Organization: IRC – International Rescue Committee
Location: Nairobi
Grade: Senior level – Senior
Occupational Groups:
Project and Programme Management
Closing Date:
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 50 countries and more than 25 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
This role is open to current IRC employees only.
The Awards Management Unit (AMU)
Established in January 2016, the Awards Management Unit (AMU) is a global department with the responsibility for identifying, securing, and managing all funding from statutory/government donors. The AMU is a bridge between donors and country programs: providing expert technical advice to the country teams, while maintaining portfolio-level visibility to ensure consistency and compliance and manage risk. This unit ensures that donor compliance policies and procedures are implemented consistently and supports all staff working across the award management cycle for all restricted funding from global government sources.
The Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department
The Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department has a growing portfolio of humanitarian relief, post-crisis recovery, and development programs under their remit. This work focuses support in five key areas: ensuring safety from harm, improving health, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being and ensuring people have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. In all these programs, there is a drive to address the unique needs of women and girls (who represent the majority of those displaced) – and the universal barriers they face.
The CRRD works across 6 regions globally, including West Africa, Central Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The regional teams are the links between country offices and key HQ departments and aim to support and provide advice to country programs with a range of issues from strategic planning, business development to compliance, awards management and partnerships management.
The Purpose of the Role
The Program Development and Award Advisor (PDAA), MENA, plays a vital role within the Regional Program and Award Support (RPAS) team overseeing an award portfolio of humanitarian relief and post-crisis recovery programs. The PDAA liaises with country programs, HQ departments and donor contacts to ensure high quality guidance and support to country offices throughout the award lifecycle. The role works with country offices to pursue funding opportunities in line with IRC’s Business Development Strategy, from opportunity identification to contract signature; to ensure compliance with donor rules and regulations and IRC systems and processes; and leads on the review and submission of high-quality donor deliverables. The PDAA represents the region and country offices to internal and external stakeholders and manages donor relationships.
The successful candidate will have a strong track record of contributing to new humanitarian and development funding opportunities and managing awards with a range of Non-European donors, including USAID, US Department of State, Global Affairs Canada, World Bank, etc., a deep knowledge of donor rules and regulations, and experience collaborating with local partner organisations.
Scope and Authority
Line management for Program & Award Officer.
Key Working Relationships
Reports to the Director, Awards Management, MENA, and works closely with other MENA RPAS team members, especially the Head of Business Development (HBD) and Senior Program & Award Advisor (SPAA), as well as MENA’s Program Development Advisors (PDAs), Program and Award Advisors (PAAs), and others; country program grants and partnership teams; and across all teams within the Awards Management Unit, Crisis Response Recovery and Development Department, Global Supply Chain, Finance, Office of General Counsel, Technical Excellence, and other key departments within IRC.
Key accountabilities
Business Development
•Support country offices with Donor engagement and intel sharing for positioning for Non-European donors in the PDAA portfolio; prepare for and participate in Donor calls as needed.
•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 the full proposal lifecycle for opportunities within the PDAA portfolio, 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, including the PEER system.
•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. This includes partners packages if applicable.
•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 and hand-over to regional team 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 available.
Awards Management and Compliance
•Manage a portfolio of Non-European awards for the MENA region. Review, provide substantive feedback and ensure timely submission of reports, collaborating with and ensuring input from relevant country/regional technical and financial staff.
•Guide country offices in partnership with other relevant departments in the design, production, and submission of and revise and quality assure award amendments and modifications.
•Serve as first point of contact for country program-based awards staff to guide and advise country teams on all post-award issues and to act as a connecting point between country program and other AMU teams to facilitate the timely flow of key information between them.
•Review and lead negotiation of award agreements with donors, other IRC entities and partners according to IRC policies and internal processes.
•Review and process sub-grants/partnership agreements in alignment with internal processes.
•Provide support to and monitoring of projects to ensure progress against objectives and compliance with donor guidelines and IRC internal requirements. Monitoring of awards can take the shape of monitoring visits, project implementation meetings and targeted calls following specific donor internal guidelines and IRC established processes.
•Provide technical advice to country offices on ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues in coordination with AMU’s Compliance and Policy team on non-routine and high-level compliance matters and escalate to leadership for support as needed.
•Take part in meetings and calls with country teams where required to provide support and collaborate closely on specific issues related to donor compliance, submissions and/or monitoring/award management.
•Ensure lessons learned from finalised projects inform new business development with donors in the Non-European portfolio.
•Supervise direct report(s) in carrying out necessary functions as they relate to country program support
•Advise country programs appropriately to enable them to successfully follow internal IRC policies and procedures (e.g. OTIS, PEERS).
•Travel to provide additional support to or cover short-term gaps for awards and partnerships teams in the countries as required and agreed.
•Coordinate with other members of the Program and Award Support Team and other AMU members for information sharing and to establish a coherent awards support.
•Manage donor relationships by maintaining communication on contractual issues, updates on program implementation and following up on compliance queries and securing changes and approvals as needed.
Capacity Building and Training
•Develop training materials and carry out training of IRC in-country staff, as required and in coordination with PAS leaders.
•In coordination with PAS leaders, develop and maintain work-processes and checklists for award implementation and report review, as well as record lessons learned.
•Onboard new country office Grants and Partnerships staff and new Program and Award Support team to assigned donors, policies and/or IRC processes, as requested.
Staff Management, Learning & Development
•Coach, train, supervise and mentor direct reports, including communicating clear expectations, providing regular and timely performance feedback, document/discuss performance issues if needed, and deliver high-quality documented annual performance reviews.
•Ensure direct reports are trained on all relevant IRC processes and donor regulations.
•Support direct reports in achieving annual objectives, acting as a trusted and accountable manager, mentor and professional resource, including promoting collaboration, enabling adequate resourcing and ensuring accountability.
Other Responsibilities
•Contribute to AMU and regional strategic priorities and initiatives.
•Actively participate as a member of the PAS Team, engaging in strategy development and other initiatives as needed.
•Represent IRC externally at e.g. country specific meetings, with donors and stakeholder networks as requested.
•Other duties as assigned by supervisor.
Person specification
Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:
•Degree, preferably in a subject related to IRC’s work (International Relations, Refugee or Migration Studies, Development Studies, Public Policy) or equivalent experience
•Fluency in English, both spoken and written
•Experience with and a strong understanding of United States Government donor requirements required
•Good understanding of humanitarian aid and development programming
•Ability to work collaboratively as part of a diverse team and handle a multifaceted workload
•Good financial management and budgeting skills
•Ability to analyze and synthesize information
•Proven organizational skills, detail-oriented, ability to prioritize tasks, and to learn quickly
•Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to successfully and effectively liaise with people within and across departments in a multi-cultural environment.
•Ability to work independently in a very fast paced environment
•A flexible work attitude and a calm manner
•International work experience in the Global South is a plus
•Excellent IT skills (Word, Outlook, Excel)
•Ability to travel internationally, sometimes on short notice and to insecure areas
Experience:
•Experience in working at a distance and supporting country-based staff
•Experience writing, reviewing and editing narrative and financial reports and excellent attention to detail
Standard of Professional Conduct:The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
Commitment to Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: The IRC is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment where all persons are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The IRC expressly prohibits and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or bullying of the IRC persons in any work setting. We aim to increase the representation of women, people that are from country and communities we serve, and people who identify as races and ethnicities that are under-represented in global power structures.