Job Overview

The Grants and Finance Manager will maintain a portfolio of grants within IRC’s Technical Excellence Department. Reporting to theGrants and Finance Coordinator, this position will work closely with in-country and HQ grants staff, finance and business development to ensure timely and accurate grant reporting, maintenance of grant records, and leadership of the proposal process for new grants. The Grants and Finance Manager will also be responsible for tracking grant spending, developing spending plans, and handling internal disbursement of grant funding to country programs.This position has limited field travel and support for special projects.

Major Responsibilities

Grants and Budget Management

• Build and maintain an in-depth understanding of grants, donor compliance, and budget conditions and status
• Review, track, and analyze expenditures for standard grants
• Review monthly BvAs and transaction detail reports, participate in monthly budget meetings and ensure that all BvAs and financial reports accurately reflect current and planned spending
• Make any necessary spending plan adjustments
• Attend and actively participate in all grant related meetings
• Work in close collaboration with the Senior Adviser, Grant Operations and the Deputy Director, Business Operations to harmonize grants as part of Technical Excellence’s funding portfolio
• Work with relevant Technical Unit and HQ-based finance staff to ensure accuracy of financial reports and to promptly identify and advise applicable grant leads on areas of concern
• Review and process sub-grants to country programs for grant activities
• Coordinate the approval of agreements, amendments, cost extensions and no-cost extensions for grants
• Apply existing IRC standard grant management processes (OTIS, project cycle meetings, etc.) and develop new tools or reporting formats to enhance grants management
• Manage salary allocations by tracking and monitoring all salary lines in grant budgets
• Work with other Grants & Finance Managers to streamline and harmonize IRC processes

Donor Reporting and New Business

• Develop guidance, templates, and toolkits to ensure timely submission of narrative and financial donor reports
• In partnership with program technical staff and the Business Development Coordinator, manage and contribute to the development of proposals ensuring donor and IRC compliance, including reviewing and contributing to concept notes, proposals and creating budgets
• Manage OTIS (Opportunity Tracking Information System) workflow for proposals, ongoing grants, agreements and amendments
• Assist in donor relations; participate in calls with select donors, represent Technical Excellence at donor meetings as required; and communicate relevant priorities to donors and internal business development and foundation relations units.

Key Working Relationships

• Position Reports to:Grants and Finance Coordinator
• Position directly supervises:May supervise Grants Assistants and/or Interns and Volunteers

Other Internal And/or External Contacts

• Internal:Regularcontact withTechnical Unit teams.
• Liaise with country program staff. Interact regularly with internal IRC departments, especially budget, finance, human resources and procurement.
• External:Interact with donors, vendors, contractors, and consultants.

Education

Job Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field is required or demonstrable experience.

Work Experience

• 2+ years of experience managing government and/or private grants
• Demonstrated experience developing proposals for public and private donors

Demonstrated Skills And Competencies

• Excellent budget management skills including experience tracking expenses and developing spending plans
• Excellent organizational skills: the ability to multi-task, learn quickly, and work independently and productively in a fast-paced and detail-oriented environment
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to effectively liaise with and motivate a variety of people in a multi-cultural environment
• Excellent digital literacy: MS Word, Excel, and Desktop Publishing. Proficiency in Excel preferred.

Language Skills

• English fluency

Job Summary

The position will support the communication, media and digital components of this exciting global flagship programme and work with the External Engagement and Influencing pillar to increase the capacity of the programme in both its external and internal communications in Sub-Saharan Africa, MENA and Asia regions. Working closely with the WW2 External Engagement and Influencing pillar and the Program team, the position will provide communications support to the EEI pillar in their advocacy and influencing work to advance strategic change through engaging key stakeholders and building solidarity and shared agendas with the wider VAWG prevention field. The position will feed knowledge and learning from What Works II funded projects into research and policy work, communications, and campaigns. The person will also be responsible for tracking programme wide campaign analytics and maintaining digital media archives. Twenty percent of the time will be spent supporting some logistical coordination aspects of the programme such as organizing donor visits to partners, supporting the WW2 Director in communicating to our global expert board through events and meetings.

Responsibilities

• Communication for advocacy and influencing –
• Work with the EEI, research consortium and fund management team to deliver the communication strategy including translating evidence emerging from the grants and studies into easily accessible and user-friendly forms for dissemination to various users e.g., to the consortium, the VAWG prevention stakeholders, and donors.
• Present the information in an attractive and engaging format that can be shared with the public, media, WW2 consortium partners, project stakeholders, donors and to maintain a record of content produced.
• Work closely with the technical advisors, grant managers and program teams to visit field sites to identify, collect, capture, and document project activities in the form of case studies, including the collection of photos.
• Gather information to support advocacy initiatives such as related case studies and evidence from the field as requested.
• Support the EEI team compile and finalize regular reports for various audiences and identifying trends or highlights to include.
• Produce staff spotlights and other internal communications outputs as required
• Provide visibility and briefing material packages for all high-level/external visits, including WW2 donors, other delegations, as needed
• Producing and managing multimedia and communications content –
• Provide multimedia and communications content for the What Works II programme, including development of a programme branding guide and popularizing materials for activist communities.
• Identify photography opportunities as well as support the hiring of freelance photographers and videographers and orienting them with the principle of informed consent. Manage content collection shoots as needed.
• Ensure that all materials adhere to the WW2 Programmes branding requirements and are in line with donor requirements where applicable
• Consult closely with the EEI team, grant managers and technical advisors to support information requests and collect material and draft stories required for donor visibility requirements.
• Maintain a dynamic ‘story list’ to showcase WW2 Program impact
• Work with other WW2 pillars on internal communications priorities such as newsletters as requested
• Produce or project manage deliver of graphic design - provide graphic design and formatting support to ad hoc donor- and external/public- facing programme documents (e.g., reports, briefs, templates)
• Social media management –
• Manage social media accounts for the programme (Twitter) and lead on maintaining a social media brand for the What Works II programme across several platforms throughout the programme lifetime, including communicating and social grant funding windows and webinars, maximizing mainstream media from results of the grantee projects and wider programme in years 4-7 and using social media to engage WW2 project stakeholders.
• Create communications content, write press releases, develop blog content, and create social media content and posts e.g., development of communications plan for second round of grant funding window.
• Website management –
• proactively manage the WW2 programme web portal,
• Collect information and authentic content suitable for What Works 2 Programme communications, including media, social media, stories, and updates for the website,
• Lead on managing the What Works II website, updating, and editing and uploading key programme documents to the Knowledge Hub (newsletter; reports; briefs) as required.
• Email management –
• Monitor and manage the What Works II email account, including responding to emails and seeking input as appropriate, and monitoring newsletter sign-ups.

Events, Logistics and Communications admin to What Works II programme and team

• Event coordination and planning –
• Provide support to planning, coordination and delivery of What Works II events and external events that the programme will have a presence at (virtual and in person). Where required, organize travel and logistics arrangements (including booking flights, venue hire, visa, and accommodation support).
• Support the admin and logistics for communication-focused visits, including donor visits
• Workshop and meeting coordination –
• Actively participate in relevant programme, team and partner meetings and where relevant coordinate meetings, agreeing agenda items with team members, taking minutes, following up on actions, and preparing any presentations or related documentation as required. Provide ad hoc administrative support to the organization and logistics of workshops/ webinars/ training – lead on hosting and provide support to coordination and delivery of workshops.
• Capturing comms impact for donor reporting –
• Provide support to the Programme Coordinator on quarterly donor reporting (e.g., compiling digital media metrics, editing, and writing relevant sections of the report, leading on elements of the report).
• Provide support during FCDO Annual Review process and meetings, including case studies, highlighting ‘good news’ stories; and responding to ad-hoc queries from FCDO programme and press teams.

Reporting

The Communications and Digital Officer will report directly to the WW2 Director with technical supervision for the role coming from EEI co leads.

Requirements

• A bachelor’s degree in communications, journalism, English, public relations or another related field from an accredited university.
• Experience in, or familiarity with development and humanitarian assistance programming and operating in an emergency context
• Willingness and ability to travel to visit field-sites and document findings
• Knowledge of/experience with graphic design and social media photography , videography,
• Fluent written and spoken English required. Knowledge of French or Arabic an added advantage

Experience

• A Minimum of 3-6 years of professional experience in a similar role
• Excellent IT skills, including Advanced Word, Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint. Strong Excel skills a particular advantage
• Experience working with quantitative and digital metrics data (desirable)
• Good analytical skills
• Experience in a communications role and demonstrated experience of developing public/audience facing documents/ content
• Experience of using social media for communications and advocacy
• Excellent organizational skills
• Proven ability to manage a heavy and fluctuating workload
• Proven ability to manage conflicting demands of a large team
• Proven ability to prioritize own workload
• Proven experience in administrative role
• Proven experience in organization of events/workshops
• Results orientated