TITLE: Head of Award Management and Donor Compliance, WCA
TEAM: Programme Operations
LOCATION: Dakar (Senegal), or any WCA country where SCI has a presence
GRADE: National or International
TYPE OF CONTRACT: 2 years Renewable
CHILD SAFEGUARDING:
Level 3: the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.
ROLE PURPOSE:
The Head of Award Management and Donor Compliance (HoAMDC) is responsible for delivering an efficient award management function across all West & Central Africa (WCA) programmes and develop best practice award management processes across 9 Country Offices. The role has three main aspects: lead and develop the regional award management effort including compliance, staff capacity building, and actively monitoring and strengthening process and practices across the AM cycle within the region. This includes driving fit for purpose operating model within the AMDC space in collaboration with other funding-related functions across the RO and CO’s.
The role offers a leadership opportunity for an individual highly experienced in grants management and capable of providing strategic leadership to a dynamic team, as well as the management of a portfolio of awards currently valued at US$720M, and an annual budget of approx. US$230M. S/he will maintain oversight of the award portfolio health for the region to ensure programme delivery is in line with the strategy, collaborating with Resource Mobilisation and PDQ.
The individual will play a strong leadership role both internally, across the Save the Children global network and, in collaboration with Regional Resource Mobilisation, with donors, aiming at developing and preserving a periodic and constructive relationship. S/he will provide both leadership and technical support to the project and program teams in the regional office, as well as to field-based and operations teams to deliver donor compliant awards (rules and regulations), ensuring the consistent delivery of timely and quality donor reports. S/he will also have a strong management insight with respect to partnership, notably with the Localisation lens.
The maintenance of the AM System and day to day management of the team will also be a key aspect of the role. S/he will play a key role in the development of a culture that promotes the primacy of ensuring Save the Children delivers high quality programmes whilst always seeking to improve national staff capacity to take on roles currently held by international staff. In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.
S/he is accountable for the regional strategic award portfolio oversight of SCI Directly Received (local and global) within the region, ensuring necessary reviews, approvals and performance of programme delivery. This includes providing recommendations to fundraising protocol governance within Programme Funding and Institutional Partnerships (Resource Mobilisation) to ensure compliance and good award management and managing AMS approvals for the Funding Office entity on AMS (escalation is via Operations/Regional Director).
SCOPE OF ROLE:
Reports to: Regional Programme Operations Director
Staff reporting to this post: 2 Awards Managers (2 additional staff members by end of 2022)
Matrix: Country heads of award – 9
Budget Responsibilities: US$150K
Role Dimensions: strong relationship building across the organisation, good communication skills, and great presentation skills and working in complex and difficult context is key to this role
KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
Leadership and direction of Award Management and Donor Compliance in WCA
- Adapts and supports with context the strategic direction of the awards management and donor compliance function, undertaking effective planning that supports the function, and maintaining an efficient and effective awards management process
- Contribute to global and organisational thought leadership, projects and development of the award management and donor compliance function. Actively engages in the global award management functional governance as a representative for the region and its constituent implementing offices in the AM Leadership group across members and SCI
- Provide strong line management to award management team in the regional office and provide matrix (dotted line) management for country awards’ leads in the region and create a collaborative team culture that supports our program results for children
- Establish and maintain a broad network at all levels both internally and externally to stay abreast of changes in the sector and operating environment, consider and mitigate impacts to the organization, and share back to the leadership team for course correction in strategy where applicable
- Ensure that the WCA Regional Office awards function maintains appropriate preparedness and capability to respond to emergencies
- Manages the regional office implemented award portfolio, ensuring that appropriate review of awards is occurring in line with the SCI scheme of delegation
- Ensures oversight of portfolio delivery of SCI Led funding within the Region
- Report periodically to the regional leadership team on award management and donor compliance progress, including on the functional Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Award Management Standards, Processes and Systems
- Accountable for driving standards in the region in the award cycle from contract negotiation (during securing an award) through post-award to close out. Supports Resource Mobilisation (owner of pre-award processes) to ensure consistent understanding of delivery risks and issues, learning from previous experiences
- Accountable for upholding SCI Award Management and Donor Compliance Standards, and performance of functional and cross-functional KPIs and MI for awards delivery
- Understand and analyse KPI results, provide supporting information to the RO and Centre, and identify improvements that can be undertaken to improve results in the Award Management related KPIs. Ensures Implementing Office awards teams have action plans to improve performance as needed and supports Implementing offices to implement actions
- Ensures oversight of the portfolio of SCI Directly Received and SCI Led funding, driving consistent reviews, approvals, visibility of performance, and timely escalation of risks
- Provides regional awards representation to design on key Transformation Delivery projects on behalf of the Regional Awards Leads globally (to drive efficiency of engagement, representation on behalf of all RALs, shared across projects, etc.)
- Support the rollout of Transformation Delivery projects including CAPP (Coding, Agresso Onboarding, PMM PRIME), Localisation, Flexible Operating Model, TE Transformation
- Support implementing offices in complying with requirements through coordination of capacity building and responding to support requests
- Support and drive the use of AMS across the region and focus on data quality improvements and systems integrity. Ensures AMS is up-to-date and effectively maintained as a tool to govern good award management within the regional portfolio – across awards and sub-awards, including approvals/authorisations and document retention
- Act as the key contact for broad donor regulations and compliance issues, including coordinating with members to ensure donor compliance support as necessary. Contribute to the improvement of key award management processes, practices and global tools in conjunction with other functions
- Acts as the lead on SCI Directly Received and SCI Led funding delivery within the regional office, to ensure proper oversight of portfolio performance as a subset of the regional portfolio (mostly via Members)
- Regional Funding Office approver for SCI Directly Received (where required) on AMS to ensure compliance with the Fundraising Protocol, with good governance and decision-making to proceed and compliance with standards to drive quality award delivery
Donor Compliance, Risk Management, and Issue Resolution
- Ensure effective risk management is in place for award management and donor compliance across the region, from PART to Implementing Office and RO Risk Management Plans (RMP), aligning functional mitigations, driving management of risk and decision-making as close to the programme as possible, and working cross-functionally to manage risk to organisational objectives
- Oversight of and responsible for the award management and donor compliance related risks in the regional risk management plan
- Maintains an active knowledge of the requirements of key donor requirements and the regulations of different funding modalities in the region, to ensure technical expertise to support and advise as required
- Play a leading role in strengthening and improving donor compliance in WCA by providing innovative solutions and focal point for member collaboration to strengthen CO teams on donor compliance and quality award management
- Ensure effective dissemination of donor compliance requirements and guidance from Save the Children members to our country offices
- Contribute to the resolution of novel and complex donor-related issues needing senior management attention and interfacing with SC members, escalating to regional and centre management as required
- Collaborate closely with the Global initiative of Donor Compliance Improvement
- Promote a culture of excellence in donor compliance in all COs and identify support needed to do so
Portfolio Analysis and Delivery
- In collaboration with the RO SMT, ensure the region has a clear framework for master budget development, cost allocation, monitoring of award budgets, phasing and forecasting, ensuring alignment between the master budget and funding tracker
- Produce country office deep dive analysis related to their respective portfolio
- Identifies trends in donor funding and funding mechanisms across the region, provides visibility to leadership, seeks to understand compliance operationalisation required for emerging funding types and works cross-functionally to ensure readiness for award/portfolio delivery, e.g., shift to commercial contracting, increase in payment by results, etc.
- Monitor and analyse regional performance against KPIs and other metrics. Challenge and validate performance data to provide assurance. Support the delivery and analysis around award management KPIs, Mis and Right First Time cross-functional performance
- Using strong financial analysis skills to oversee the award portfolio delivery
- To work in collaboration with the finance department and provide technical advice regarding strategic donor costs allocations with a view to minimise compliance issues where possible
- To analyse and comment compliance on internal regulations. GO no GO process, Cost allocation methodology, acceptance criteria, awareness around any new global SCI initiative
- Ensure accurate and up to date information on the regional and country award portfolios is readily available to regional SLT and members
- Collaborates with Head of Resource Mobilisation and PDQ Director as required on portfolio development, to ensure portfolio delivery insights are understood, risks and opportunities identified, and a holistic, consistent end-to-end view that enables country strategies to be fulfilled
Capacity Building and community of practice for Award Management
- Creating an environment of continuous learning where staff are encouraged and supported to grow and develop and are willing to be held accountable for their commitments
- Triangulates implementing office self-assessments of performance against standards; performance indicators; observations from engagement with the AMDC community in the region relative to functional and leadership competencies; and portfolio analysis, to identify the donor-specific and donor-neutral capacity strengthening and continuous improvement requirements across the region
- Actively engages the AM Leadership to ensure resources in place to support regionally led capacity building efforts e.g., through the annual workshop, community of practice, etc.
- Role modelling and supporting the development of an organisational culture that reflects our values, our dual mandate and promotes accountability and high performance
- Developing and sharing best practices with other Regional Awards Leads
- Sustaining a network of senior award management practitioners across the region, facilitating their engagement, relationships and sharing of practices across the COs
- Support the capacity building of staff across all functions to manage awards and comply with donor requirements as relevant to their role by providing induction, training and coaching consistent with their various roles and responsibilities
- Support recruitments, inductions and performance management of Country Awards Leads
- Together with HR, coordinate talent management and learning and development
QUALIFICATIONS
- Post graduate degree, though no specific qualification, is required
- Desirable that candidate has completed training in institutional donor requirements for some of the key donors within the Save the Children portfolio e.g. InsideNGO training in USAID Rules and Regulations: Grants and Cooperative Agreements; ECHO PuntoSud training courses, etc.
EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
Essential
- Excellent strategic, planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organise and prioritise a demanding workload comprised of diverse and challenging tasks and responsibilities
- 5-8 years’ experience of international organisations similar to Save the Children
- 5-8 years’ experience in programmes or operations support functions like finance, awards, project management
- Proven track record of active contribution to senior managers and providing strategic support across multiple sectors and/or regions
- Extensive experience with NGOs with increasing responsibilities including a proven experience of establishing and running the award management function in the field
- Good diverse knowledge of the requirements of major institutional donors including budgeting, eligibility issues, compliance management, and reporting; experience of engaging with donors at strategic level
- Well-developed skills in diverse and multi-cultural staff management
- Proven coaching and capacity building skills
- Attention to detail, problem solving, and analysis of trends, whilst maintaining big picture and vision
- Computer literate (i.e. Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet Explorer, financial systems)
- Cultural awareness and ability to build relationships quickly with a wide variety of people, at all levels, internally and externally
- Demonstrated experience in complex stakeholder management, including in a matrix management environment
- Patient, adaptable, able to improvise, and communicate clearly and effectively under pressure
- Ability and willingness to change work practices and hours in the event of major emergencies incl. travelling at short notice and for extended periods of time
- Mastering of French and English (oral and written) is a must. Strong communication and interpersonal skills in both languages
