Senior Partnership Advisor ECHO

Contract

This is a DRC - National contract. More about DRC - National contracts.

About DRC

DRC’s Global Strategy 2025 aims to assist people affected by displacement and conflict and advocate on their behalf. DRC has implemented an organisational transformation aiming at advancing accountability, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, while increasing efforts to generate sufficient resources to fulfil DRC’s strategic ambitions. Following this organisational transformation process, the new division for Partnerships, Engagement and Fundraising (PEF) has been established, which is responsible for DRC’s global strategic partnerships and engagement with institutional donors (ID), global foundations, and private contributors at a global level. The division is part of the DRC HQ department for Partnerships, Advocacy & External Relations (PAER). DRC works in support of conflict affected people and forcibly displaced in 40 countries worldwide. Most DRC resources come from institutional donors such as the European Commission, UN agencies, and bilateral humanitarian and development funding envelopes from major donor countries. While most funds are raised at country and regional level, the newly established Institutional Donors team is accountable for ensuring that DRC has a centralised and harmonised approach of high quality to engaging with donors and keeping an overview of untapped funding opportunities. Together with the rest of the department, the Institutional Donors team is working to increase DRC’s capacity and ambition to expand, deepen, and strengthen partnerships and fundraising activities with institutional donors.

ECHO is one of the most important donors for DRC. DRC is among the top three INGO recipients of ECHO funding. DRC successfully passed the certification process for a Humanitarian Partnership with ECHO in 2020 and has recently signed a Programmatic Partnership contract with ECHO in Burkina Faso.

About the job

The Senior Partnership Advisor for ECHO will be part of the DRC Brussels team of 5 persons. The Senior Partnership Advisor reports to the DRC Brussels Representative and has a technical line to the Head of Institutional Donor Engagement at headquarters in Copenhagen.

As Senior Partnership Advisor for ECHO you will be part of the Institutional Donors (ID) team working with the Head of Institutional Donors, colleagues based in HQ, and DRC Representations in Geneva, Brussels, and Berlin. Your overall responsibility will be to support DRC’s capacity strengthening to maintain and improve relationships and fundraising efforts with ECHO.

The Senior Partnership Advisor for ECHO oversees the engagement and fundraising efforts from ECHO. In this role, you are responsible for supporting the strategic planning and leading donor-specific engagement plans in collaboration with colleagues from DRC Regional and Country Offices. An important part of your role is to lead on partnership engagement with ECHO in close collaboration with key internal stakeholders, namely Regional Business Development Coordinators and Regional Head of Programmes, HQ Finance, HQ Operations, Code of Conduct, Monitoring Evaluation And Learning (MEAL) Unit, Programme Units and the DRC Brussels team. You are tasked with undertaking analyses, elaborating donor intelligence to inform and advise senior management and colleagues about the partnership development and fundraising opportunities. You will be accountable for sharing relevant information and developing tools on strategic compliance.

Your main duties and responsibilities will be:

Strategy

• Support design and advancement of the global donor engagement strategy on ECHO.
• Lead development of ECHO specific engagement action plans and support and/or monitor implementation.
• Contribute to income growth by supporting Country Operations/Regional Offices (COs/ROs) in meeting and ECHO funding targets.
• Lead and/or coordinate the DRC steering committee for ECHO.

Partnership Engagement

• Lead on a strong and strategic partnership between DRC and ECHO in Brussels.
• Engage proactively with ECHO to address challenges and opportunities related to DRC’s partnership with ECHO at global level and inform/advise ROs/COs accordingly.
• Develop clear protocols for sharing information, communicating, and engaging with ECHO in strategic and policy issues across the organization.
• Prepare, document and overview high-level engagement between DRC and ECHO, in particular senior management meetings or major ECHO-specific events.
• Provide support and expertise to DRC country and regional operations on ECHO partnership.
• Represent DRC in dialogues with ECHO on regulatory frameworks.
• Actively participate in coordination mechanisms with peer organisations or other networks and platforms such as the VOICE Humanitarian Partnership Watch Group.

Donor intelligence and knowledge management

• Monitor and analyse relevant ECHO trends, providing strategic advice on possible impact and ways to adapt across all levels of the organization.
• Provide information and advice on ECHO priorities to inform leadership and colleagues on opportunities for resource mobilization.
• Develop qualitative and quantitative surveys and analyses to feed into global donor trends analyses, lessons learned and other dissemination documents.
• Coordinate and compile information requested by donors from DRC’s global operations.
• Maintain ECHO portfolio overview.

Strategic Compliance

• Proactively monitor and notify management on global-level concerns and risks related to ECHO compliance and support decision making process.
• Disseminate internally key strategic compliance topics as necessary.
• Develop tools, platforms, and internal workflows for efficient donor compliance. This includes maintaining DRC Insite donor pages, updating and publishing internal guidance tools such as Donorpedias, fact sheets etc.
• Act as admin for key donor digital portals such as APPEL, including updating, enabling access, and answering technical queries.
• Provide strategic ECHO compliance trainings – live trainings and e-learning through webinars.
• Strengthen capacities of Grants Management Unit staff on ECHO policies and guidelines.

• Lead and coordinate donor HQ capacity assessment and due diligence processes as relevant such as the ECHO Ex-Ante Assessments and audits.

• Coordinate internal selection processes for global ECHO calls such as ERC.

• Planning, organising and hosting COs/ROs visit - coordinating with other DRC Brussels team members, scheduling the meetings, briefing notes, prep meetings with the teams, accompanying visitors to the meetings.
• Audit library, internal resource management, Insite focal point for team.

About you

To excel in this role, you will have natural communication and social skills, including networking and the ability to influence. You are comfortable navigating internal stakeholders horizontally and vertically, and representing DRC externally with ECHO, peer organisations and in other forums.

The role will further require deep knowledge of ECHO’s structure and funding priorities, including regulatory frameworks and contracting. This role calls for someone who is both a “thinker” and a “doer”: an ability to work on strategic-level analyses while being detailed, as well as result and service-oriented.

Moreover, we also expect the following:

Requirements

• Minimum 5 years of experience on donor engagement and compliance
• Documented extensive experience with ECHO and donor engagement in general
• Solid knowledge of ECHO guidelines and requirements
• Understanding of the links between compliance and building the image of a go-to organisation for donors
• Good relationship building skills and proactive approach to partnership building and nurturing
• Experience with networking and representation at all levels
• Strong verbal and written communication skills with an ability to identify, address and communicate the core of an issue even if very complex
• Professional proficiency English. Other languages (French, Spanish, Arabic) an asset, but not a requirement
• Experience in working in an international, multicultural work environment
• Master’s degree in relevant field of study or equivalent in experience
• Field experience from humanitarian operations is an asset, but not a requirement
• Prior experience in an INGO, UN agency or the European Commission is an asset
• Right to live and work in Belgium

Conditions:

• Terms and conditions in accordance with the DRC Brussels salary scale
• Availability: as soon as possible
• Working hours: 38 hours per week
• Place of work: DRC Brussels, @Mundo-Madou, Avenue des Arts 7-8, 1210 Brussels

Application process

• All applicants must upload a cover letter and an updated CV (no longer than four pages) in English
• Applications sent by mail will not be considered
• Closing date for applications: 22 October 2023, however interviews will be done on a running basis due to the urgency of filling this role. Hence, in case a candidate is identified before the deadline, the vacancy announcement will be removed.

Further information:

• For general information about Danish Refugee Council, please consult https://drc.ngo
• For questions related to the post, please, contact DRC Brussels Representative Birte Hald birte.hald@drc.ngo
• For questions related to the online application, please contact job@drc.ngo