Grants and Partnership Intern at International Rescue Committee

Job Description

• Under IRC Kenya’s 2022 – 2024 Strategic Action Plan (SAP), the Country Program made a commitment to increase the amount of funding to local partners to 8% of the operating budget by FY24. It also committed to developing seven Strategic Partnerships with local actors, five of which should be women-led or focused. At the half-way point of the current SAP, Kenya has made significant progress towards these goals including identifying five new partners that are in the process of being brought on board under various grants. However, there is still much progress to be made particularly when it comes to speeding up onboarding processes and management of partners during implementation, as well as around the identification of strategic partners.
• The Kenya Country Program is seeking an intern based in Nairobi to support the Grants and Partnership Officer and work collaboratively with all members of the Grants Unit, as well as with technical coordinators, monitoring, and evaluation (M&E), and the finance and operations teams. They will assist to coordinate and manage the sub-award lifecycle in accordance with the IRC’s Partnership for Excellence and Equality System (PEERS), including conducting due diligence, ensuring partners understand applicable donor regulations, and managing receipt and review of partners’ deliverables. They will also contribute to overall grants management efforts and work to ensure adherence to donor regulations and compliance across grants and sites.
• S/He will be a key member of IRC Kenya’s Grants Unit and will report to the Grants and Partnership Officer and occasionally required travel to field sites (partner visits) and refugee camps.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Contribute towards identification of local partners/organizations, and maintain clear, accessible documentation of identified organizations.
• Support in the partner vetting process through implementation of PEERS framework including carrying out partner capacity review, partner identity and background checks.
• Assist in preparing and/or review solicitations and requests for proposals from Program team(s) before publishing to ensure compliance with IRC policy and donor rules and regulations.
•  Contribute towards drafting of agreement, populating monitoring and reporting schedule and review of partner proposal documents.
• Assist in ensuring sub-grant related administrative processes and procedures are standardized and consistently implemented throughout the project cycle, such as for disbursements, reporting and monitoring.
• Assist in maintaining the sub-grants tracker for all partnership/sub-grant agreements including basic sub-grant details, funds disbursed, and liquidations received.
• Support partners throughout the partners proposal development, provide tools and guidance where relevant and collate feedback for review.
• Assist in ensuring partners remain apprised of grant report due dates and submission dates for partner inputs are kept updated on IRC’s internal tracking sheets.
• Assist in supporting all partners in report submissions and file in the Grants Unit’s Box folder system, and maintain hard copy files of report submissions, as appropriate.

Administrative/Other

• Support in keeping an accurate and up-to-date sub-awards Filing system on the Shared Drive (Box), on OTIS and in hard copy folders in order to ensure grant documents are easily accessible for the day-to-day work of the Grants team and for internal and external audit purposes.
• Support other program initiatives / work streams / task as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in social sciences/International development/Communication. Background and prior experience in Finance/Accounts is a plus.
• Experience working in grants within the humanitarian sector is an added advantage.
• Familiarity with program design, budgeting, grants, and report writing.
• Excellent interpersonal, cultural and diplomatic skills; Friendly and constructive approach in managing work relations and addressing challenges.
• Demonstrated strong writing and revision skills in English (both in terms of content structauring and copy-editing)
• Strong computer skills in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel), Outlook, Internet (browsers and Skype), PDF manipulation
• Highly organized and detail-oriented
• Able and willing to learn and work with teams based in Nairobi, Kakuma, Lodwar, and Dadaab
• Able and willing to work under stress and with tight deadlines.
• Able and willing to work in a multicultural context as a respectful team player.