This Senior Associate, Grants & Compliance role is critical to ensuring TaRL Africa’s grants adhere strictly to donor rules, financial policies, and legal requirements. This cross-functional position involves monitoring all compliances on grants and subgrants, including reporting and expenses eligibility, conducting partner capacity building, supporting budget holders in preparing budgets and managing budget burn-rates, handling donor partners communications, supporting the review of awards and subgrants, and ensuring the proper close-out of grants and agreements. The incumbent will work closely with finance, project management, and partner organizations to maintain compliance and financial integrity.
Key Responsibilities
Donor Contract and Compliance Management
- Review and interpret donor agreements (e.g., FCDO, UNICEF, Founders Pledge, Co-Impact, Gates, GPE) and translate complex terms into clear operational guidance.
- Develop and maintain donor compliance checklists and trackers for each active grant.
- Develop and maintain an internal compliance dashboard for all grants and joint programming to track programmatic, financial, and administrative deliverables committed to as per donor contracts.
- Conduct regular reviews of project spending, procurement, and documentation to ensure alignment with donor and internal requirements.
- Support the development and review of donor reports and supporting documentation to ensure accuracy and compliance before submission.
- Maintain an organized repository of all donor agreements, amendment reports, and correspondence.
- Train staff on donor compliances and internal policies compliances.
Internal Controls and Risk Management
- Work with the Finance and Operations teams to strengthen internal control systems that mitigate compliance risk.
- Proactively participate in Joint Programming Organisational Capacity Assessments and ensure grant management aspects are documented and gaps identified are addressed in consultation with the Finance team.
- Review procurement, travel, and subgrant transactions for compliance with both donor and internal policies.
- Support the design and implementation of compliance monitoring tools and risk registers.
- Identify compliance gaps and coordinate with relevant teams to address them through corrective actions and training.
- Conduct spot checks or internal compliance checks to assess adherence to donor rules and organizational policies.
- Work with the Director, Finance & Operations to develop an organisational risk register incorporating all the five steps of risk management viz: - identification, analysing the risk, evaluation, treatment, and monitoring and review.
- Maintain a log of compliance risks and advise management on mitigation strategies.
Partner and Sub-grantee Engagements
- Review partner budgets, agreements, and reports to ensure alignment with donor and TaRL Africa standards.
- Develop and standardize templates of contracts/addendums and other relevant agreements for joint programming and sub-granting in compliance with the Sub-Grants Policy, ensuring all documents align with donor regulations and organizational standards.
- Oversee and track the development of sub-grant contracts and memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with monetary value and ensure compliance on terms and conditions as prescribed in the contracts are fulfilled promptly and accurately.
- Assist with any adjustments to sub-grant agreements or MoUs based on evolving project needs, donor guidelines, or compliance issues.
- Conduct partner due diligence and capacity assessments.
- Provide training and ongoing technical assistance to implementing partners on donor compliance, financial documentation, and reporting.
- Support monitoring visits to subgrantees and other partners to verify supporting documents and compliance practices.
Support Budget Holders
- Support budget holders with preparation of award specific and annual organisational budgets.
- Prepare relevant reports for project leads and the relevant finance team on the status of grant agreement compliance and provide recommendations where necessary.
- Prepare regular reports on sub-grant compliance status, highlighting potential issues and recommending corrective actions where needed.
Grant Documentation and Filing
- Summarise incoming awards highlighting key administrative and other compliance requirements and assign roles to different functions as needed.
- Assist in preparing grant proposals, sub-award agreements, and managing grant files and databases.
- Prepare award amendments, as needed, for review by the management.
- After projects are completed, ensure closeout grants in accordance with applicable policies and procedures.
- Organise good filing system (online) for all donor awards, correspondences and reports.
Others
- Support development (or acquisition) and maintenance of Contracts & Grants Information System and use it to maintain accurate, complete, and up-to-date information on all assigned awards. This will include documents from pre-award to closeout and evidence of monitoring and support.
- Maintain excellent working relationships with coworkers, colleagues in other TaRL Africa offices, and partners.
- Other relevant duties as assigned by the supervisor.
Education, Experiences and Qualifications
- A university degree in social sciences fields like finance, Law, economics, accounting, Project management or business management is required.
- Certification Training on project management courses like PMP pro, Prince2, PMI Risk management professional among others shall be a necessary.
- Master’s degree is an added advantage.
- At least eight years of experience in grants management, financial administration, risk management and compliance, often within an NGO setting, is necessary.
- Expertise in interpreting and applying donor regulations (like those from multilateral and bilateral donors) is crucial.
