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Program Development Advisor, East Africa
The Purpose of the Role
- The Program Development Advisor (PDA), East Africa will support country programs to pursue funding opportunities in line with IRC’s Business Development Strategy. Support will include all phases of the business development process, from opportunity identification to contract signature, including pre-positioning, partnerships building, proposal development, and due diligence phases. The successful candidate will have a strong track record of working on new funding opportunities in humanitarian and international development with a range of multilateral and bilateral donors (USAID, US Department of State, FCDO, EU and DG ECHO, GFFO, BMZ, Sida, SDC, World Bank, etc.), as well as experience collaborating with local partner organisations.
- The PDA will support business development for institutional donors in the IRC’s East Africa region, which comprises programs in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. Candidates who are from these countries and/or have significant experience in the region are strongly encouraged to apply.
Scope and Authority
- This position does not have any line management responsibilities.
Key Working Relationships
- Reports to Senior Program Development Advisor, East Africa. Works closely with all Regional Program and Award Support team members, the Regional Business Development Advisor (Capture and Engagement), Business Development (Specialist Team) and across all other teams within Awards Management Unit, Crisis Response Recovery and Development Department, Global Partnerships and Philanthropy, Global Supply Chain, Finance, Office of General Counsel, Technical Excellence, and other key departments within IRC. Donor and partner point of contact as applicable per region.
KEY ACCOUNTABLITIES
Planning and Strategic Leadership (15%)
- Collaborate with country teams to proactively identify and address their priorities and support needs in BD
- Collaborate with other AMU pillars to gather donor intel through desk research to identify funding leads and analyze resource mobilization trends in the region.
- Support country offices with Donor engagement and intel sharing for positioning; prepare for and participate in Donor calls as needed.
- Collaborate with country offices to successfully position for new funding opportunities by leading or assisting in the identification, tracking, and updating of new business opportunities across a variety of technical sectors and donors.
- Lead or support pre-positioning for specific opportunities, including facilitating technical brainstorming, partner and competitor landscape analysis and win theme sessions with technical and country staff
- Support country offices in setting up annual regional metrics and analyzing the Quarterly Strategy Review for the regional leadership
End to End Program Development (60%)
- Support the full proposal lifecycle including sharing initial assessment of new opportunities, supporting Go/No Go processes, preparing, and sharing templates and timelines, ensuring adherence to deadlines, supporting recruitment, assisting in reviewing budgets, ensuring document completion, organizing meetings, and compiling notes, and drafting and proofreading proposal sections.
- Facilitate the identification of consultants, partners and other proposal development support as needed in collaboration with the country team.
- Collaborate with technical units, country offices, and other colleagues to support conceptualization of winning proposal and bid designs for new project activities and/or amendments to current projects.
- Provide quality assurance and quality compliance support on proposals. Ensure responsiveness to and compliance with solicitation documents and with IRC’s requirements.
- Support coordination, communication, and inputs from consortium partners in accordance with donor and IRC processes.
- Coordinate and support regional reviews and approvals of proposal packages depending on country and regional needs.
- Review agreements to ensure accurateness and highlight key compliance requirements, in coordination with post-award, compliance and country grants teams and support in award negotiation as required.
- Maintain complete and accurate electronic files, including final submission packages and internal trackers.
- Deploy to country offices to lead on proposal development as needed
Donor and Partner Engagement (10%)
- In line with IRC’s Partnership Ambition, and in collaboration with regional Partnerships teams, contribute to increasing the volume and equity of IRC’s work with local and regional partners (with a focus on women-led national organizations) by coordinating support to country offices in identifying partnership opportunities, identifying strong partners, and finalizing teaming arrangements.
- Coordinate regional and country-level inputs to donor meetings, conferences and communications as needed.
- Represent IRC externally to donors, peers, and partners.
Capacity Building and Training: (10%)
- Contribute to developing, updating, and delivering business development related training for the region.
- Facilitate internal post-submission debrief sessions, (i.e., After Action Reviews) with country teams, technical units, regional team, and other relevant stakeholders to collect lessons learned.
- Collaborate with SPDAs and other stakeholders to ensure internal knowledge management, share lessons learned and ensure they are incorporated into future proposals
- Support in recruiting, onboarding, and training of new grants and partnerships team members.
Other Responsibilities (5%)
- Contribute to AMU and regional strategic priorities and initiatives.
- Support with translation to regional or donor languages when necessary
- Participate in special projects as needed and other tasks as assigned.
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PERSON SPECIFICATION
Essential
Skills, Knowledge, and Qualifications:
- Experience in developing and supporting humanitarian and development proposals for NGOs
- Experience with strategies and proposal processes of key government/statutory donors – US, UK, EU, German, Scandinavian, etc.
- Experience in collaborating with and supporting national and community-based partners
- Experience in proposal budgeting
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively collaborate across a variety of relationships in a multicultural environment
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate equally effectively with colleagues in remote and diverse teams, including as team leader for proposals
- Clear, compelling writing skills
- Ability to multi-task and prioritize effectively
- Ability to travel internationally (approximately 20% of time)
- Fluency in English
Senior Grants and Business Development Coordinator, East Africa
Key Working Relationships:
- The Senior Grants and Business Development Coordinator reports to the Senior Program & Award Advisor (SPAA) and works closely with Grants, Partnerships, Programs and Finance teams in country, as well as other members of the Regional Program and Award Support (RPAS) team, and other AMU team members, as well as country office and regional staff. When deployed, the Regional Grants and Business Development Coordinator will also be accountable to the relevant line manager in the respective country program,
Key Responsibilities:
- The Senior Grants and Business Development Coordinator is deployed (remote or in-person) to support specific country programs or the RPAS team, and may be responsible for the following, as assigned:
Proposal development
- Work closely with country programs to support specific proposal development coordination and tasks, such as developing proposal work plans, writing non-technical sections, consolidating and editing written inputs, developing annexes, writing budget narratives, and other tasks as needed, providing additional bandwidth, or backfilling for country grants staff when needed to support these processes.
- Act as proposal development lead, writer and/or coordinator, as identified by country programs and the regional team.
- Facilitate design sessions in coordination with country grants teams with key country program, partners, regional and HQ teams, and ensure proposal design is in line with the country program SAP.
- Liaise with the AMU’s global Business Development and Regional Program and Award Support Teams to ensure proposals are of high quality, meet internal and donor standards and are submitted on time to the donor.
- When in-country and in coordination with the DAM and the Senior/Program Development Advisors (S/PDA), support the country team in the cultivation of donor relationships at the country level and support country offices in the capture and pre-positioning for upcoming BD opportunities.
Awards management and compliance
- Work with country teams to develop donor reports and other award deliverables (e.g., workplans, M&E plans) and ensure they are high quality, coherent, accurate and submitted on time in accordance with donor and IRC internal requirements, providing additional bandwidth, or backfilling for country grants staff when needed to support these processes.
- Manage and/or support agreement and amendment/modification reviews and negotiations, and support award close-out, as needed.
- Provide technical guidance on donor rules and regulations to country team to ensure compliance.
- Proactively raise potential compliance issues to country team and keep senior management and regional team informed of any projected inabilities to meet contractual obligations and of spend rates/significant budget variances.
- Monitor and support the use of award management tools such as monthly financial reports, procurement plans, and activity plans amongst program teams to ensure accurate tracking of implementation and timely alerts to potential challenges/obstacles. Where support is required, act as focal point in facilitating the review of donor deliverables and approvals by technical advisors and other relevant persons at HQ and/or the region.
- Participate in and support the coordination of country program’s project cycle meetings, as well as donor and partner meetings, as required.
Partnerships
- Where necessary, support the management and implementation of partnership responsibilities including partner identification for positioning or proposal development processes, due diligence, partnership agreement package development and reviews, partnership agreement amendments and close-out in line with the IRC’s partnership management system’s (PEERS) and relevant donor requirements.
- Support country programs to strengthen existing systems and structures around PEERS implementation in-country and provide coaching and mentoring to country teams for a deeper understanding and effective implementation of PEERS.
Training/capacity building and regional/global initiatives
- Contribute to the development of training materials/modules, and adapt and contextualize training resources and materials to respond to in-country needs.
- Train and support country program teams on reporting, donor compliance, proposal development, and award and sub-award management (i.e., PCM and PEERS).
- Contribute to contextualizing global/regional initiatives (such as PEERS, PCM, Gender Equality Diversity and Inclusion, etc.), and their roll-out within country programs.
- Support country programs in the use of Project Cycle Meetings (PCM) guidance and provide capacity building to the teams for effective implementation.
- Train and onboard new Grants, Partnerships and other team members within country programs, as needed.
- Support and facilitate (as appropriate) regional and country program PEERS related trainings.
- Capture best practices and lessons learned and support cross-learning opportunities across the region and globally.
- Contribute to country program SAP development and implementation, or other strategic initiatives, as requested.
Regional support
- When not deployed, cover and provide surge support for other positions within the Regional Program and Award Support team or targeted support to different country programs.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Essential
Skills, Knowledge, and Qualifications:
- Degree in international development/affairs, public administration, social sciences or related subject
- 5-7 years’ experience working with non-governmental organizations in the area of program development, grants management, and/or project management; preferably in the region
- Successful experience developing projects, writing proposals, and developing budgets for USG, United Nations, and/or European donors, and with partner organizations
- Experience working in portfolio or grant management in humanitarian/conflict or post-conflict settings
- Fluent English written and verbal communication skills
- Enhanced interpersonal skills and ability to work in a diverse team setting
- Ability and willingness to travel to across the region (up to 60% of the time)
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize high volumes of work to meet tight deadlines.