Grants Manager

Job Title: Grants Manager – South Sudan

Reports to: Programme Director (PD)

Line Management: Grants Assistant

Location: Juba, South Sudan

Terms: Fixed-term contract for 12 months on unaccompanied terms and conditions.

Salary: International Grade 3 (€41,108 – €45,676)

Liaises with: The role collaborates closely with Area Coordinators (ACs), Programme Managers (PM), M&E Managers, Country Financial Controller, Operations Director and Logistics Coordinator, and Health & Nutrition Technical Coordinator. The role holder will work closely with Head Quarters (HQ) Desk Officer and coordinates with HQ Technical Advisors. Additionally, they will liaise closely with the relevant Clusters information management, in-country donors on proposals and grant-related matters, as appropriate.

About Concern: Established in 1968, Concern is a non-profit, non-governmental humanitarian organisation, dedicated to the reduction of suffering and the ultimate elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries.

Concern’s vision, our mission and our work are all defined by one goal – ending extreme poverty, whatever it takes. Concern strives for a world free from poverty, fear and oppression.

Our culture is values driven and we believe that our people are central to all that we do and are key to delivering on our goal of Reaching the Furthest Behind First. We are committed to ensuring a workplace where everybody feels valued and are enabled to succeed in their work and contribute to delivering on our mission.

Role Purpose: The post holder will lead the development of proposals and cost modifications, managing donor agreements, reporting and other information needs. The role also includes leading the development of a funding strategy aligned with the strategic plan, donor intelligence/review and analysis of funding opportunities.

Concern’s programme in South Sudan (with implementation in Unity, Northern Bahr el Ghazal and Western Bahr el Ghazal states) covers health, nutrition, WASH, agriculture, protection, and food security sectors. Concern is funded by a range of donors including US DoS/BPRM, ECHO, Irish Aid, UNICEF, WFP, South Sudan Humanitarian Fund (SSHF) 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.

The information management function includes 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 presentations for meetings with the donors and other key stakeholders

Responsibilities:

Grants Management and Reporting

• Oversee Concern South Sudan’s grants portfolio, keeping PMs and country management team informed.
• Country programmes 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 the PD and Country Director (CD) 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 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 PD, ACs and PMs to effectively mainstream cross-cutting issues and quality standards.

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) and build capacity of the grants staff.
• 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 Grants Assistant 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.
• 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 PD and PMs as relevant.
• Work with PD, ACs, and PMs to develop a communications strategy and roll out plan for the country programme.

Human Resource Management and Capacity Development

• Line manages the 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.
• All managers are responsible for upholding and promoting Concern’s values, demonstrating leadership on workplace equality, diversity and inclusion, and role modelling a positive safeguarding ethos.
• All managers are required to actively participate in any emergency response as and when required.

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 Feedback, Complaints and Response Mechanism (FCRM) is functional and accessible, that feedback and complaints are welcomed and addressed
• Work with relevant colleagues to ensure that information about FCRM, safeguarding and expected staff behaviour is disseminated among programme participants and communities.

Role Holder Requirements:

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, USAID/BHA, US DoS/BPRM, 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, 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 of working in South Sudan.