Grants & Partnerships Officer at International Rescue Committee

Scope of work:

• Based in Nairobi, the Grants and Partnership Assistant will be a key member of IRC Kenya’s Grants Unit and will report to the Grants and Partnership Manager. This position does not currently have supervisory responsibility. Occasional travel to field sites and refugee camps may be required. The Grants and Partnership Assistant will 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 run 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 handling receipt and review of partners’ deliverables. They will also chip in to overall grants management efforts and work to ensure adherence to donor regulations and compliance across grants and sites.

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.
• Contribute towards drafting of agreement, populating monitoring and reporting schedule and review of partner proposal, budget and workplans documents.
• Collaborating closely with HQ for approvals and/or review of documents and agreements through the IRC grants management system (OTIS).
• Draft and process sub-awards modifications in a timely manner ensuring that the relevant to the project.
• Ensure sub-grant related administrative processes and procedures should be standardized and consistently implemented throughout the project cycle, such as for disbursements, reporting, project cycle meetings and monitoring.
• Support and co-lead Partnership Project Opening, Review and Closing Meetings, together with the relevant team members.
• Maintain a sub-grants tracker for all partnership/sub-grant agreements including basic sub-grant details, funds disbursed, and liquidations received.
• Support partners throughout the partner’s proposal and budget development in coordination with programs and finance teams and provide tools and guidance where relevant and collate feedback for review.
• Ensure partners remain apprised of grant report due dates and submission dates and with programs team coordinate narrative reporting processes and collaborate closely with finance on finance reporting processes, including review and feedback, ensuring that appropriate checklists are completed.
• Ensure all partner report submissions are filed in the Grants Unit’s Box folder system, and maintain hard copy files of report submissions, as appropriate.
• Maintain up to date Partnership Tracker/Monitoring Schedule.
• Coordinate with Finance to ensure timely transfer of payments to partners!
• Lead on all partnership agreement closeout processes.

Administrative/Other.

• Support the grants & partnership manager 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.
• Travel to IRC Kenya field locations to undertake capacity building, training, and monitoring, as applicable.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant course.
• At least two years’ experience working in grants within the humanitarian sector.
• Familiar with program design, budgeting, grants, and report writing.
• Demonstrated strong writing and revision skills in English (both in terms of content structuring and copy-editing).
• Demonstrated strong digital literacy in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel), Outlook, Internet (browsers and Skype), PDF manipulation.
• Highly organized and thorough.
• Able and willing to learn and work with teams based in Nairobi, Kakuma, Lodwar, and Dadaab.
• Able and willing to work with tight target dates and time.
• Able and willing to work in a multicultural context as a supportive teammate.
• An eye for design is a plus!