Senior Program Officer - Grants and Growth Management

Job Description

This role can be based in New York, USA (Remote), London UK or Nairobi, Kenya.

The IRC Emergencies & Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU)

The IRCs Emergencies and Humanitarian Action Unit (EHAU) leads and oversees IRCs global emergency preparedness and response activities. The mission of the EHAU is to help meet the immediate survival needs and reduce suffering in conflict or disaster affected populations during the acute phase of an emergency. The EHAU also works in protracted emergencies, where the risk to life may be reduced but the population is still subjected to rights abuses and a lack of basic services.

The Signpost Project

Housed within the EHAU, the Signpost Project is a rapidly scaling responsive information service, providing up to date and contextually adapted information and content to equip its clients to make critical decisions about their futures throughout the arc of a crisis. It is our mission to decolonize humanitarian information and shift power back to our clients and we do so be direct engagement with our clients and by developing information products that address self-expressed information needs in our client communities.

The Signpost project is at a critical point of inflection where its proven success is fueling a global expansion and our vision is to install a Signpost project at the heart of every major humanitarian context worldwide – making community-led, responsive information a public good for the aid sector. Business development, sustaining programs once deployed, identification of new partners, and attracting new donors is key for the success of the program and making our vision a reality. With rapid scaling, greater visibility on the health of finances in the field and grants is key for future growth and success of the program.

Job overview/summary:

The Signpost Senior Program Officer (PO) will report to the Signpost Project Director. The Senior Program Officer will support objectives on both the pre-award and post-award phases of Signpost programs, working with existing programs within the IRC as well as new programs with Signpost global consortium partners.

Pre-award: The Signpost Senior Program Officer will lead the Signpost Project’s efforts to enable IRC’s Awards Management Unit (AMU), countries and regions to raise funding for the continuation and expansion of the project. The Senior Program Officer will coordinate pieces of work across the Business Development process, including at positioning, capture and proposal development phases. Examples of support could range from the development of capacity statements, past performance references, presentations, boiler plate text, budgeting tools, to partner engagement or taking on a role in the proposal team, if required.

Post Award: The PDA will create an overview of the financial health of all global Signpost programs and anticipate funding needs with ample time to support and structure fundraising for maintaining existing programs. The PDA will also support the creation of tools and frameworks to support field teams across the Signpost consortium.

The successful candidate will have a strong track record of working in humanitarian and international development with a range of multilateral and bilateral donors (USAID, US Department of State, FCDO, EU and ECHO, GFFO, BMZ, Sida, SDC, World Bank, etc.), as well as experience collaborating with local partner organizations.

Major responsibilities

• Work with IRC’s AMU, country and regional teams, and technical units to increase Signpost’s visibility internally, with donors, within consortium member organizations, and prospective partners.

• Work with Signpost Director and Communications Officer to develop pitches and materials for donors and other public audiences.

• Develop tools and guidance to support integration of the Signpost project into upcoming programs, including design tools, budget guidance, boiler plate language, and activity details.

• Support positioning and capture for specific opportunities, including facilitating technical brainstorming, partner and competitor landscape analysis and win theme sessions in collaboration with AMU’s Business Development team, technical and country staff.

• Collaborate with Signpost partners, AMU’s business development team, technical units, country offices, and other colleagues to support conceptualization of winning program and bid designs for new project activities and/or amendments to current projects.

• When needed, help drive business development by providing effective proposal support to country offices or technical units. Support could range from contributing specific proposal sections to taking a role on the proposal team, such as taking on a coordination role on a multi-country submission.

• Support the creation of partnership frameworks with Signpost global partners.

• Coordinate and communicate with country teams and consortium partners and identify partners, consultants, and other proposal development support as needed.

• Collaborate with country programs to successfully position for new funding opportunities.

• Facilitate internal post-submission debrief sessions with consortium members, country teams, technical units, regional team and other relevant stakeholders to collect lessons learned.

• Work with regional program support team colleagues to incorporate lessons learned from implementation at the proposal stage. Incorporate achievements from ongoing and completed projects into cape statements, past performance references, callout boxes and other proposal graphics.

• Maintain complete and accurate electronic files, including final submission packages.

• Create and maintain an overview of existing grants on all Signpost programs worldwide, complete with mechanisms to alert country and regional teams when nearing the end of a grant cycle.

• Create tools and frameworks for supporting field and regional teams with integrating Signpost programming within existing programming, across sectors, e.g., proposal language and budgeting.

• Create tools to support fundraising efforts for various scenarios for growth by crisis type, e.g. programming scenarios for disasters, for mass displacement, to support cash programming, outbreaks, etc.

Requirements

• Experience in NGO sector, preferably field and HQ, and understanding of HQ/field and partner dynamics.

• Strong experience (5+ years) in grant development with both private and public institutional donors, e.g. ECHO, BHA, PRM, GFFO, and private foundations.

• Excellent networking and diplomacy skills

• Competence with budget building and drafting spending scenarios

• Excellent writing and communication skills in English. French, Arabic and Spanish skills desirable

• Ability to work independently, proactive approach to work

• Experience with online project management and collaboration platforms (e.g. Mural, Teams, Slack, Trello)

• Must have experience working in multi-cultural environment

Key Working Relationships

Position Reports to: Signpost Project Director

Position directly supervises: N/A

Other Internal and/or external contacts: Signpost Global Team and Consortium, IRC’s Award Management Unit (AMU), EHAU Grants and Finance team, Regional Teams, Country Teams

Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional 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, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.

The Emergencies & Humanitarian Action Unit strives to build a diverse and inclusive team at all levels who as individuals, and as a group, embody our culture statement creating a working environment characterized by critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity for us to achieve our aspirations as a unit and deliver the best possible services to our clients.

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Qualifications