The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world’s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you’re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.
Awards Management Unit (AMU)
Established in January 2016, the Awards Management Unit (AMU) is a global department with the responsibility for identifying, securing, and managing all funding from statutory/government donors. The department includes the following teams: Program and Award Support, Planning and Strategic Operations, Compliance and Policy, and Global Business Development.
The AMU is a bridge between donors and country programs: providing expert technical advice to the country teams, while maintaining portfolio-level visibility to ensure consistency and compliance, and manage risk. This unit ensures that donor compliance policies and procedures are implemented consistently and supports all staff working across the award management cycle for all restricted funding from global government sources.
Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department
The Crisis Response, Recovery and Development (CRRD) Department has a growing portfolio of humanitarian relief, post-crisis recovery, and development programs under their remit. This work focuses support in five key areas: ensuring safety from harm, improving health, increasing access to education, improving economic well-being and ensuring people have the power to influence decisions that affect their lives. In all these programs, there is a drive to address the unique needs of women and girls (who represent the majority of those displaced) – and the universal barriers they face.
CRRD works across 5 regions globally, including West and Central Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The regional teams are the links between country programs and key HQ departments and aim to support and provide advice to country programs with a range of issues from strategic planning, business development to compliance, awards management and partnerships management.
Purpose of the Role
The Program Development and Award Advisor (PDAA) will provide delivery support in both pre- and post-award across the Regional Program & Award Support (RPAS) team, and contribute to regional learning and service improvements. The role will provide business development, award management, and compliance support to country programs in the East Africa region and in line with donor regulations and IRC’s systems, processes and relevant strategies (e.g. IRC’s Business Development Strategy). The role will also contribute to regional learning, and systems and process improvements.
Scope and Authority
This role has no line management responsibilities.
Key Working Relationships
Reports to the Directors, Awards Management East Africa. Works closely with the Head of Business Development (HBD); Senior Program & Award Advisor (SPAA); and other members of RPAS teams. The role works closely with country program grants and partnership teams, and across all teams within the AMU, CRRD, Global Supply Chain, Finance, Office of General Counsel, Technical Excellence, and other key departments within IRC.
Key Accountabilities
The Program Development and Award Advisor will support the East Africa RPAS team, and may be responsible for some or all of the following, as assigned by the RPAS team:
Business Development
• Collaborate with country teams to identify business development priorities and support donor engagement, including intelligence sharing, strategic positioning, and participation in donor calls as needed.
• Coordinate with AMU pillars and country offices to conduct donor research, analyze funding trends, and track new opportunities across sectors and donors.
• Lead or support pre-positioning efforts for specific opportunities, including technical brainstorming, partner and competitor analysis, and development of win themes to strengthen proposal readiness.
• Assist country offices in setting annual regional metrics and reviewing Quarterly Strategy Review progress for leadership insights.
• In collaboration with the HBD, support the full proposal lifecycle.
• 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.
• Provide quality assurance and quality compliance support on proposals. Ensure responsiveness to and compliance with solicitation documents and with IRC’s requirements, including the PEER system.
• 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. This includes partner packages if applicable.
• Review agreements to ensure accuracy and highlight key compliance requirements, in coordination with post-award, compliance and country grants teams and support in award negotiation and hand-over to regional team as required.
• Maintain complete and accurate electronic files, including final submission packages and internal trackers.
• Deploy to country offices to lead proposal development as needed
Awards Management and Compliance
• Manage a portfolio of awards for the region, as agreed on a roving basis, and retain a portion of the portfolio as needed based on regional priorities. Review, provide substantive feedback, and ensure timely submission of reports, collaborating with and ensuring input from relevant country, regional, technical, and financial staff.
• Guide country offices, in partnership with relevant departments, in the design, production, processing, and submission of award amendments and modification, ensuring quality and compliance throughout the process award amendments and modifications.
• Serve as first point of contact for country program-based awards staff to guide and advise country teams on all post-award issues.
• Review and lead negotiation of award agreements with donors, other IRC entities and partners according to IRC policies and internal processes.
• Review and support the processing sub-grants/partnership agreements in alignment with internal processes and serve as the compliance approver.
• Provide support to and monitoring of projects to ensure progress against objectives and compliance with donor guidelines and IRC internal requirements.
• Provide technical advice to country offices on ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues in coordination with the Compliance and Policy team.
• Throughout the entire BD cycle, ensure that lessons learned from projects are captured and applied to promote continuous learning and improvement. Advise country programs to ensure they successfully adhere to internal IRC policies and procedures (e.g. OTIS, PEERS) and provide ongoing support to ensure compliance.
• Travel to provide additional support to or cover short-term gaps for awards and partnerships teams in the countries as required and agreed.
• Coordinate with other members of the RPAS and other AMU members for information sharing and to establish a coherent awards support.
• Manage donor relationships by maintaining communication on contractual issues, updates on program implementation and following up on compliance queries and securing changes and approvals as needed.
Capacity Building and Training
• Deliver training and onboarding for country program and RPAS staff on pre- and post-award processes, donor compliance, IRC policies, and award management standards to strengthen staff capacity and understanding.
Other Responsibilities
• Contribute to regional learning initiatives and feed into after-action reviews, as needed.
• Actively participate as a member of the RPAS Team, engaging in strategy development and other initiatives as needed.
• In collaboration with the DAM and HBD, manage assignment requests by maintaining a calendar, ensuring effective coordination of support needs across the team.
• Ensure sufficient record keeping.
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor.
Qualifications
Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:
• Fluency in English; proficiency in German is desirable. **
• Significant experience with, and a strong understanding of, European and emerging donor requirements is required; a good understanding of United States Government requirements is desirable. **
• Good understanding of humanitarian aid and development programming
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a diverse team and handle a multifaceted workload
• Good financial management and budgeting skills **
• Ability to analyze and synthesize information **
• Proven organizational skills, detail-oriented, ability to prioritize tasks, and to learn quickly
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to successfully and effectively liaise with people within and across departments in a multi-cultural environment
• Ability to work independently in a very fast paced environment
• A flexible work attitude and a calm manner
• International work experience in the Global South is a plus
• Excellent IT skills (Word, Outlook, Excel)
• Ability to travel internationally
Experience:
• Experience in working at a distance and supporting country-based staff
• Experience in developing, reviewing and editing narrative and financial reports, concept notes, proposals, proposal budgets, and budget narratives, demonstrating excellent attention to detail
Recruitment Process
The process for this role will be as follows:
• screening call online
• first round panel interview online (with/without assessment)
• second round panel interview online
Compensation: Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.
- UK Pay Range: £57,444 – £67,018
Standard of Professional Conduct: The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.
More Information
- Job City Kenya
