Senior Partnerships Finance Manager

Job Description

The Senior Partnerships Finance Manager acts as the focal point for financial and compliance aspects of Partnerships Department for sub-awardees, including ensuring high-quality financial monitoring of sub-awardees. This position reports directly to Partnerships Coordinator Syria, with an indirect reporting line to the Deputy Director of Finance.

Specific Responsibilities:

Financial Management Participate in partner’s proposal review and modification process focusing on sub-awardee budget (both budget and budget narratives); review in coordination with Partnerships Coordinator Syria, Partnerships Senior Manager and Partnerships Managers and technical coordinators Supervise the verification of partners’ financial reports and supporting documentation, ensuring that expenses are reasonable, allowable and allocable to the approved budget and align with donor’s regulations. Communicate findings to partners, and ensuring timely follow-up to provide solutions and documenting the findings. Reviews must be based on partner risk and sampling or review of full documentation, as required. Ensure proactive communication with sub-awardees about the submission of their financial reports according to terms of their sub-awards. Ensure tracking of sub-awardee submission of financial reports, communicating delays to the Deputy Director of Partnerships Syria. Review and validate spending plans from partners against reported expenditures, following-up with sub-awardees as needed. Submit summary of reported expenditures and spending plans to Program Coordinator-Sub-Awards and Technical Coordinators, outlining follow-up steps. Ensuring that the sub-awardee financial reports are approved (signed) by the appropriate authority within IRC, preparing the Journal Voucher, fully coded and submitting to the Syria Finance Department in hard and soft copy for posting into the SUN system. Respond to questions that arise from the Syria finance team and IRC HQ regarding submitted financial reports. Prepare Payment Requests for Sub-Awardee payment (advances and reimbursements), both from Syria bank account and HQ bank account, respond to questions that arise from the Syria finance team and IRC HQ regarding submitted payment requests. Ensure timely follow-up on the status of payments release, tracking them and informing sub-awardees in a timely manner on the status of the payments. Follow up with IRC HQ and sub-awardees confirm transfer and receipt of payments respectively. Ensure the financial monitoring and spot check visits to sub-awardee offices is conducted according to IRC requirements and standards. Ensure monitoring visit plans drafted and submitted ahead of visits to review and share monitoring visit reports in a timely manner to partners, related Program team, and Partnerships Coordinator Syria. Participate in case management meetings with the program, finance, supply chain and other staff to respond to regular issues as they arise within partner management and ensuring properly coordinated and handled responses to sub-awardee issues as they arise. Reconciling the sub-grantees advances on monthly basis, reports to the Deputy Director of Finance on all over-due, unliquidated advances, update on monthly basis all tracking sheets for sub-grants finances. Ensure that a sound, accurate and organized archiving system is in place, both hard and soft (electronic) copies for all financial reports and their supporting documents. Work with Partnerships Coordinator Syria and Finance team to collaborate internal and external audit to ensure proper compliance with all regulations and to ensure that all sub-awardee files in hard and soft copy are 100% audit ready at all times. In coordination with Partnerships Senior Manager and Deputy Director of Finance, obtaining approval from the Partnerships Coordinator Syria, develop or revise sub-awardee financial templates (including proposal budget and budget narrative formats, monthly/quarterly reporting templates, and other documents, as need). Support the provision of guidance notes to current and potential sub-awardees for use of appropriate templates, overall budget drafting and submission as part of calls for proposals sent to potential partners. Depending on nature of call, provide appropriate level of support current and potential sub-awardees to ensure proposal budgets and budget narratives meet IRC and donor requirements within set deadlines for submission.

Sub-Grant modifications Review all sub-awardee budget modifications (both budget and budget narratives) in coordination with technical coordinators, and Partnerships Manager ensuring clear action points for follow-up are communicated. Vetting and Capacity-Building of Partners Ensure Pre-Award Financial Assessment (PAAs) is conducted for all new potential partners, as well as update the PAAs for all existing partners, on annual basis. Report to the Deputy Director of Finance and the Partnerships Coordinator Syria on the findings and provide recommendations for improvement. Support in developing risk management action plan and suggest corrective actions to address/mitigate risks identified during the PAA process. Design, update and deliver financial management training for partners’ staff, working closely with the Partnerships Capacity Strengthening Specialist, and IRC’s Finance, Human Resources and Supply Chain units on the training materials according to the needs in order to build the organizational capacity of the partner. Coordinate with Capacity Building Manager to provide compliance training to partners’ staff. Conduct finance and general compliance monitoring visits to partners and prepare monitoring report and action plan to submit to Partnerships Coordinator Syria and share with partners in timely manner for each visit.

Management Take the lead on the finance and compliance section of the Grant Opening, Review and Closing meetings, making sure that the partners are fully aware of donor regulations, all financial reporting requirements in terms of required documentation, reporting templates and deadlines. Represents Sub-Grants Finance in Sub-Grants Workshops, being the key facilitator and presenter for all Sub-Grants’ finance related sessions.

Staff Management and Development Coach, train, and mentor staff with the aim of strengthening their technical capacity, exchanging knowledge within the team and providing professional development guidance. Offer leadership support for successful adherence by staff to IRC’s Global HR Operating Policies and Procedures.

Other Provide assistance with requests from IRC headquarters as directed by the Partnerships Coordinator Syria Any other duties as assigned by the Partnerships Coordinator Syria

Qualifications

(Applicants missing any of the below requirements will not be considered for the position)

Fluency in Arabic and English. Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, finance, or any related field. Minimum 7 years of dynamic work experience in a non-profit setting overseeing and handling partners’ projects funded by major institutional donors, particularly USAID and DfID. Detailed knowledge of US Government procurement rules and regulations, OMB Circulars, and related administrative guidelines and requirements associated with funding from OFDA or USAID in particular. Knowledge of EU, UN, or DfID rules and regulation will be a plus. Experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring of staff, NGOs/CBOs. Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to present to groups of all sizes. Self-starter with ability to work independently and part of a team. Demonstrated ability to work effectively under pressure and handle multiple simultaneous tasks and demands coming from multiple sources. Willing to travel within the Middle-East region. Hard-working, sharp and detailed oriented Proficiency in MS Office software suite – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Experience working with databases and/or other tracking systems.

Key Working Relationships: Position Reports to: Partnerships Coordinator Syria Position directly supervises: Finance Senior Officer, Finance Officers & Finance Assistant in both hubs Indirect Reporting: indirect reporting to the Deputy Director of Finance