Partnerships Manager

Background The Ukraine crisis could become the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades. More than 5.3 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 people are reported to be displaced. Reports indicate almost all arrivals in Poland are women and children, including those that are unaccompanied and separated, as well as older persons.

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 emergency response, and has identified partner agencies in Ukraine and Poland to facilitate immediate assistance that can be used where it is most needed. Simultaneously, the IRC has established operations across Ukraine and Poland offering a robust humanitarian response to complement partner response services either in breadth or scale.

Job Overview

The Partnerships Manager is a key position supporting the Poland 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-grant 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 Poland portfolio.

Key working relationships

• Position Reports to Partnerships Coordinator, Poland

• Position directly supervises: N/A

• Internal collaborations within IRC: Technical Coordinators, Partnerships Department Staff, Finance team, Supply Chain team,

• External collaborations with IRC: IRC existing and prospective partners

• 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 position.

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 Bangladesh Country Program, and to ensure 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 the 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.

Partner capacity-building mapping and planning:

• Identifying and channeling requests for technical support/capacity building/training to partners based on different technical areas and gaps identified and highlighted through the partnership support plan

• Facilitate the collaborative development and delivery of the partner project support plan, ensuring that it appropriately addresses issues identified in the due diligence process, and coordinates with the relevant department for the timely, quality implementation of the plan.

• Develop materials and processes consistent with best practices to address partner technical and organizational priorities, including designing and facilitating learning events, providing mentoring and coaching, facilitating peer learning, developing e-learning modules and videos, and utilizing other learning methodologies as appropriate.

• Identify opportunities for mentoring and/or coaching follow-up activities at the partner organizational and individual levels. Arranging the logistics of training (in-person or remote), supporting with the invitation of relevant stakeholders, identification of venue and transport (in collaboration with supply chain team), etc.

• Leading on procurement requests for translation services for technical resources and training material

• Identify areas for mutual learning between IRC staff and partners, so that IRC can learn from unique partner practices and innovations.

Job requirements:

• Language: Polish and English required; if possible, Ukrainian

• Bachelor of Arts or Science in Social Work, Gender, Human Rights, Social Science, Public Health, Humanities, or another related field, desirable

• Experience developing and managing relationships and/or partnerships with external stakeholders

• Experience managing partner capacity assessment and capacity strengthening plans will be an asset

• Excellent organizational skills

• Experience in working in NGO, preferably in the international humanitarian organization

• Excellent communication skills

• Positive and professional attitude, including the ability to lead and work well in a team setting

• 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

• Computer literate, including Microsoft Word and Excel

This position will be based in Warsaw, with occasional travel to Krakow, Lublin, and other locations as necessary. As this is a fluid and rapidly changing context, the location of this position and the length of the assignment may change based on the needs of the program.

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, 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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