Program Development and Award Advisor (PDAA) at International Rescue Committee

Key Accountabilities
Business Development

• Support country offices with Donor engagement and intel sharing for positioning for Non-European donors in the PDAA portfolio; prepare for and participate in Donor calls as needed.
• Lead or support pre-positioning for specific opportunities, including facilitating technical brainstorming, partner and competitor landscape analysis and win theme sessions with technical and country staff
• Support the full proposal lifecycle for opportunities within the PDAA portfolio, including sharing initial assessment of new opportunities, supporting Go/No Go processes, preparing, and sharing templates and timelines, ensuring adherence to deadlines, supporting recruitment, assisting in reviewing budgets, ensuring document completion, organizing meetings, and compiling notes, and drafting and proofreading proposal sections.
• 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 for new project activities and/or amendments to current projects.
• 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 partners packages if applicable.
• Review agreements to ensure accurateness 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 on proposal development as available.

Awards Management and Compliance

• Manage a portfolio of Non-European awards for the MENA region. 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 other relevant departments in the design, production, and submission of and revise and quality assure 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 and to act as a connecting point between country program and other AMU teams to facilitate the timely flow of key information between them.
• Review and lead negotiation of award agreements with donors, other IRC entities and partners according to IRC policies and internal processes.
• Review and process sub-grants/partnership agreements in alignment with internal processes.
• Provide support to and monitoring of projects to ensure progress against objectives and compliance with donor guidelines and IRC internal requirements. Monitoring of awards can take the shape of monitoring visits, project implementation meetings and targeted calls following specific donor internal guidelines and IRC established processes.
• Provide technical advice to country offices on ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues in coordination with AMU’s Compliance and Policy team on non-routine and high-level compliance matters and escalate to leadership for support as needed.
• Take part in meetings and calls with country teams where required to provide support and collaborate closely on specific issues related to donor compliance, submissions and/or monitoring/award management.
• Ensure lessons learned from finalised projects inform new business development with donors in the Non-European portfolio.
• Supervise direct report(s) in carrying out necessary functions as they relate to country program support
• Advise country programs appropriately to enable them to successfully follow internal IRC policies and procedures (e.g. OTIS, PEERS).
• 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 Program and Award Support Team 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

• Develop training materials and carry out training of IRC in-country staff, as required and in coordination with PAS leaders.
• In coordination with PAS leaders, develop and maintain work-processes and checklists for award implementation and report review, as well as record lessons learned.
• Onboard new country office Grants and Partnerships staff and new Program and Award Support team to assigned donors, policies and/or IRC processes, as requested.

Staff Management, Learning & Development

• Coach, train, supervise and mentor direct reports, including communicating clear expectations, providing regular and timely performance feedback, document/discuss performance issues if needed, and deliver high-quality documented annual performance reviews.
• Ensure direct reports are trained on all relevant IRC processes and donor regulations.
• Support direct reports in achieving annual objectives, acting as a trusted and accountable manager, mentor and professional resource, including promoting collaboration, enabling adequate resourcing and ensuring accountability.

Other Responsibilities

• Contribute to AMU and regional strategic priorities and initiatives.
• Actively participate as a member of the PAS Team, engaging in strategy development and other initiatives as needed.
• Represent IRC externally at e.g. country specific meetings, with donors and stakeholder networks as requested.
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor.

Person specification
Skills, Knowledge And Qualifications

• Degree, preferably in a subject related to IRC’s work (International Relations, Refugee or Migration Studies, Development Studies, Public Policy) or equivalent experience
• Fluency in English, both spoken and written
• Experience with and a strong understanding of United States Government donor requirements required
• 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, sometimes on short notice and to insecure areas