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Program / Department Summary
Mercy Corps’ operations in The Americas are focused on the countries of Haiti, Guatemala, Colombia, in the Northwest United States, as well on the Venezuela regional humanitarian crisis, and supporting resilient communities across Caribbean states and territories. These are a disparate collection of contexts with many different challenges and opportunities that are all undergoing dramatic transitions that have the potential to create significant opportunity for development and change. Mercy Corps is well-placed to play a meaningful role in supporting forces for positive change in these places.
The Americas regional team works closely on program development efforts with the global New Initiatives (NI) team, which takes a leading role supporting and enhancing Program Development throughout the Mercy Corps world. The NI team: 1) leads the development of grant submissions to institutional donors and 2) carries out initiatives that enhance agency competitiveness. Team members lead and support strategic, high-priority proposals by: assisting country teams with pre-proposal positioning activities; assembling proposal teams; leading the proposal planning and development process; conducting on-site participatory assessment and design work; writing and editing technical proposals; working closely with the HQ and field finance team in the development of the proposal budget/cost application; reviewing proposals to assess clarity and competitiveness; and more. The team enhances agency competitiveness through the development of tools and processes to improve proposal quality across the agency. With all of its activities, New Initiatives works in a highly collaborative manner with the agency as a whole.
The Position
The Regional Senior Program Development Officer will be a member of the regional team, reporting to the Senior Program Officer and working alongside the regional team and the global NI team to support the regional country offices. They will work closely with the Americas Regional team on program development efforts by: 1) supporting prepositioning efforts focusing on (but not exclusively) proposal opportunities in Guatemala and Central America, Colombia, Venezuela, the Caribbean, and Haiti; 2) Act as lead writer on medium to large proposal efforts to institutional donors (focused on USG and private corporate/foundation donors, but not exclusively); 3) Working with members of global NI team, TSU, and wider program team (to include field teams and RPT members) to lead or support supporting proposal development processes; 4) Provide targeted reviews and editing support to field teams as needed; and 5) tracking the pipeline of potential new business opportunities for the region and supporting the RD and Country Directors (CDs) in prioritizing and preparing for them. They will help enhance regional competitiveness by working with NI team members and other stakeholders to enhance the overall state of practice vis-à-vis proposal processes.
Essential Responsibilities
PROGRAM AND PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT (60%)
STRATEGIC PRE-POSITIONING (25%)
BUILD REGIONAL CAPACITY (15%)
Supervisory Responsibility
None
Accountability
Reports Directly To: Americas Technical Director (with dotted line to Senior Director, New Initiatives)
Works Directly With: Americas Regional Director, Deputy Regional Director, and RPT, Country Directors/Deputy Country Directors and their teams, Global New Initiatives team, TSU.
Accountability to Participants and Stakeholders
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
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