Program Development & Award Advisor at International Rescue Committee

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

• The Program Development and Award Advisor will be ‘deployed’ primarily on a remote basis to support specific RPAS teams, and may be responsible for some or all of the following on deployment, as assigned by the RPAS team: 

Business Development  

• Support country offices with Donor engagement and intel sharing for positioning; prepare for and participate in Donor calls as needed.
• Lead or support pre-positioning for specific opportunities
• In collaboration with the regional Program Development team, 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 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 needed
• Awards Management and Compliance 
• Manage a portfolio of awards for the region, as agreed on the roving basis. 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.
• Review and lead negotiation of award agreements with donors, other IRC entities and partners according to IRC policies and internal processes.
• Review and help processing 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. 
• Provide technical advice to country offices on ad-hoc queries on donor compliance issues in coordination with the Compliance and Policy team.
• Ensure lessons learned from finalised projects are fed into the Business Development team.
• 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 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

• Develop training materials and carry out training of relevant staff.
• 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 RPAS team to assigned donors, policies and/or IRC processes, as requested.
• Ensure sufficient record keeping for efficient handover when deployment ends. 

Other Responsibilities

• After each deployment, contribute to cross-regional learning initiatives and feed into after-action reviews, as needed.
• Support development of systems, processes, and/or resource improvements.
• Actively participate as a member of the PAS Team, engaging in strategy development and other initiatives as needed.
• Manage requests and assignments by maintaining a calendar of assignment requests and coordinating support needs across teams.
• Other duties as assigned by supervisor.

PERSON SPECIFICATION 
Essential
Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Fluency in English and Spanish, with additional language skills in French and/or German highly desirable.
• Significant experience with and a strong understanding of United States Government donor requirements required; experience with European donors highly 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, sometimes on short notice and to insecure areas

Experience:

• Experience in working at a distance and supporting country-based staff
• Experience writing, reviewing and editing narrative and financial reports and excellent attention to detail