Grants and Funding Manager 127 views0 applications

About Oxfam

Oxfam is a global movement of people who won’t live with the injustice of poverty. Together we save and rebuild lives in disasters. We help people build better lives for themselves. We speak out on the big issues that keep people poor, like inequality, discrimination against women and climate change. And we won’t stop until every person on the planet can live without poverty.

Oxfam GB is a member of the international confederation Oxfam.

Our Team 

An important role of the Grants Unit is to provide ongoing capacity building support for all Oxfam staff and local partners on proposal development, reporting and grant management. The Team provides specialist support to the programme on donor compliance, proposal development, and grant management. This includes ensuring that all proposals and reports are of best quality, and are produced in a timely manner with input with all key stakeholders, including working with Oxfam’s local partners.

This unit will be working for the whole Ethiopia Programme which includes the long term, humanitarian and campaigns.

Job Purpose

Provide direct support to the organisation leading on the development of the fundraising strategy, identifying new donors, managing existing donor relationships, ensuring that donor compliance requirements are met and facilitating the development of new programme designs and proposals.

As a senior manager within Oxfam, and a member of the Oxfam in Ethiopia Senior Management team, the Grants Manager leads the planning, coordination, securing and management of restricted income to enable Oxfam in Ethiopia to deliver on the national country strategy.

Accountable to the Oxfam International Country Director for planning, coordination, securing and management of restricted income for the Ethiopia country programme.

Our values and commitment to safeguarding

Oxfam is committed to preventing any type of unwanted behaviour at work including sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse, lack of integrity and financial misconduct; and promoting the welfare of children, young people and adults. Oxfam expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment through our code of conduct. We place a high priority on ensuring that only those who share and demonstrate our values are recruited to work for us.

We are committed to ensuring diversity and gender equality within our organisation and encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply.

Note: All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which can include criminal records and terrorism finance checks.

Key Responsibilities

Planning/Strategy

• In consultation with the Country Senior Management Team, lead the development and implementation of an up-to-date funding strategy for the Oxfam Ethiopia Country Programme.
• Conduct regular donor mapping informed by the ambitions and outcomes articulated in the Oxfam Country Strategy.
• Lead the fundraising strategy review processes, facilitating decision making to ensure that fundraising strategies and activities are relevant and remain aligned with changes in the programme.
• Provide ongoing research, strategic donor intelligence gathering, and trends analysis and generate information to enable engagement with global, regional and country level donors.
• Work with affiliates in identifying and sharing new opportunities with home donors.
• Identify and foster potential partnerships, coalitions, consortia and affiliate engagement that may result in joint programme funding opportunities.

Funding Coordination and Management

• Provide direct support to the Country Director, and the Programme Managers in the field on all matters of grants management and donor reporting with a view to ensuring quality donor standards are met.
• Ensure effective coordination with Oxfam staff at country, regional, and head office levels to ensure adequate overview of funding, proposal submissions, donor reports and donor liaison.
• Supports and provides guidance to staff on compliance with Oxfam and donor requirements and the uses of restricted funds, including budget monitoring, amendment requests and timely flagging of problems.
• Leads communications to donors including responding to information requests, income tracking, and contract amendments.
• Establish and maintain funding grids, proposal pipelines, and progress reports.
• Liaising with managers in country in order to resolve problems related to the effective functioning of funding department.
• Facilitate access to specialist support from within, and external to the Confederation in support of proposal development.

Proposal Development

• Evaluate eligibility and provide summaries of opportunities and calls that are relevant to the country team, and follow up sign on for opportunities using the bid and no bid decision making tool and processes.
• Lead or support the development and submission of high quality concept notes and proposals.
• Provide effective coordination, with Oxfam colleagues at country/region/HQ level, for specific proposal submissions, overseeing scheduling of the proposal development process.
• Work effectively with colleagues in other functions, partner organisations, and affiliates to develop joint funding proposals.
• Provide quality assurance to all concept notes and proposals, ensuring that proposals are of best quality to meet donor requirements for submission.
• Ensure timely submission of high quality funding proposals and manage donor communications and follow up.

Donor Contract Negotiation and Management

• Lead or support on negotiating donor contracts favourably in line with Oxfam’s policies and procedures.
• Review and strengthen compliance and utilization of EA grant management system (CRIMSON) for project and contract management.
• Ensure that funding files, both electronic and paper, are complete and kept up-to-date.
• Support preparation for audits or donor visits of donor funded programs as required.

External Engagement

• Facilitate Oxfam’s engagement with donor agencies and other external stakeholders in order to identify opportunities for funding, exchange information about programmes and priorities, promote technical cooperation, ensure regular communications with donors, resolve problems and help negotiate solutions.

Capacity Building

• Assess and strengthen the capacity of colleagues in the planning, securing and management of restricted funds using appropriate methodology, such as formal training, technical guidance, coaching and accompaniment.
• Analyse and provide advice/training to relevant staff on funding policies and formal requirements of donors.

People development and management    

• Provide leadership to the funding team, ensuring the best possible support to the programme and advice to the country management team.
• Ensures that all members of the Grants Team have access to staff development opportunities, identifies and addresses capacity gaps and provides on-going counselling and support to the team member
• Manage and support the Grants Team to deliver on the Funding Strategy and manage the restricted Grants portfolio, providing leadership, inspiration and guidance and ensuring that the management of the team is in line with Oxfam’s HR policies and procedures.
• With support from Human Resources Manager, manages the life cycle of individuals within the team from pre-recruitment to exit, including performance management processes, people’s development and working with HR on issues such as disciplinary matters among others.

Other

• Required to adhere to Oxfam’s principles and valuesas well as the promotion of gender justice and women’s rights
• Understanding of and commitment to adhere to equity, diversity, gender, child safety and staff health and wellbeing principles

Job Requirements

Essential

• BADegree in relevant field of studies that can bring added value to the job from any recognized University/college.
• 7 – 10 years senior management experience in securing and managing funds from institutional donors, such as ECHO, DFID, OFDA, CIDA, and UN agencies, as well as international trusts and foundations.
• Excellent planning and budgeting skills, and a sound understanding of Programme Cycle Management in emergencies and/or development environments.
• Experience working jointly with partner organisations to develop winning funding proposals.
• Experience in developing organizational strategies and plans for communication and measuring effectiveness.
• Experience in managing and developing others, including direct line management.
• Experience in leading and managing conflict resolution.
• Proactive in addressing the interface between different functions and programme teams in-country to ensure efficiency and accountability.
• Demonstrated organisational awareness and understanding of knowledge management.
• Good understanding of management roles and dynamics in organizations.
• Leadership, management, negotiation and coordination skills (of people and projects) in a complex multi-stakeholder, networked, global and largely virtual environment.
• Strong analytical and conceptual thinking skills; able to understand complex issues and translate them into simple, workable actions and plans.
• Persuasive influencing, motivation, team-building and facilitation skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and negotiation skills with demonstrable ability to lead, influence and motivate others.
• Excellent personal communication skills, in written and verbal English, with high impact influencing and persuasive skills. Able to use different approaches to achieve followership.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills, able to explain complex technical/legal issues, and build a considered analysis of taking different approaches.
• Excellent skills and experience in capacity building staff in relation to fundraising or programme development.
• Highly developed interpersonal, influencing and relationship skills.
• Ability to demonstrate leadership behaviours and ways of working within the funding team that promotes value addition, non-duplication of roles across functions, empowerment and role enrichment of team and a culture of cost effectiveness by all functional managers.
• Ability to develop customer service attitude within the funding and a focus on integrated teamwork.
• Ability to liaise with a wide range of people, both internally and externally at very senior levels (OI, Executing Affiliate and other senior organizational leaders) with credibility, tact and diplomacy.
• Ability to represent Oxfam to donors and external institutions.
• Ability to adjust to constantly changing situations while maintaining focus on delivery and follow-through.
• Self-motivated, target-driven and an entrepreneurial approach to fundraising opportunities
• Experience with gender programming and working in multi-cultural environment.
• Commitment to Oxfam’s overall aims and policies and experience of promoting women’s rights and the interests of marginalized people in all aspects of Oxfam’s work.
• Sufficient knowledge of Oxfam’s priorities and development and humanitarian programme work is an advantage.
• Excellent in the use of computers and Microsoft, especially spreadsheets (Excel), accounting packages, word processing (Word) and Power Point. Competent in the use of email packages.

Desired

• Prior experience in Oxfam
• Knowledge of donors portfolio in Ethiopia/Horn of Africa

Key Attributes

• Ability to demonstrate sensitivity to cultural differences and gender issues, as well as the commitment to equal opportunities
• Ability to demonstrate an openness and willingness to learn about the application of gender/gender mainstreaming, women’s rights, and diversity for all aspects of development work
• Commitment to undertake Oxfam’s safeguarding training and adherence of relevant policies to ensure all people who come into contact with Oxfam are as safe as possible

Organisational Values

• Accountability– Our purpose-driven, results-focused approach means we take responsibility for our actions and hold ourselves accountable. We believe that others should also be held accountable for their actions
• Empowerment– Our approach means that everyone involved with Oxfam, from our staff and supporters to people living in poverty, should feel they can make change happen
• Inclusiveness– We are open to everyone and embrace diversity. We believe everyone has a contribution to make, regardless of visible and invisible differences

Note to candidates: Shortlisted candidates will be assessed on our organisational values and attributes at the interview stage. The successful candidate(s) will be expected to adhere to our code of conduct. We encourage candidates to read and understand our code of conduct here.