Philipp is currently working as an organisational development advisor and fundraiser for a non-governmental organisation in Georgia. Together with his local colleagues and superiors, he reviews and develops the organisation’s strategies, programmes, and working processes. As their activities are highly dependent on international donors (such as the European Union, the United Nations, embassies, and similiar) he also devotes a lot of time on grant applications and project reporting.
The Public Policy Analysis Programme helped a lot with two important aspects of Philipp’s daily work:
1) It’s a game and therefore you need to understand the other players. Philipp strongly considers the needs, fears, and desires of our donors and partners, including politicians, when presenting project ideas and activities. In order to convince them, he always thinks about how to nudge our plans best to make them sound like their gain and success.
2) Know your audience. When writing any kind of document, Philipp always remembers Katri’s remarks on papers and essays, namely “Explain” and “Why?”. Many people reading through applications and reports are generalist, who change country and position every three to five years. They are objectively smart people but don’t have explicit expertise in the topic or region. Hence, it is important to give as much background information and details as needed but also to keep it as short and precise as possible to keep their attention.
Philipp’s current position is sponsored within the framework of the German Development Workers Act. A total of seven organisations – one state agency, six non-state actors – are allowed to deploy professionals under this law; mainly EU-citizens but there are also exceptions for third-country citizens. They and other actors in the field often announce their positions on websites such as www.epojobs.de.
