Partnerships Manager

Job Description

More than 3.6 million people have fled across borders to seek safety in the 1st month since the escalation of conflict in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and over 6.5 million Ukrainians are reported to be displaced internally. As the vast majority of the displaced are women, girls, and boys, this could become the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades.

Between February 7-23, 2022, an IRC team undertook a scoping mission covering Poland and Ukraine to better understand the context, humanitarian and civil society landscape, and anticipated service gaps in the event of an escalation of conflict in Ukraine and consequent displacement into neighboring Poland. As of February 24th, the IRC has pivoted to an emergency response, and have identified partner agencies in Ukraine to facilitate immediate assistance that can be used where it is the most needed. Simultaneously, the IRC is establishing operations across Ukraine to complement partner response services either in breadth or scale.

This position will be based in Vinnytsia and Lviv, with occasional travel to other locations in Ukraine as permitted and occasionally to Rzeszow Poland, and other locations. As this is a fluid and rapidly changing context, the location of this position and length of assignment may change based on the needs of the program.

The Partnerships Manager is a key position supporting the Ukraine Country Program. With the overall objective of achieving high quality and compliant programming, the main goal of this position is to manage a partnership portfolio and support the Partnership Working Group to ensure effective sub-grants management and build strong, sustainable partners. The Partnerships Manager will coordinate the daily management of sub-awards under their management and invest in their sustainable growth and capacity for the Ukraine portfolio.

Key Responsibilities

Promote Effective Partnerships

• Promote and apply the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results system (PEERS).

• Contribute to building a strong understanding of PEERS throughout the Country Program, and to ensuring that IRC’s partnership principles, skills and approaches are applied by staff across programs and projects with partners.

• Facilitate systematic partner feedback on IRC’s management of the partnership relationship, including the documentation of, and response to partner feedback.

Partnership Management

• Support the Partnership Working Group with facilitation and coordination of all partnership management processes to ensure well planned, timely, coordinated and coherent partnership management.

• Lead in the overall management of all partnerships in your portfolio and all PEERS processes / documentation.

• Support the program team in facilitation of Partnership Project Opening, review and Closing Meetings.

• Coordinate narrative and finance reporting processes, including reviews and feedback.

• Support the Partnership Working Group members to ensure timely and effective partner program, finance, and compliance review and reflection (monitoring).

• Support the Partnership Working Group members to ensure project support plans are implemented in line with agreements.

• Maintain complete and organized partnership files for each partner.

• Maintain up to date Partnership Project Tracker / Monitoring Schedule.

• Process sub-awards modifications in a timely manner ensuring that the relevant IRC units (in-country and at the HQ) provide their inputs and approve the modification.

• Support the Partnership Working Group to ensure the smooth close out of partner projects, as applicable.

• Responsible for managing the relevant partnership email inbox

• Any other relevant tasks, set by the Partnerships Coordinator.

J****ob requirements

• BA degree or equivalent in International Development or Affairs, Finance, Business or related field; Advanced degree a plus – or equivalent work experience

• Minimum of 3 years’ experience with I/NGOs

• IRC PEERs experience is preferred

• Demonstrated successful experience working with partners

• Knowledge of key donor rules and regulations (in particular U.S. Government, Sida, and ECHO)

• Highly organized, close attention to detail, and ability to effectively prioritize tasks in a fluid environment

• Ability to work well independently but also coordinate with other teams

• Willingness to travel frequently to field offices and partner locations

• Very strong computer skills.

Other Internal and/or external contacts: the position regularly corresponds and attends meetings with external and internal audiences, thus a strong ability to communicate and maintain positive working relationships is highly desirable for this positon.

Languages Requirements: Fluency in Ukrainian and English. Polish is a plus

Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others.

Gender Equality: IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols and other supportive benefits and allowances.

IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability.

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