SR MANAGER , PLANNING, RESEARCH AND LEARNING At CARE USA

CARE is an international NGO with local staff and community partners in more than 90 countries. We create local solutions to poverty and inequality and we seek dignity for everyone every day and during times of crisis. These solutions have a broad range, from clean water to access to education; from microfinance to ensuring that everyone has nutritious food; from agriculture and climate change to disaster response. CARE puts women and girls at the center of everything we do because they have proven to be the best hope for creating lasting change in the world. Our staff live where they work, which makes us effective at understanding the challenges they face. We’ve been doing this for over 70 years, since World War II. It started with the world’s first CARE Package® of food for the post-war hungry in Europe. Our work today is as important as ever, we believe that poverty and inequality are historic injustices that we can end within a generation, for good. If you share our core beliefs: poverty is an injustice; poverty is solvable; and together, we have the power to end it, join us, and fight with CARE.

The Senior Manager for Planning, Research, and Learning plays a key role in ensuring CARE teams have and are utilizing timely data and intel to inform their decision-making and strategic positioning for USG funding. As part of the Institutional, Funding, and Strategy (IFS) team, this role ensures IFS is closely aligned to RMUs, COs, and HQ technical units in identifying competitive opportunities long in advance of actual solicitations so that resources can be deployed to position, influence and adequately capture and win bids. This requires tracking and supporting CARE’s regional, country, and technical unit resource mobilization strategies, through the provision of sound research, data collection, and analysis on a timely basis.

This role will ensure that constructive meetings take place with CARE’s regional, country, and technical unit staff on an annual and quarterly basis, as well as whenever needed, to review opportunities in the pipeline and ensure CARE is pre-positioning as necessary. The role will oversee staff who provide business intelligence research and data analysis on funding trends, competitors, and technical issues that will have an impact on CARE’s ability to win, as well as provide day-to-day tracking and reporting for on-going bid opportunities as they make their way through the various stages of the proposal lifecycle.

The successful candidate must possess the ability to meet performance objectives as needed. The position will support other IFS teams in their process and system improvement. The position will also oversee internal IFS knowledge management and learning, overseeing and supporting the efforts of IFS Knowledge Management and Learning Manager.

The person in this role will also develop and institutionalize resources, tools, templates, and capability in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning, (MEL) in line with USG funders’ expectations and best practices. Where necessary, the incumbent will directly support, draft, and/or review MEL plans ensuring they reflect the state-of-the-art in this field and are considered overall strengths in CARE’s competitive proposals.

Responsibilities:

• Business Research and Planning
• MEL Capacity Building and Quality Assurance
• Knowledge Management and Learning
• Personnel Management

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in International Development or another relevant social science field of study that emphasizes critical analysis and thinking skills. Master’s degree preferred
• At least 10 years of relevant technical experience in research, analysis, knowledge management and learning
• At least 3 years of dedicated MEL experience, with strong familiarity with USAID and/or other USG donor requirements
• Demonstrated management experience and team leadership experience
• Excellent writing and editing skills with special emphasis on clear, persuasive language
• Knowledge of US government proposal requirements including familiarity with 2 CFR 200, FAR, AIDAR and ADS
• Ability to work under tight deadlines and comfortable with fast-paced, deadline-driven tasks and assignments
• Comfortable working independently and pro-actively solving problems and seeking solutions
• Success in designing and implementing MEL plans and MEL sections of proposals
• Demonstrated skills in quantitative and qualitative data analysis and management and research methods
• Experience in program design, implementation and evaluation