Grants and Partnerships Officer at Flone Initiative

Job Purpose:

• The Grants and Partnerships Officer primary responsibilities is of overseeing the implementation of Flone’s partnerships strategy, identification of new funding opportunities, developing concept notes and proposals to raise funds from potential donors and maintaining good relationships with donors. In addition, she/he will administer grant and subgrant contracts, ensuring compliance with donor policies, requirements, and agreements.

Responsibilities

Opportunity Generation and bidding

• Grow a pipeline of funding opportunities for the country programme.
• Conducting research on fundraising opportunities and donor mapping
• Provide country staff/programmes with up-to-date intelligence on, funding opportunities and donor terms and conditions.
• Write funding proposals & concept note and submitting these to potential donors.
• Coordination of proposal development and bid preparations, using staff and consultants as necessary to deliver bids
• Ensure effective contract negotiation for strategic, high value opportunities as well as maintain standard negotiating positions for donor contract terms and conditions.
• Develop and maintain proactive fundraising tools for presentation/information to donors
• Gather and analyse strategic donor intelligence; building effective liaisons/consortia with profit and non-profit entities, multilateral/bilateral funding institutions that will translate into project development and funding of projects.
• Develop and execute Business development strategy aligned with the Flone Strategy .
• Work closely with all departments to ensure that fundraising efforts are coordinated and aligned with the organisation's overall goals and priorities to ensure that the programmes are funded sustainably.

Grants Management

• Develop and implement grant-making and grants management policies, procedures, and practices, in coordination with the Executive Director and Program Operations Manager
• Evaluate subcontracts and grant concepts, proposals, and grant agreement/award documents to ensure adherence to established grants management policies and donor requirements,
• Ensure proper negotiation of the terms and conditions for subcontracts and grants (both cash and in-kind) and review and analyze budget estimates (for cash or in-kind grants) for allocability, reasonableness, and consistency.
• Provide guidance to potential grantees through formal training, coaching, and other support in line with our ethnical practices.
• Review draft budgets before they are approved and further flesh out budget notes to ensure clarity and auditable records.
• Manage and regularly update Grants Tracking Sheet to inform ED’s support.
• Ensure full compliance with all applicable donor policies and contract agreements, for all subcontracts and grant agreements including grant solicitation and selection procedures, grant awards, grant implementation, grant monitoring and evaluation and grant close-outs.
• Ensure the proper preparation and execution of subcontracts and grant documents and grant disbursements consistent and compliant with donor policies and requirements - define any special conditions for grantee compliance throughout each grant.
• Support risk management by developing and maintaining risk management plans for donor-contract funded programmes.
• Effectively support and challenge programmes, finance teams and partners to flag project risks and ensure plans for mitigation of the risks are communicated to the Senior Management Team.
• Administer the grants portfolio including setting appropriate work priorities, applying knowledge of organizational needs and deadlines, and consistent follow-up to assure receipt of required documentation.
• Responsible for activities related to monitoring grants, including receiving and reviewing progress reports
• Capacity Building: Work with programme and finance staff to develop and provide additional training for grantees if and as needed, such as in budget development, program coordination and reporting.

Partnerships

• Assists in maintaining existing partnerships and developing new relationships with sub national and national governments, non-governmental, non-profit, tribal government, media, academic, and other organizations to support Partnerships.
• Manage partnerships database and relationships
• Establishing good relationships with staff, members of the public, donors, partners and the media.
• Implementing a variety of marketing strategies and promotional campaigns to show case Flones program and influencing work
• Organizes and facilitates monthly partnering sessions between staffs, teams, and current or prospective partners; in partner amendments, realignments and general challenges in project implementation, as necessary.
• Organizing and attending non-profit events and networking with relevant stakeholders.
• Develop ingenious ways to raise awareness.
• Perform any other tasks as may be required and assigned from time to time.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 3 years of relevant experience in grant management, partnerships and fundraising
• Relevant education at undergraduate level in a relevant field.
• Non-profit experience and familiarity with organizational growth plans.
• High level of capability in the areas of analytical, research and problem solving skills.
• Experience with project work and competence in computer applications including word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Must be results orientated, with ability to manage and satisfy multiple organisational, donors and other stakeholder demands.
• Excellent relationship building skills, particularly the ability to learn fast and build trust.
• Work well in a team and have outstanding social and intercultural skills and proven ability to be flexible and sensitive in demanding situations.
• Attention to detail and ability to perform multiple tasks and balance competing priorities effectively and efficiently.
• Ability to communicate effectively with managers, colleagues, service providers, donors, grantees, and other stakeholders.
• Good communication skills and fluent command of written and spoken English, Kiswahili and Sheng;
• Familiarity with the rights-based approach, social justice, adult empowerment and gender sensitive approaches.