Senior Program Support Manager, Private Partnerships – East Africa at International Rescue Committee

Major Responsibilities

• The role will serve as the primary focal point and liaison between the private fundraising teams, the regional team, and country office teams for all aspects of business development and grant management. The major responsibilities will span across all award lifecycle stages and include:

New funding and proposal development (20%):

• Pursues new funding opportunities for the region suitable for presenting to private sector entities including corporations, foundations, wealthy individuals and faith and membership organizations;
• Ensures that country office funding needs and priorities are well represented across high-value fundraising teams on an ongoing basis, and proactively shares information, and advocates as needed on behalf of country offices;
• Scans the program work in the region to identify new areas of work that can be proactively worked up and offered to new partners and donors;
• Manages proposal development processes as required for single-country, multi-country and/or multi-region opportunities, bringing together teams across fundraising, program regions and technical units;
• Reviews and provides substantive feedback and content on all private donor proposals and drafts proposals with inputs from country programs when needed;
• Reviews budgets and supporting documentation for proposals in coordination with the HQ Finance Department and assists country programs in creating budgets when necessary.

Private funding portfolio management (70%):

• Maintains an up-to-date record of all private sector partnerships in the region to inform effective and timely delivery of relevant updates, progress and insight to the relevant business teams;
• Ensures consistency and compliance across private partnerships for the entire duration of a partnership in close coordination with country teams to ensure donor requirements are met and compliance issues are raised to the appropriate focal point;
• Keeps up-to-date with developments around program implementation, flagging risks and challenges around implementation, and ensures timely flow of information to support efficient delivery of donor reports;
• Proactively reviews and provides substantive feedback or content on donor reports, guides country offices with budget realignments, and supports grant amendments;
• Coordinates and ensures clear, reliable reporting and data-points for maximum partnership impact, including drafting and finalizing donor reports and communication materials for country offices as needed;
• Flags donors who need to be stewarded by Fundraising to maintain and deepen relationships, especially if there have been any issues with program implementation;
• Supports country offices to apply internal procedures and systems such as OTIS (IRC’s grant information tracking system), and PEERs (IRC’s partnership management system) for private funding portfolio and ensure SNAP entries are up to date;
• Maintains an ear to the ground on programmatic issues and security & political developments in East Africa and how they might affect private partnerships;
• Provides project management support on large multi-year and multi-country opportunities and grants as requested from fundraisers, the region and Technical Units.

Process improvement (10%):

• Responsible for establishing the foundation for the development of processes and systems that would advance our private-sector partnerships pursuits;
• Coordinates with relevant teams in ER to ensure optimal support for country program offices;
• Reviews and proposes improved processes as needed to help reduce time, and ensure appropriate partner sign off, to better match private sector donor timescales.

Key Working Relationships
Reports to: Senior Advisor, Private Partnerships, East Africa
Essential Qualifications

• Approximately 6 years working in private sector grant support or related area, with at least 3 years working in or closely with the East Africa region;
• Demonstrable experience of running and/or monitoring large, multi-sectoral and multi-country private sector partnerships and working across various teams and functions;
• Knowledge of the drivers and motivators for support from corporations, foundation, wealthy individuals and faith and membership based organizations, and experience working directly and supporting private sector fundraisers;
• Experience in developing and leading successful complex proposals and providing impactful reporting for high value donors;
• Ability to effectively manage and coordinate with geographically dispersed teams throughout all stages of the private grant lifecycle;
• Experience managing donor compliance, budgeting, negotiating agreement provisions, technical and financial reporting;
• Understanding of the private donor mentality and pace of work and the differences from public funding culture;
• Ability to analyze and synthesize information and excellent attention to detail;
• Willingness and ability to regularly travel to the region, sometimes on short notice and to volatile areas;
• Outstanding people skills: strong ability to communicate constructively across culturally diverse teams and contribute to a pleasant work environment;
• Solid organizational skills: ability to be flexible and in a fast-paced multi-task team environment;
• Language skills: English fluency required; additional languages spoken in the region a plus