the inside, and the jobs they create should be fair and sustainable ones.
• No participant leaves worse off. The program should not leave anyone in a worse situation than when they joined. For example, participants should not end up with unnecessary debt or struggle because too many people were supported to start the same type of business in the same market. These risks can be reduced through good planning and thoughtful program design from the beginning.
• Real outcomes, honestly measured. Ventures launched, jobs created, funding raised, organizations still standing after two years. Not attendance. To understand the true impact of the program, compare participants with applicants who met the requirements but were not selected due to limited spaces. This provides a fair way to measure the difference the program made. It is important to establish this tracking system before the first group begins, as it is very difficult to recreate the information later.

Everything else, including curriculum, session format, the pacing and intensity of the eighteen months, selection criteria, sector emphasis, and partnerships, is the Program Director’s to determine and to revise as evidence comes in.

Qualifications

Required

• Minimum five years in entrepreneurship, startups, business development, social enterprise, or nonprofit leadership, of which at least two are hands‑on operational experience carrying responsibility for money, people, or delivery — not advisory or research years
• Direct experience founding, building, or leading an organization or venture
• Experience facilitating training, workshops, or programs for adults
• Demonstrated ability to mentor or coach individuals over timePractical command of financial management: budgeting, cash flow, pricing, and preparing accounts that a lender, funder, or auditor will accept
• Direct experience registering or running a legally compliant entity in Tanzania, whether a company or a nonprofit
• Strong written and verbal communication in Swahili and English
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, the Arusha region
• Willing to undergo TFFT’s safeguarding checks, including a criminal record check and reference verification, as a condition of appointment

Strongly Preferred

• Prior involvement in an incubator, accelerator, or entrepreneurship support program, in any capacity
• Prior involvement as an entrepreneur in East Africa Region
• Practical experience of Tanzania’s regulatory environment, including BRELA, TRA, and the NGO Board
• An established network within Tanzania’s business or civil society community
• Existing relationships with banks, microfinance institutions, SACCOs, angel investors, or grant funders active in Tanzania
• Experience helping ventures reach customers, buyers, or institutional funders, rather than only helping them plan
• Experience designing a program or organization from the ground up
• Familiarity with vulnerable youth programming or with TFFT’s work

TFFT is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from women, and from candidates whose route into this work has been unconventional. TFFT is committed to safeguarding, and all appointments are subject to safeguarding checks.