Grants Program Manager 449 views0 applications

Blood:Water is seeking a mid-level public health professional to lead its grant-making program to African civil society organizations. This role will be responsible to manage all aspects of administering multi-year community-focused grants to a growing portfolio of grantees across Eastern and Southern Africa. This professional is a program generalist with field experience designing and managing health and/or development projects. The preferred location for this position is Nashville, TN or Nairobi, Kenya, where Blood:Water operations are based, however remote candidates from other geographic locations will be considered and are welcome to apply.

Key Responsibilities, Actions and Results include the following, while other duties may be assigned:

Key Result #1 – 60% – Manages Blood:Water’s grant programming for African partner organizations. Serves as lead on grants management, communication, administrative compliance, and coordinates support to partners through the grant cycle continuum. Ensures Blood:Water grants management policies and systems are robust and applied appropriately, internally and across partners.

• Responsible for leading all partner grants management workflow and serves as the primary communication liaison on matters specific to grants.
• Ensures timely execution of new and renewing grants. Manage the proposal development process from initiating stage to preparation of contractual documents. Manages the proposal editing process and guiding the development of proposals that are sound, evidence based and measurable. This requires coordinating multiple AP team members for collaborative participation while working towards specific deadlines.
• Responsible for administrative filing and oversight on partners and grants workflow folders on google drive. Ensure all partner files are appropriately stored, complete and up to date.
• Ensures all partners are adequately onboarded, including providing training and developing materials that effectively equip partners for successful management of their grants, as systems are refined over time.
• Supports partners as needed throughout the partnership lifecycle, providing assistance, training and troubleshooting on granting systems and general project management as needed.
• Conducts monitoring visits to provide in-person relationship building, spot-checks, program audits, verification of work and/or other grants management supervision as needed.
• Manages the grant disbursement schedule and flags advised changes due to performance and compliance breeches.
• Oversees ongoing monitoring on partner administrative compliance and grant performance to inform Africa Partnerships’ decision making on partner risk, and feasibility of relationships over time.
• Collaboratively works with the Performance Monitoring Manager who leads the processing of quarterly grant reports and feedback process. Grant Manager will focus on narrative and financial report feedback.
• Participates in the new partner selection process, and participates in the shortlisting, vetting and site visits as part of the AP vetting processes.
• Leads the partnership close-out process post determination by Director of Africa Programs.
• Provide generalized backstopping on program design applying best practices in community development, WASH and HIV/AIDS. Lead partner learning and adoption of these best practices into project proposals and implementation strategies.

Key Result #2 – 30% – Coordinates intradepartmental processes to ensure achieving the department strategic objective on need-based partner organizational strengthening.

• Ensure grant partners have timely access to organizational strengthening and relevant Blood:Water driven technical services throughout the grant cycle and partnership.
• Engages the Performance Monitoring Manager for monitoring, evaluation, reporting capacity strengthening and technical assistance that emerge throughout the partnership.
• Engages Technical Services Advisor for initiation and management of the IDF Process paired with the grant cycle as well as other targeted organizational strengthening assistance needs that emerge throughout the partnership.
• Engages the entire department to coordinate collaborative partner performance reviews and feedback calls.

Key Result #3 – 10% – Interim support to Marketing and Development Departments by responding to queries and providing support to US-team travel including vision and story trips.

• Oversee engagement of partners for vision, story and other field trips as it relates to trip planning and logistics. Leads and/or Co-leads trips as needed.
• Provides support to the bridging process by responding to systems and fundraising requests.

Skills, Education, Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (International Development, Public Health, Public Administration, Community Development, etc) plus 3-5 years professional experience in community health and development focused on program management, program development, grants administration and compliance. Masters Degree plus 1-2 years experience also eligible.
• Technical programmatic experience with HIV/AIDS and WASH a priority.
• Prior Africa-based field experience required. Full-time experience and field experience specific to Eastern and Southern African regions a priority.
• Previous experience participating in the full continuum of the project/program management cycle demonstrating an ability to assess, design, implement, monitor and evaluate projects. This includes proposal and budget development, financial management/oversight on projects of $100,000-500,000 USD.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with an advanced ability to articulate oral and written technical information clearly and effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Ability to manage people and partner-institution relationships
• Ability to train and innovatively develop other capacity building methods to build capacity grants and project management.
• Ability to work with remote teams with a high level of integrity and ability to deliver on deadlines with little supervision.
• Ability and willingness to travel throughout Africa and the US to fulfill responsibilities (up to 30%)
• Ability to communicate effectively, diplomatically, and tactfully with people of varied professional, cultural, and educational backgrounds, including a variety of internal and external stakeholders
• Experience and ease with both Apple and Windows systems, Salesforce, MS Office and Google Apps software.
• Ability to learn on the job quickly and absorb/synthesize a broad range of information
• Strong interpersonal skills with proven teamwork leadership and participation
• Strong organization, communication and presentation skills

Critical Qualities:

• A growing maturity of Christian faith
• A genuine passion for Blood:Water
• Professionalism in demeanor, written and oral communication
• Disciplined with priorities
• Commitment to excellence in the development and growth of the organization
• Demonstrated willingness to be flexible and tolerant in a changing work environment
• Detail oriented, excellent organizational skills and ability to prioritize tasks.
• Self-starter and ability to work independently on global remote teams.

General Information: Position is based in Nashville, TN or in Nairobi, Kenya; Remote location may be a consideration. Benefits include PTO, health insurance, SIMPLE retirement.