Position description
The Head of Partnerships will support the Ipas Francophone Africa Regional Director to conduct effective fundraising and effectively engage with various partners in a highly complex, dynamic funding environment. S/He will support the Senior Management Team in efforts to advance strategic business priorities and position Ipas as a preferred organization within the SRHR (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights) space in Francophone Africa. Through daily and ongoing executive, administrative and developmental support, this role will support the organization’s business initiatives and objectives. Under the guidance and direct supervision of the Regional Director, the Head of Partnerships will ensure the effective and efficient functioning of Ipas Francophone Africa’s fundraising initiatives. S/He must maintain full confidentiality in all aspects of assignments, maintenance of protocol procedures, management of information flow and follow-up on deadlines and commitments made. S/he will be responsible for ensuring alignment between ongoing country/regional-level and global work, contributing to program reporting, and supporting efforts to engage with high-level safe abortion champions and all donors.
Key Responsibilities
The Head of Partnerships:
- Contributes to Ipas’s efforts to identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward donors in support of Ipas’s mission and the priorities of our strategic framework, focusing on Ipas programs in Africa, especially Francophone Africa;
- Manages proposal development processes in close collaboration with technical and other staff across the organization to submit high-quality proposals, responses to competitive bids, concept notes, and other donor correspondences. Ensures that proposals are professionally written, cohesive, and compelling and meet all donor requirements;
- Provides guidance on donor priorities and expectations and helps proposal teams tailor requests accordingly;
- Works closely with Regional Director and other staff to identify and cultivate new donors and to identify and pursue new opportunities with existing donors;
- Organizes meetings and events with donors and other funding partners, including follow-up on related organizational commitments;
- Works collaboratively with the development service unit and teams in different time zones, manages complex donor proposal processes to deliver high-quality proposals on time, typically under tight deadlines, and in line with donor guidelines;
- Forms proposal teams, establishes and tracks timelines, prepares outlines and templates, compiles technical information from various teams, and coordinates technical review, clearly communicating with proposal team members about their roles through proposal submission;
- Works with Ipas Francophone Africa staff to research funding trends in the region and to identify and cultivate new donors, participates in donor calls, and drafts/edits concept notes, briefs, letters of inquiry, and other donor communications;
- Researches donor priorities, strategies, language, and requirements and provides guidance to proposal teams to ensure proposals align with these;
- Provides support and collaborative coaching in the fundraising and proposal development process, including logistical and writing support to program teams in Francophone Africa;
- Logs emails and maintains accurate records in the Ipas donor database for a portfolio of donors;
- Fosters a team approach with the development service unit and with other teams, ensuring that information related to donor proposals, contacts, and processes are well-documented and accessible to all.
Financial and Risk Management:
- Ensure adherence to appropriate protocol and correspondence guidelines by country team when communicating with Government, donors and other external partners;
- Works with the Finance unit and other team members to develop budgets for proposals.
Communications and Engagement:
- Build, track and maintain partnerships that enhance the impact of the engagement efforts for the Francophone regional program;
- Support the creation and promotion of strategic alliances with donors, multilateral agencies, and other NGOs (Non Governmental Organization).
Technical Delivery
Proposal Development:
- Research and review funding opportunities and prepare grant opportunity synopses;
- Work with team members to develop high-quality, innovative proposals;
- Review and improve concepts to proposal level;
- Research, analyse and maintain a regular register of donor calls for funding applications including, expressions of interest and requests for proposals;
- Ensure that all categories of program costs are considered at the conceptualization and submission stage of grant preparation.
Business Development:
- Conduct regional partners and competitors’ analysis to ensure Ipas Francophone is ahead of the competitors as regards donors' information and upcoming expression of interest and/or request for bids/proposals;
- Lead fundraising proposal activities, including development and preparation of final documents and program deliverables;
- Follow up on deadlines, commitments made, actions taken, and coordination and submission of reports to the Regional Director.
Knowledge Management:
- Provide inputs into donor reports, monitor timely deliverables, and provide support to the Program team for reporting back to donors;
- Draft routine correspondence, background notes, interoffice circulars, general briefing notes, documents, reports, and minutes of meetings when requested;
- Support the programs team to ensure timely and accurate documentation of project implementation for organizational learning, donor reporting and external communication;
- Ensure development of regular reports and analysis of implementation plans, mapping between program priorities and donor opportunities, funding analysis, etc to be used by management for tracking progress against the targets, review and decision making;
- Work closely with all team members and staff across the Ipas Network to develop information products and learning materials, including but not limited to cases studies, technical notes, policy briefs, success stories and lessons learned;
- Strategizes on and supports dissemination of learning internally and to partners.
Position Requirements
Education:
- Bachelor’s Degree in public health, international development, social sciences, business administration, communications, or related field.
Experience:
- 5-7 years of progressively responsible program implementation secretarial, administrative, programme experience is required at the national or international level;
- 5 years of fundraising, proposal management, project management, and writing/editing experience, with a minimum of 2 years working in Francophone Africa;
- Experience working in the sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equity, human rights, and/or humanitarian sectors, preferably at a global health or human rights NGO;
- Demonstrated experience gained in international development, preferably to include managing, implementing and/or supporting international development programmes;
- Successful track record of securing multiple projects grant bilateral and multilateral donors, trusts and foundations and other new donors;
- Significant expertise in all areas of new business development including strategy, forging partnerships including negotiating teaming agreements, project design, theory of change construction, proposal writing, budget development, managing donor and other partner relationships and project reporting;
- Knowledge of donor compliance regulations especially, procurement and grant management is necessary;
- Demonstrated experienced in capacity building and working in cross-cultural and low resource settings;
- Experience working with high-level champions or their teams and maintaining good relationships with diverse networks of people.
Competencies and Skills:
- Communication & Collaboration-Actively listens and communicates -connects easily with her/his team and gains their trust and respect. Works well across all organizational teams. Demonstrates clear and concise information and idea sharing;
- Steward resources- Implement ways to reduce the inefficient use of resources or pass the ideas on to someone who can make them happen;
- Deliver results: Prioritise, plan and monitor own work to meet own and team deliverables to agreed performance and quality standard;
- Strive for improvement: Seek better ways of doing things, considering the possible implications;
- Excellent English editing and writing skills;
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills;
- Excellent French language written and verbal skills;
- Strong analytical and strategic decision-making and problem-solving skills;
- Ability to work well with a wide variety of people in a fast-paced environment within a complex organization, in person and virtually;
- Ability to work independently, with a strong ethic of accountability;
- Strong knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite.
Working environment:
- Ability to travel up to 10%.
Application instructions
Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on Globaljobs.org
