Programme Development & Partnerships Specialist

About ForAfrika: Founded in 1984, ForAfrika (formerly Joint Aid Management, JAM) is an Africa-based international relief and development organization working to save lives, overcome poverty and create sustainable living within the continent of Africa. Today, it operates across seven countries running programmes in Food Security, Nutrition, Health, WASH, and Economic Recovery. In South Sudan, ForAfrika began operations in 2002 with programming spanning across five states in Jonglei, Unity, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Warrap, and Central Equatoria. ForAfrika’s integrated programming focuses on three pillars: 1) Saving Lives; 2) Promoting Early Recovery and 3) Promoting Community Resilience.

Job Purpose: ForAfrika South Sudan recognizes that financial sustainability is key to ensuring the successful implementation of its Strategic Plan. This will be done through diversifying its donor base as well as developing mechanisms for long-term financial sustainability. To help achieve this, ForAfrika South Sudan will require the expert services of a programme development and partnerships professional who will provide leadership to increase its grant portfolio in order to reach the country office strategy, meet the required funding mix as defined in the annual targets.

The Programme Development & Partnerships Manager is responsible for growing ForAfrika’s funding portfolio in line with the country strategic plans. S/he will lead donor engagement, intelligent research on donor strategies, sectoral focus and forecasts, prepositioning for solicited and unsolicited opportunities and meet annual grant income target for ForAfrika South Sudan. The incumbent shall contribute strategically to the development of Grant Acquisition and Donor Retention Strategies for the country office. The PDPM must have diverse professional depth to network externally, engage with donors and design winning funding proposals. The PDPM will also need to link learnings from the field to the emerging programming approaches in order to create innovations that would render ForAfrika a competitive edge.

Key Responsibilities

Growth of grant income as a result of strengthening grant acquisition business process

• Lead donor engagement exercise
• Identify donor priorities and intelligence on upcoming opportunities; search for information that will facilitate positioning and establishment of partnership for opportunities
• Lead the proposal development process in partnership with Country Office teams, Affiliates and partners / consortia as relevant
• Ensure that the proposal development and related processes include standardized approaches for budget, procurement and personnel planning and monitoring
• Maintain a ‘pursuit list’ of the funding pipeline and extract reports and analyses to share with senior management
• Develop well organized digital database of project designs, proposals, concept notes and ‘pitching documents’ that can be easily accessed whenever required;
• Establish and coordinate procedures for managing new opportunities including grant startups

Donor attraction and retention

• Actively seek out strategic alliances with donors, NGOs, UN, governments, Affiliates, bilateral and multilateral agencies for purposes of coordinated fund raising
• Pro-actively provide donor updates on existing grants and keep the donor relations on course to ensure repeat funding,
• Ensure good donor and ForAfrika Affiliate relations by meeting all contractual obligations and achieving high quality planning and implementation of activities

Development of strategic partnerships

• Identify and develop innovative and strategic partnerships and consortia with private, public, research, academia and non-government partners. Ensure an up-to-date network of key partners and that a partner-engagement plan exists;
• Develop and continually update the ForAfrika South Sudan Plan for Operationalization of the Localization Agenda

Grants start-ups Monitoring, Reporting, Documentation and Knowledge Management

• Coordinate with grant compliance, due diligence, pre-teaming, teaming process and sub-grant agreements
• Lead the handing over process of awarded opportunities and support startup processes of grants as relates to business process.
• Lead the process of after action reviews after every submitted opportunity and document lessons learnt to improve our process
• Participate in donors’ grant monitoring trips as feasible

Capacity Building for staff on Grants Acquisition and Management

• Lead identification of ForAfrika staff capacity gaps at Country Office levels in regard to grants acquisition and donor requirements.
• Lead the development & implementation of Country Office’s Grant Acquisition capacity building plans.
• Facilitate capacity building on proposal development, donor engagement, ForAfrika Branding and monitoring & reporting based on donor requirements.
• Research, develop & implement new initiatives that make GAM function more effectively e.g. Sub-granting.

Qualifications

• Minimum of Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences, Development or relevant field from a recognized University. Post graduate degree and/or Proposal or Programme Pro or equivalent training will be added advantage
• Minimum 7 years’ relevant experience, 3 of which must be in grant acquisition and donor engagement with experience in engaging with bilateral, multi-lateral donors, UN partners, foundations and private donors;
• Strong analytical and conceptualization skills. Capable of hands-on problem-solving, with ability to generate ideas and solutions. Highly organized and efficient, high energy attitude, flexibility and attention to detail;
• Demonstrated writing and presentation skills: the ability to develop quality concept notes, proposals, logical frameworks and reports under tight deadlines
• Must have experience in project management cycle and designing projects in the sectors of Food Security & Livelihoods, Health & Nutrition, WASH, Humanitarian Emergency Response
• Demonstrated experience in community development work, partnering and consortium management, staff capacity building,
• Ability to motivate multi-stakeholder teams and inspire teamwork and to manage donor expectations