Program Development Advisor, East Africa

Person specifications:

Essential Skills, Knowledge, and Qualifications:

• Experience developing and supporting humanitarian and development proposals for NGOs
  
• Experience with strategies and proposal processes of key government/statutory donors including UK, EU, German, French, Scandinavian, US, 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 a team leader for proposals
  
• Clear, compelling English writing skills
  
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize effectively
  
• Ability to travel internationally
  
• Fluency in English
  

Planning and Strategic Leadership (15%)

• Collaborate with country teams to proactively identify and address their priorities and support needs in BD
  
• Collaborate with Global BD 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
  

End-to-End Program/Proposal 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 PDAs 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.