Awards and New Business Development Manager - Humanitarian Surge Team (HST)

ROLE PURPOSE:

As part of our humanitarian ambition and 2030 global strategy, Save the Children is developing and implementing a new Surge Capacity Model to further improve the efficient deployment of high quality surge staff to support the delivery of our Humanitarian Responses directly and in collaboration with SCI partners.  The model will be a stimulus for other areas of the organisation, demonstrating more collaborative and cost effective ways of working to drive resources closer to children and honour our commitments to sector wide developments including the Grand Bargain and Core Humanitarian Standard.  

People surge is a vital component of our humanitarian responses, providing a much-needed expertise and capacity which can be called upon when it is needed most, helping to ensure high quality and timely humanitarian responses and ultimately saving the lives of children and their families.  The postholder will provide dedicated surge support for all categories of humanitarian response efforts, interim cover for critical roles and capacity building to country and regional office staff and SCI partners within humanitarian contexts around the globe.  When not on deployment the postholder will undertake work at the base location agreed with their subject matter line manager and deployment manager and contribute to the further development of the surge capacity model.

This role will be responsible and accountable for full cycle awards management and new business development in SCI emergency responses, from portfolio planning to implementation and managing awards. The post holder will also provide ongoing support to develop best practice emergency awards and new business development management procedures and processes when deployed to SCI Country Programmes.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

CHILD SAFEGUARDING:

Level 3:  the post holder will have contact with children and/or young people either frequently (e.g. once a week or more) or intensively (e.g. four days in one month or more or overnight) because they work country programs; or are visiting country programs; or because they are responsible for implementing the police checking/vetting process staff.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Deployment Management - GHSP

Staff reporting to this post: TBC, depending on size and complexity of a response, this can range from having none to five direct reports.

Budget Responsibilities: TBC

Role Dimensions: Working with other emergency departments in country to ensure that there is a co-ordinated response in line with best practices in an emergency environment; assist in transition and work with existing country awards and new business development management functions to ensure that best practices are adopted after emergency activity is completed. In a large or complex response, it is possible that the awards and new business development functions will be separated and the post holder will lead on one or another.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Award Management in Emergency Responses 

- Ensure that award management systems and processes are implemented across the response and key controls are in place to support effective management of the funding portfolio and compliance with the donor requirements.

- Provide technical support and quality assurance to ensure that proposals are high quality and compliant with donor requirements. This includes ensuring donor log-frames are articulated adequately to avoid compliance issues during the implementation of awards (indicators are set realistically, objective and results framed with enough flexibility).

- Ensure sectors and geographical areas covered in individual awards contribute to overall response aims and programming.

- Support the finance team on master budget development, cost allocation, monitoring of award budgets, phasing and forecasting 

- Coordinate the process and provide technical support and quality assurance to donor reporting to ensure that reports are high quality, delivered on time and supported by auditable records. This includes assessing and making recommendations to improve the reconciliation process between Finance, Procurement, Logistics, Distribution, M&E that will ensure accountable reporting to donors on all humanitarian inputs (items delivered to beneficiaries) 

- Build and maintain relationships with the local representatives of donor organisations and award management staff of similar organisations. 

- Maintain effective communications with Save the Children members, providing them with timely updates on their awards and flagging potential issue promptly. 

 Donor compliance 

- Provide timely, accurate and comprehensive donor compliance support to all functions, providing advice on funding mechanisms, donor compliance, regulations etc. and strengthening organisational awareness on donors’ expectations (e.g. through training, Q&A sessions etc.)

- Act as a focal point for donor compliance and support all functions to ensure donor requirements are understood and complied with and complete audit trials of the implementation and reporting for all awards.  

- Ensure that all appropriate donor formats are available in-country and that key contributing staff have a clear understanding of donor requirements and expectations at the proposal, kick off, amendment, reporting, close out and audit stage of awards.  

- Ensure potential issues and amendment requests are flagged promptly to donors via the relevant Save the Children member. This may include developing business cases where donor waiver/derogation requests need to be more thoroughly articulated or negotiated with donors. 

- Work with internal and external auditors as necessary.  

 Partnerships 

- Work with relevant program staff to ensure all implementing partners for the response operations undergo legal vetting prior to commencing work with Save the Children, are engaged with appropriate agreements and effective monitoring systems are in place so that partner delivery meets donor expectations and requirements. 

- In rapid onset emergencies, work with program staff to ensure capacity assessments and induction into Save the Children policies are undertaken for all new partners promptly upon their engagement and any actions needed as a result of this (eg capacity strengthening of partners) are taken within an appropriate timescale. 

- Work with program staff to ensure relevant donor requirements are effectively communicated and understood by implementing partners. 

Award Management System (AMS) 

- Ensure that all opportunities, proposals, contracts and amendments with donors are processed and approved through AMS and the system is an accurate reflection of current award status at all times. 

- Ensure all partners and sub-award agreements are input into AMS. 

- Provide reporting upon the portfolio to the response management team as required 

 New Business Development

- Undertake portfolio planning activites: Working closely with Save the Children members and other stakeholders, undertake a donor mapping against response focused sectors, develop a funding strategy, structure and track engagement with key donors.

- Opportunity: coordinate collaborative, data-driven Go / No-Go decisions, undertake pre-proposal activites including analysing the funding opportunity and gathering intel on the donor and other actors

- Proposal development: Supervise and ensure proper facilitation of project design workshops, developing concept papers, full proposals, and budgets, ensuring that high quality standards are met and that proposals meet donor and member requirements; Clearly identify roles and responsibilities and key actions for proposal development and ensure that there is a robust internal review process in place to ensure quality proposals are submitted; Ensure that all relevant Programmes, Operations and Support teams such as HR, Awards, Procurement, IT, Finance are fully and proactively involved in the development of new proposals.

- Carry out in depth reviews of unsuccessful proposals to identify reasons and any lessons learned. Document, share and develop plans to address identified weaknesses.

- Work with Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL) and Communication teams to develop marketing materials and presentations for external use.

- Use AMS to understand the portfolio and track funding and gaps, and submit regular updates to Senior Management Team (SMT).

Capacity Building

- Transfer knowledge and best practices to the response and Country Office's development and advancement of policy and procedures.   

- Recruit, train and manage award management staff and/or work closely with existing country staff & ensure a good handover at end of mission.  

- Carry out inductions and staff trainings for award management procedures, donor requirements etc.  

- Contribute to ongoing award management policy revisions and maintain and continue the ongoing development of SCI awards management  guidance on tools for award management in emergencies.  

 Support to ongoing emergencies, Fragile States and/or country/regional programmes

- Provide interim support to a country or regional programs which lack award management resources in various roles (Country Award Manager, Regional Award Manager, etc).  

- Upon countries or region request, provide country programme staff with award management induction, training and coaching into SC policies, procedures and tools and on major awards compliance issues 

 Additional

- Deliver high quality results in line with the agreed ToR and develop effective relationships with country programme staff. 

- Comply with all relevant SC policies and procedures with respect to child protection, health and safety, equal opportunities and other relevant policies and procedures. 

QUALIFICATIONS 

Professional qualification relating to business, finance, accounting or international development

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS:

 Essential 

- Experience of and well developed skills in staff management, supervision and capacity building 

- Proven track record of supporting a senior management team, and providing strategic support for portfolio management across multiple sectors and/or regions  

- Experience in coordinating and preparing successful proposals and reports  for major donors (i.e. ECHO, DFID, USAID) 

- Good understanding of the award management cycle, logical frameworks, budget monitoring and experience of working with major institutional donors such as DFID, ECHO, USAID etc.

- Good attention to detail and analytical skills 

- Computer literate (i.e. WORD, advanced Excel, Outlook) 

- Cultural awareness and ability to build relationships quickly with a wide variety of people 

- Patient, adaptable, flexible, able to improvise and remain responsive and communicate clearly and effectively under pressure, working with a wide range of stake holders 

- Excellent planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organise a workload comprised of varying and changing tasks and responsibilities 

- Strong communication (written and spoken), and interpersonal skills in English, with experience in managing multicultural team 

- Strong interpersonal and communication skills including influencing, negotiation and coaching,

 Desirable  

- Experience with Save the Children award management system (AMS)  

- Significant experience with NGOs in an international emergency environment 

- Fluent in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic or Swahili