Grants & Information Manager At Concern Worldwide

Reports to: Programme Quality Coordinator and line manage the Programme Support Officer and Grants Assistant.

Liaises with: Collaborate closely with Programme Director (PD), Deputy Programme Director (DPD), Programme Coordinators, Programme Managers (PM), M&E Coordinator, Finance and Logistics teams, and Technical Coordinators. Work closely with Head Quarter (HQ) Desk Officer and coordination with HQ Technical Advisors. In addition liaise closely with the relevant clusters information management, in-country donors on proposals and grant-related matters, as appropriate.

Job location: Juba, South Sudan

Pay Band: 3 (€39,128 – €43,476)

Contract: 12 months unaccompanied contract

Start date: As soon as possible

Job Purpose:

The role contributes to ensuring quality programing through effective grant management including through the development of a funding strategy aligned with the strategic plan, donor intelligence/review and analysis of funding opportunities, proposals & cost modifications, managing donor agreements and compliance. Concern’s programme in South Sudan (Central Equatoria, Unity and Northern Bahr el Ghazal states) covers health, nutrition, WASH, shelter, agriculture and food security sectors. Concern is funded by a range of donors including USAID/BHA, ECHO, GAC, Irish Aid, Zurich, FAO, UNICEF, WFP and other private donors. The Grants & Information Manager supports the continued growth of the country programme grants portfolio and effective management of the overall grant cycle from program design till closeout.

In addition, the information management function include maintaining up-to-date records for each grant both in the in-country grant filing system and online Grant Management System (GMS). The successful candidate will also support with preparing internal and external communications, implementation of the donor and organizational branding and visibility plan and preparing updates, reports /presentations for meetings with the donors and other key stakeholders.

Key responsibilities:

• Ensuring smooth grant cycle management processes are adhered to and management of the GMS, in close collaboration with HQ Desk Officer
• Supporting effective management of donor portfolio and identification of funding opportunities
• Coordinating the development of quality concept notes, proposals, and their timely submission
• Maintain reporting schedule for each grant (donor) and internal reports, keep track of reporting schedule, timely sharing of the template with the relevant team (PC/Sector Coordinator) for their inputs on reports, review/edits and compiling of both donor/internal reports and timely submission to in-country donor or to HQ Desk officer (where applicable).
• Leading the development and implementation of the communications strategy in collaboration with PD and DPD
• Overseeing information and knowledge management to promote learning, ensuring the production and appropriate use of materials for external communications to different audiences.

Grants Management and Reporting

• Oversee Concern South Sudan’s grants portfolio, keeping PMs and country management team informed and updated on donor policies and compliance requirements.
• Lead Country programme grant cycle management processes via GMS, and support capacity building of PMs and Grant Owners as required
• Coordinate grant opening and closure meetings, ensuring participation of programme, finance, logistics and HR colleagues and partners as relevant.
• Maintain the grants tracking system; update and share regularly with programme and finance focal points and HQ Desk Officer, and lead on ensuring the preparation and submission of timely, accurate, quality reports to donors.
• Keep up to date with relevant donor regulations and provide proposal development teams and PMs with correct proposal and reporting templates, and guidance on donor policies and compliance requirements.
• Coordinate with the finance team to ensure that PMs and team members understand and comply with donor grant/contract compliance rules and requirements.
• Coordinate with Finance team to ensure effective and cohesive development and review of financial and narrative reports and proposals; and timely invoicing to WFP and UNICEF as per agreements.
• Collaborate with programme teams to ensure contractual visibility and communications requirements of the different donors are met (as appropriate to context).Participate in project review meetings to keep abreast of progress against contractual deliverables including outputs and outcomes.
• Organize quarterly grant review meetings at the country management team level, involving program and program support teams, to review progress against each grant and agree on follow up action
• Coordinate with M&E team and PMs to ensure grant M&E obligations are met as per donor requirements and agreements.
• Coordinate and contribute to review and development of donor, partner and consortia draft contracts, sub-agreements and amendments.

Programme Development and Funding

• Support PD and DPD on analysis of donor funding streams, proactively identifying funding gaps to be filled, and monitoring of donor pipeline opportunities and calls to contribute to inform decision-making on country grant/donor portfolio, and the Go/No-Go process for new funding opportunities.
• Coordinate and facilitate proposal design processes/programme development meetings, ensuring participation of relevant colleagues from across the different sub-teams, implementing partners, consortia partners and local partner NGOs as necessary.
• Support the PD and DPD to coordinate development of concept notes and proposals, ensuring high quality of content and formatting; liaising with HQ Desk Officer and Technical Advisors for inputs, ensuring internal and external deadlines are met.
• Support DPD, PD, Area Coordinators and PMs to effectively mainstream cross-cutting issues and quality standards.
• As a member of the Programme Quality Unit, support the capture and use of learning to inform adaptive management and future programme development.

Information and Communications Management

• Maintain folders, on GMS, Shared Drive and Sharepoint, of key organisational information required for proposals, and of all prior proposals submitted, for staff induction, learning and future reference purposes (with HQ Desk Officer support).
• Work with the HQ Desk Officer to produce and promote simplified guidelines and reference tools on the use of GMS and Sharepoint, and track status to ensure clear and complete documentation of grants and programme documents are accessible to PMs and Grant Owners
• Coordinate and ensure collection and proactive use of beneficiary case studies, photos, field reports, monitoring/support visit reports and other information to demonstrate effectively to different audiences the achievements (and challenges) of programmes implemented, and learning.
• Support Program Support Officer and the PMs in the production of quarterly (or as agreed) Programme Updates, Newsletters, Briefing Papers and information Packs for distribution to donors, clusters, working groups, fundraisers, etc.
• Build capacity of the Programme Support Officer for compilation and editing of high quality timely donor and country programme reports and updates as required and ensure submission and dissemination to relevant stakeholders at different levels.
• Support documentation of key Country level internal meetings and workshops with clear and concise minutes and action points.
• Support and ensure Concern representation at donor, consortia, humanitarian forums, clusters and other meetings, and thematic workshops/working groups as required and share information arising with DPD, PD and PMs as relevant.
• Work with PMs and the Programme Support Officer to develop a communications strategy and roll out plan for the country programme

Human Resource Management and Capacity Development

• Line manage the Programme Support Officer and Grants Assistant, and support their on-going professional development.
• Support identification of needs for capacity building within individuals and teams, including local partners: source opportunities and, where relevant, directly lead training to build capacities in grants compliance, report writing, proposal development, documentation, case studies, and other relevant topics as agreed with the respective Line Managers.
• As a member of the country team, actively promote compliance with Concern’s Programme Participants’ Protection Policy, the Code of Conduct and all associated policies, as well as the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) and country Accountability Plan

Accountability

In line with Concern’s commitments under the CHS:

• actively promote meaningful community participation and consultation at all stages of the project cycle (planning, implementation, M&E);
• work with relevant colleagues to ensure that the Complaints and Response Mechanism (CRM) is functional and accessible, that feedback and complaints are welcomed and addressed;
• work with relevant colleagues to ensure that information about CRM, safeguarding and expected staff behaviour is disseminated among programme participants and communities.

Required Skills and Experience

Essential

• Educated to degree level in International Development, Humanitarian Action or relevant discipline.
• At least four years INGO experience, including at least two years working in grants management and adequate understanding of Humanitarian Architecture
• Familiarity with key humanitarian and development donors, and their specific reporting and compliance requirements (e.g. ECHO, GAC, USAID/BHA, Irish Aid, UNICEF, WFP, UN, etc.)
• Previous experience of programme development, proposal design and/or project cycle management.
• Understanding of mobilising funding from and maintaining relationships with Foundation donors.
• Significant experience of leading proposal development and strong familiarity with proposal and reporting formats of various donors.
• Ability to thrive and act independently in a high-pressured, results-focused, dynamic environment.
• Fluent spoken/written English language skills; proven excellent report and proposal writing ability.
• High attention to detail in reviewing and inputting to reports, proposals and other documents.
• Solid experience supporting the development of budgets and ability to review expenditure against narrative reports.
• Experience identifying and documenting lessons learned, development of quality case studies and/or other communication resources for different audiences.
• Highly organised, with experience developing work-plans and tracking tools.
• Strong computer skills, particularly Microsoft Office, Excel and Powerpoint.
• Working knowledge of monitoring and evaluation processes and tools.
• Good networking abilities, strong interpersonal communication and presentation skills, ideally in multicultural contexts and with colleagues/partners/stakeholders at different levels.
• Team player, flexible and capable of working effectively in collaboration with colleagues from different backgrounds.

Desirable

• Postgraduate degree in a relevant discipline.
• Knowledge of main institutional donor priorities for programming in South Sudan.
• Programmatic experience and/or knowledge of some of the following approaches and sectors: Emergency Response, Resilience, Health, Nutrition, Shelter, WASH, Agriculture and Food Security
• Demonstrated commitment to learning and using learning to strengthen practice.
• Understanding of and commitment to principles of accountability, equality (esp. Gender), centrality of protection, and conflict sensitivity
• Professional knowledge of quality standards (e.g. CHS, SPHERE); able to support colleagues in their use.
• Experience working with local implementing partners.
• Facilitation and/or training experience; keenness and ability to build capacity of colleagues (in e.g. in donor requirements, proposal/report writing, critical analysis, quality standards, communication materials).
• Willing to take on new responsibilities, within reason and if needed.
• Experience working in South Sudan.