Business Development and Grants Manager - Zimbabwe

Description

About Trócaire

Trócaire is an International NGO. We work with local partners in the world’s most at-risk communities and with people in Ireland to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and injustice and respond to the crises they create. Together we bring about positive and lasting change for a just world. Trócaire works in up to 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. We work towards five goals:

• Promote Access to Justice;
• Achieve Climate & Environmental Justice;
• Ensure Women & Girls’ Protection, Voice & Influence;
• Save Lives and Protect Human Dignity and
• Mobilise the Public on the island of Ireland to achieve Global Justice.

Our work is rooted in Catholic Social Teaching and in our values of Solidarity, Courage, Participation, Perseverance and Accountability.

In Zimbabwe, Trócaire works with 26 local partners to bring about positive and lasting change around women’s empowerment and gender based violence, governance and human rights, climate justice, and humanitarian response. The programmes are funded by a variety of donors including Irish Aid, EU, SIDA, and the UK Government, along with funding from private foundations and individuals.

About the role

The role of the Business Development and Grants Manager is to manage current donor contracts, strengthen and diversify Trócaire’s institutional funding base, and ensure donor compliance with existing and future institutionally funded grants and potential commercial contracts.

The role will report to the Country Director.

Key duties and responsibilities

Overaching

• Provide oversight and support to programme and finance staff in the management and compliance of all institutional funding grants and potential commercial contracts.
• Increase and broaden the institutional funding base of Trócaire’s country programme in line with the organisational and country specific institutional funding strategy.
• Coordinate and manage all components of the concept note and proposal development process, ensuring a high quality and timely submission to institutional donors, consistent with Trócaire’s Organisational and Country Strategic Plans.
• Support the programme teams in the development of well-designed projects and programmes for submission to institutional donors, consistent with Trócaire’s Organisational and Country Strategic Plans.
• Position Trócaire as potential partner (sub and lead) for grants and commercial contract consortia.
• Build the capacity of Trócaire’s programme staff and partners to manage existing and future institutional funding grants/contracts.

The role can be divided into two main components:

Business Development & Programme Growth (60%)

In close coordination with the Global Partnerships and Funding Unit (GPFU) staff in Trócaire HQ:

• Pre-Positioning: Identify relevant upcoming funding opportunities, track grant forecasts, and using advance intelligence gathering prepare recommendations based on specific bid/no bid decision criteria. Identify potential partners; manage pre-solicitation proposal preparations; participate in pre-design meetings; draft sections of the proposal in advance of the solicitation; coordinate and facilitate design workshops; and support field teams to collect relevant country and technical information that informs design.
• Proposal Preparation and Coordination: Lead the coordination and development of proposals from initial development to grant submission. Manage partners’ inputs to the cost application; provide technical input to the finance team to support the completion of the cost application in alignment with the technical programme design. Manage the proposal review process and budget alignment and compliance with donor guidelines; build effective working relationships with partners on proposal bids; support the management of consultants recruited to support proposal development; support the recruitment process to ensure identification and inclusion of qualified key personnel in proposals.
• Post Submission: Manage and or/support post submission and lessons learned processes contributing to shared learning. Engage in the Teams’ development of best practice and evidenced base approaches utilised in proposals.
• External Engagement and Networking: Identify international and local partners for future opportunities; arrange meetings and calls with donors and partners; initiate and lead/participate in donor engagement and donor relationship management; conduct potential partner outreach and follow up with subject matter experts for organizing meeting; support technical advisors to develop organizational capability statements in coordination with the GPFU/Programme team.
• Lead the review and implementation of Trócaire’s country institutional funding strategy, in line with country programme needs and institutional funding landscape and opportunities; monitor and update the Funding Pipeline for discussion with Country Team; regularly review and update the Donor Mapping and Engagement Plan; update annual Country Funding Targets.
• Localisation: Support Trócaire’s localisation priorities including partner capacity strengthening directly or indirectly via consultant support.
• Collaboration: Share learning with GPFU and contribute to working groups or other initiatives that may emerge.

Grants Management & Compliance (40%)

• Keep up to date with donor regulations, relating to all current grants and commercial contracts, and communicate relevant changes to staff, ensuring links with HQ in terms of global donor strategies and updates on regulations.

• Support programme staff to manage grant agreements/contracts for all institutional grants and commercial contracts including adherence to supply chain and financial management policies and procedures, fraud etc. Keep relevant HQ staff informed about the progress of grant agreements/ contracts through the programme cycle.

• Develop appropriate procedures, tools, and operational systems to support partners in adherence to Trócaire and donor /contract compliance requirements, including adherence to Trócaire’s minimum requirements.
• In coordination with programme / finance staff, monitoring and ensure compliance of programs with donor rules and requirements including financial tracking and reporting/amendments for all grants/contracts.
• Advise and support programme teams on building the capacities of partners to handle contractual compliance issues, including project audit and verification requirements.
• Support programme staff, and take responsibility for as the need arises, in preparing high quality reports for submission to donors in a timely manner. This includes supporting coordination, review, and editing of large donor reports and other project material going to external audiences. This will involve close liaison and joint working with institutional funding staff in HQ.
• Support the organisation and follow-up of grant inception meetings, grant review meetings, and grant close out meetings.
• Ensure that all information relating to proposals and donor compliance is stored on Trócaire’s information management system (Salesforce). Work with the GPFU staff in Trócaire’s HQ, as well as the finance and programmes staff in country to ensure Salesforce and Agresso funding figures reconcile.
• Provide training and tools for Trócaire staff and partners entering new institutional donor contracts, including compliance with regulations on financial management, procurement, audit, reporting, visibility, and communications.
• With the Finance and Administration Manager, advise and support programme teams and partners on how to comply with donor specific audit and expenditure verification requirements.

Benefits

Trócaire Zimbabwe offers a competitive remuneration package in line with its salary scales.

Requirements

Skills

• Technical background in Agriculture and Livelihoods, Resilience, Climate Change Mitigation/Adaptation, Human Rights, Protection GBV, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support); WASH, Cash/Voucher programming and M&E highly preferred.
• Superior project design and reporting skills, particularly in respect of producing high quality written documents, concept notes, proposals, and reports in English.
• High level numeracy; ability to develop project budgets.
• Keen interest and excitement in business development, entrepreneurial interests, willingness to learn, ambition to take on positions of increasing responsibility.
• In depth knowledge of managing grants and contractual requirements of institutional donors.
• Proven strategic thinking and planning skills, including ability to think creatively, analyse and be innovative, set priorities, manage work plans, and evaluate progress.
• Experience working with civil society partners and good understanding of partnership approach.
• Critical thinking on emergency response, women, climate change & resilience
• Detail-oriented, flexible, and able to handle multiple concurrent tasks
• Able to work independently as well as part of a team
• Able to quick build cross cultural relationships with teams and partners
• Advanced relationship, negotiation, and interpersonal skills.
• Excellent facilitation & capacity building skills and experience of applying them when working with individual partners or groups of partners.
• Excellent written English, oral and presentational communications skills.
• Computer literacy skills in Word, excel and internet/email

Experience

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience working in the international development and the humanitarian sector in a fundraising and institutional grant management position
• Experience of proposal and report writing for major international donors including Irish Aid, EU, SIDA, the UK Government, USAID and other relevant institutional donors and trusts/foundations.
• Proven record of accomplishment of securing institutional funding from successful grant applications and commercial contracts, including in consortia.
• Experience of managing grants financed by the donors such as: Irish Aid, EU, SIDA, the UK Government, , other European Governments, UN, US Government funding (USAID, State Dept.), and other relevant institutional donors and trusts/foundations.
• Project cycle management using results frameworks and/ or logical frameworks.
• Working with civil society partner organisations.

• Training/capacity building in a multi-cultural environment.

  Qualification

Third level qualification in Development, Humanitarian, Business Administration, or related field of study.

Essential requirements

• Supporting: Reflecting our values of Participation & Accountability, demonstrating Trócaire’ s values with integrity to achieve our organisation’s objectives.
• Communicating: Reflecting our value of Participation, being one organisation, communicating clearly and transparently across, teams, units, divisions, locations, and other external organisations. Getting our message across with impact.
• Collaborating: Reflecting our values of Participation & Solidarity, partnering effectively as One Trócaire organisation and, in solidarity, maintains positive relationships built on trust and respect.
• Stewardship of Resources: Reflecting our value of Accountability and decision-making around the best use of resources. Using our resources transparently, sustainably, ethically, fairly & with integrity; acknowledging Trócaire’ s reputation in the use of resources.
• Delivering Results: Reflecting our values of Accountability & Perseverance, getting a quality job done through effective performance, planning, and decision-making.
• Continual Improvement and Learning: Reflecting our values of Participation & Courage, constantly looking to learn and develop self, employees, and partners to better fulfil Trócaire’ s’ mission.

• Flexibility and Change: Reflecting our values of Participation & Courage, adapts positively to change and to different ways of doing things; manages or takes part in change processes in a way that is appropriate to the role in the organisation.

  Qualities

• Dynamic, willing to take initiative and able to manage multiple priorities.

• A team player but also willing and able to work with minimal supervision.
• Capacity to be flexible and adaptable to changing contexts and priorities.
• Deep commitment to social justice.
• Ability to travel internationally at short notice, to work under pressure and to meet deadlines.
• Patient and pays high degree of attention to detail.
• Understanding of, and empathy with, the role of the Catholic Church in development.

Others

Cross cultural communication skills.

Closing date for applications is Tuesday 9 July 2024.