Deputy Director of Grants and Partnership

Background: -

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the worlds worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their lives. The IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities which support them, as well as those who remain within their homes and communities. We began work in Ethiopia since 2000 and currently implementing emergency and development programs in health, water and sanitation, economic recovery and development (ERD), womens protection and empowerment, education, child protection, and multi-sectoral emergency response.

The IRC has a focus on narrowing the gender gap in humanitarian aid and ensuring that we contribute to gender equality, diversity, and inclusion in both our programs and operations by working to establish a context where our clients (including those from minority groups) enjoy the same rights and opportunities as well as an equal access to services. The IRC also has a strong commitment to creating an equitable and inclusive culture, where safeguarding is upheld in our workplace and programs. We are determined to protect our clients and staff from safeguarding violations through prevention and, where misconduct is alleged, to address it without fear or favor.

Job Overview:

The Deputy Direct of Grants and Partnerships (DDGP), in collaboration with Director of Programs (DP) and the Country Director (CD), will provide strategic and operational direction, lead resource mobilization efforts to achieve annual growth targets, and support the diversification of funding from institutional donors and non-traditional funding sources to achieve IRC's strategic objectives in Ethiopia, He/ she will provide direct support to strategic growth opportunities, strengthen systems and processes in alignment with donor compliance and IRC requirements, donor reporting, strategic partnership management, and communications and advocacy to enhance IRCs external and internal visibility. He/ she will provide essential support in programmatic and budgetary monitoring oversee compliance with IRC and donor internal rules and regulations, and other key functions as required.

The postholder will need to work under tight deadlines and dealing with competing and changing priorities. He/ she will need to gather inputs through influencing other functions and roles whilst submitting quality and timely deliverables. He/ she will work with diverse country, region and headquarter based teams and will need to ensure adherence to organizational and donor compliance requirements. The position will be based in Addis Ababa.

Scope and authority: The Deputy Direct of Grants and Partnerships will lead a team of a team of 17 members divided into three sub-teams: grants, partnerships, communications, and GIS. He/ she will line manage 4 direct reports.

Major Accountabilities & responsibilities:

Business Development :

• Business Development Strategy: Develop and manage IRCs Ethiopia Business Development strategy, and support the CD, DP, and Technical Coordinators in donor engagement to secure funding for the IRCs Strategic Action Plan (SAP). This might include building and cultivating relationships with potential new donors and maintaining strong relationships with existing ones.
• Strategic guidance: Assess prospective and existing funding opportunities and advise IRC teams on how to make funding requests more competitive and responsive to donors priorities.
• Donor mapping: Contribute to the identification of potential donors, maintenance of donor relations and mobilization of resources to support planned work as per the SAP.

• Proposal development: Ensure high quality and timely submission of funding proposals by providing guidance overseeing the grants team and escalating issues of concerns to the SMT. This could include support in areas such as work design, coordination of technical, financial, and regional input, writing overviews, editing, and formatting proposal documents, and ensuring internal approvals before donor submission.
• Quality control: Ensure that the grants team submits quality proposal packages to the RPAS that comply with donors rules and IRCs internal requirements.
• Capacity strengthening: Strengthen the capacity of IRC team members for fundraising and business development by promoting industry best practices.
• Co-creation: Promote the involvement of stakeholder groups, including implementing partners and beneficiaries (where possible), in designing new projects/ programs.

Grants Management :

• Grant tracking: Ensure that teams keep an updated grant tracker that summarizes the status of proposals, active projects, and closed projects and discusses regularly with DP and other stakeholders.
• Workplans: Fairly distribute the workload and create monthly plans with team members in response to monthly priorities, which include project cycle meetings (PCM), reports, spending plans, and other key deliverables.
• Project Cycle meetings and Budget vs Actuals (BVA) meetings: Ensure the effective implementation of PCM and BVA meetings and escalate issues of concern identified during these meetings to SMT.
• Reporting: Ensure team members submit high-quality and compelling reports to donors as agreed with RPAS.

• Grant files: Ensure that grants teams maintain an effective information management system that contains all key documents related to the project cycle.
• Compliance: Ensure that the donor's compliance policies are applied correctly in active projects and provide advice and training to the country teams so that they have the necessary information to do so.
• Capacity strengthening and quality control: Strengthen the capacity of IRC team members on best practices for grants management and reporting and work with grants and program teams to improve their report writing and coordination skills.

Partnerships :

• Partnerships ambition: In collaboration with the Sr. Partnerships Coordinator, CD, and DP advance the partnership agenda and support the Partnerships Coordinator in all aspects of partnership management in alignment with IRCs partners system (PEERS). This includes promoting internally and externally IRCs core partnership principles of responsibility, results-oriented approach, equality, transparency, and complementarity.
• Scoping of partners and funding: Collaborate with the Sr. Partnership Coordinator, DP, CD, and technical coordinators to proactively identify potential partners and funders and advance VCRs partnership agenda.
• Resolution of challenges: Assist the partnership team in resolving any challenges (internal and external) faced that put at risk the achievement of IRC Ethiopias partnership ambitions.

Communications:

• Creation of communication materials: Support country teams efforts in designing, writing editing key communication materials (factsheets, capacity statements, or special reports on IRCs activities) in coordination with DP the sector, field coordinators, etc.
• Advocacy: Support the CD and DP as needed.
• Compliance: Provide advice on donor visibility requirements; proactively engage with program teams to ensure appropriate IRC and donor visibility.

• Media: Support media and communications activities as requested.

Staff Management, Learning and Development:

• Supervision: Coach, train, supervise, and mentor direct reports, including communicating clear expectations, providing regular and timely performance feedback, documenting/discussing performance issues if needed, and delivering high-quality documented annual performance reviews.
• Capacity building/ training: Ensure direct reports are trained on all relevant IRC grants and partnerships processes and donor regulations as required.
• Development and growth: 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.

Safeguarding Responsibilities:

• Promote and actively participate in initiatives and efforts to build team engagement, inclusion, and cohesion in the Grants and Partnerships Unit.
• Foster ongoing learning, honest dialogue, and reflection to strengthen safeguarding and promote IRC values and adherence to IRC policies.

• Post-graduate qualification or equivalent relevant experience in a relevant discipline.
• Six years or more of experience working with international non-governmental organizations in business development, grants management, and/or project management.
• Extensive experience in managing donor contracts and fundraising activities, with humanitarian and development donors, such as ECHO, UNHCR, BHA, PRM, GFFO, SIDA, etc.
• Successful experience developing projects, writing proposals, and managing awards for public and private donors.
• Ability to build relationships with external organizations and internal partners.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including demonstrated ability to communicate technical information.
• Digital literacy: MS Word, Excel & email applications required.
• Flexible, focused, and reliable in an environment of changing demands
• Highly developed interpersonal communication and relationship skills with the ability to influence external organizations and individuals.

Language Skills:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English - high-quality copywriting and editing skills.