Business Development

Basic Function:  Purpose and Scope                                                                            A Business Development Manager works to improve the organization’s market position and achieve financial growth. This person defines long-term organizational strategic goals, builds key customer relationships, identifies business opportunities, negotiates and closes business deals and maintains extensive knowledge of current market conditions.                                             Duties Performed: Strategic positioning:  BD staff should have some understanding of Caritas’ donor priorities and thus be able to advise leaders in identifying opportunities and making go/no-go decisions.  Some key job tasks in this area include: Gathering information about specific funding opportunities, competitors, and/or donor trends/interests and sharing this info with organizational leadership as they make go/no-go decisions Tracking or analyzing upcoming funding opportunities Working (through capture planning) to position Caritas for strategic upcoming funding opportunities. Pursuing opportunities:  The core responsibilities of most BD staff fall into this category of developing proposals, which includes the following job tasks: Helping to decide which funding opportunities to pursue Leading and/or contributing to proposal planning (making timelines, coordinating with other team members to assign specific proposal tasks, etc.). Supporting pre-proposal negotiations with partner organizations as relevant Ensuring that proposals reflect standard Caritas Lebanon and industry standards, policies and principles Producing high-quality, realistic, responsive, timely proposal documents. Reviewing proposals (or coordinating reviews by other team members) to ensure that proposals are clear and well-written, that they respond to donor priorities and comply with donor regulations, and align with Caritas principles and policies. Documenting key information to ensure a strong handover between the proposal team and the project start up team. A BD staffer should work to understand ongoing projects and translate monitoring and evaluation data into information for donors (proposals or other informational materials).  Specific tasks could include: Documenting information about program achievements and learning (this could be keeping running lists of project outcomes/outputs, participating in routine project reflections or evaluations, writing sector-specific capacity statements or past performance references, etc.) Integrating learning from project implementation into new proposals or marketing materials. Technical knowledge on a range of topics that allows them to develop strong, relevant proposals that respond to donor needs and requirements. This can be a fairly wide-ranging set of skills and knowledge: Knowledge of key donors, including funding trends, donor priorities, rules and regulations, and funding mechanisms. Knowledge of potential partners and/or competitors. Has a broad understanding of humanitarian assistance approaches Exhibits solid finance and budget development skills to help produce realistic, competitive, and cost-efficient cost applications Effectively representing Caritas with donors and partners. Leading and motivating teams and managing people/processes to produce proposals under tight deadlines. Exhibiting strong oral and written communications skills. Demonstrating excellent writing and editing skills. Facilitating formal and/or informal trainings, workshops, and learning sessions.