The Program Development and Awards Advisor will support the East Africa RPAS team, focusing on business development and effective awards management and compliance across the region.
Key Accountabilities
Business Development
- Collaborate with country teams to identify business development priorities and support donor engagement, including intelligence sharing, strategic positioning, and participation in donor calls as needed.
- Coordinate with AMU pillars and country offices to conduct donor research, analyze funding trends, and track new opportunities across sectors and donors.
- Lead or support pre-positioning efforts for specific opportunities, including technical brainstorming, partner and competitor analysis, and development of win themes to strengthen proposal readiness.
- Assist country offices in setting annual regional metrics and reviewing Quarterly Strategy Review progress for leadership insights.
- In collaboration with the HBD, support the full proposal lifecycle.
- 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 proposals and bid designs.
- 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 partner packages if applicable.
- Review agreements to ensure accuracy and highlight key compliance requirements, in coordination with post-award, compliance, and country grants teams and support in award negotiation and hand-over to the regional team as required.
- Maintain complete and accurate electronic files, including final submission packages and internal trackers.
- Deploy to country offices to lead proposal development as needed.
Awards Management and Compliance
- Manage a portfolio of awards for the region, as agreed on a roving basis, and retain a portion of the portfolio as needed based on regional priorities. 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 relevant departments, in the design, production, processing, and submission of award amendments and modifications, ensuring quality and compliance throughout the process.
- Serve as the first point of contact for country program-based awards staff to guide and advise country teams on all post-award issues.
- Review and lead negotiation of award agreements with donors, other IRC entities and partners according to IRC policies and internal processes.
- Review and support the processing of sub-grants/partnership agreements in alignment with internal processes and serve as the compliance approver.
- Provide support to and monitoring of projects to ensure progress against objectives and compliance with donor guidelines and IRC internal requirements.
- Provide technical advice to country offices on ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues in coordination with the Compliance and Policy team.
- Throughout the entire BD cycle, ensure that lessons learned from projects are captured and applied to promote continuous learning and improvement. Advise country programs to ensure they successfully adhere to internal IRC policies and procedures (e.g. OTIS, PEERS) and provide ongoing support to ensure compliance.
- 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 RPAS 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
- Deliver training and onboarding for country program and RPAS staff on pre- and post-award processes, donor compliance, IRC policies, and award management standards to strengthen staff capacity and understanding.
Other Responsibilities
- Contribute to regional learning initiatives and feed into after-action reviews, as needed.
- Actively participate as a member of the RPAS Team, engaging in strategy development and other initiatives as needed.
- In collaboration with the DAM and HBD, manage assignment requests by maintaining a calendar, ensuring effective coordination of support needs across the team.
- Ensure sufficient record keeping.
- Other duties as assigned by supervisor.
Qualifications
Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:
- Fluency in English; proficiency in German is desirable.
- Significant experience with, and a strong understanding of, European and emerging donor requirements is required; a good understanding of United States Government requirements is desirable.
- 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.
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