Background

The International Rescue Committee is among the world’s leading nonprofit humanitarian relief and development organizations. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC’s mission is to help people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. The organization is on the ground in more than 40 countries, providing emergency relief and rebuilding lives in the wake of disaster. Through 26 regional offices in cities across the United States, we also help refugees resettle in the US and become self-sufficient.

We’re striving to build an organization that is a supportive, kind and inspiring place to work. We encourage bold leadership, innovation in all aspects of our work, creative partnerships and accountability to those we serve.

The Global Awards Management Unit (AMU)

The Global Awards Management Unit (AMU) is a global unit spanning New York, Washington DC, London, Nairobi, Berlin and Amman with staff presence in many other locations around the world. The AMU has responsibility for identifying, securing and managing funding from statutory donors. The Unit is organized into six directorates: Business Development, Strategic Partnerships, Compliance and Policy, Training, Partnerships and Operations and Planning. The AMU’s mission leads IRC work to engage and influence government donors, secure the right funding, and enable compliant and effective program delivery for our clients.

Business Development (BD)

The Business Development Team, within which this role sits, leads IRC's public business development in collaboration with country programs and technical units across the organization. The team strives to secure the right funds in the right way to achieve IRC’s impact strategy for our clients.

The BD team focus is on the funds required from donors to deliver to those in greatest need. We strive to increase the consistency, duration, and diversity of our funds and the competitiveness of our bids to ensure the effectiveness of our work.

The team works to strengthen IRC’s long-term business development capacity and learning by sharing best practices and building upon proven approaches. We develop tools and processes that strengthen and simplify our business development efforts, and work with training colleagues to improve capacity across the organization.

We prioritize effective partnerships and collaboration, internally and externally, locally and internationally. This includes strengthening the engagement and representation of national partners in our program design and team structures, as well as using our organizational connections with peers and donors to maximize successful business development and impact for clients.

The Purpose of the Role The Senior Program/Business Development Advisor will join a global BD team and will help drive IRC’s new business development efforts by engaging with global, regional, country, and technical staff throughout the business development cycle from opportunity tracking and positioning/capture planning to proposal development, and submission. The SPDA will primarily serve as capture and proposal manager, s/he will also offer technical assistance and mentor staff working on proposals on relevant business development topics. The ideal candidate will have a successful track record of leading large-scale and complex new business efforts in international development with particular emphasis on FCDO commercial contracts.

RESPONSIBILITIES • Manage proposals from solicitation release to submission ensuring compliance with donor rules and IRC’s business development processes and practices. • Manage positioning/capture from opportunity identification to solicitation release including developing capture plan and coordinating the capture team to complete milestones. • Lead proposal development in response to requests for proposals, including those for field-based projects and large global opportunities. This will involve management of proposal teams, calendars, and deadlines; strategy development with technical staff; partner identification and negotiations; recruiting; writing; production; and after-action reviews • Manage relationships with proposal partners and liaises with IRC’s Global Recruiter to secure key personnel. • Collaborates with IRC’s pricing team, ensuring technical vs. budget consistency. • Lead on advising other IRC departments when required on FCDO contract terms and implication for structuring proposal budgets, targets, and deliverables. • Formulates the commercial strategy, including writing the commercial proposal for an FCDO contract • Build and strengthen relationships with internal stakeholders (HQ-based regional and technical units, as well as IRC country offices) as well as with donor representatives, partners and other relevant stakeholders. • Contribute to, and model the use of standardized business development processes, tools, templates and information.

Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications: • Bachelor’s degree in relevant field, including international relations, political science, public administration, and communications. • Seven years plus of experience developing funding proposals. • Experience working with UK government donors.
• Substantial experience and a successful track record leading large proposal teams on complex subject, multi-year, multi-partner proposals with minimal supervision. • Experience in proposal budgeting a plus. • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively manage a variety of relationships in a multicultural environment; • Demonstrated ability to collaborate equally effectively with colleagues in ‘remote’ and diverse teams, including as team leader for proposals; • The ability to work productively and accurately while under pressure in a fast-paced, demanding environment; • Flexible work attitude: the ability to work in a team environment and independently and ability to meet unexpected demands; • Ability to multi-task and prioritize effectively; • Ability to travel internationally (up to 20% of time); • Fluency in English with proficiency in one other language (French and/or Spanish) desirable.

Candidates must have the right to work within the country they are applying. IRC UK is committed to equality of opportunity and non-discrimination for all applicants and employees. IRC-UK seeks to ensure we achieve diversity in our workforce regardless of gender, race, religious belief, nationality, ethnic/national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability. IRC-UK welcomes applications from all candidates, including underrepresented groups and refugees who have the right to work in the UK. IRC UK will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable adjustments to participate in the job application and/or interview process, and for essential job functions if appointed to a role. Please contact us if you may need such adjustments.
If you have any questions or need assistance with the online recruitment process, please contact the UK HR team at [email protected]

IRC-Europe