Business Development and Grants Acquisition Director

With over 70 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.

Come join our 34,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!

Key Responsibilities:

Business Development and Grants Acquisition Director

Lead/Coordinate/Facilitate proposal development and grants acquisition by building the profile, pre-positioning the Malawi National Office including strengthening National Office (NO) proposal grants acquisition capacity. Lead the Malawi National Office in developing and rolling out a Grants Acquisition and Management (GAM) strategy. To drive growth in non-sponsorship income in alignment with regional and NO strategy. To engage and retain government, multi-lateral and private sector donors through successful grants implementation and strong donor relations with the aim of maximizing and diversifying the funding base.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Leadership and Strategic Management

1. Provide day to day leadership and management to the National Office GAM department.
2. Develop and lead the implementation of a resource development strategy for the NO in alignment with NO needs, strategic initiatives and contribution to Child Well Being (CWB) targets.
3. Maintain an overview of NO grant funding and resource development and branding, in conjunction with Communications.
4. Provide strategic direction for grants Acquisition in the Malawi National Office to pursue non-traditional funding sources, identifying emerging or untapped high potential donors
5. Lead team planning, ensuring efficient and effective deployment of staff time and talent to achieve NO GAM objectives.
6. Lead GAM capacity development planning and implementation in the NO.
7. Cultivate and maintain targeted donor and development partner relations.
8. Model Christ-centered servant leadership and support spiritual development of his/her team.
9. Represent the Region in both internal/external resource mobilization activities, such as donor meetings, WebEx, Skype calls, meetings etc.

Pre-positioning & Donor Engagement:

1. Identify key relationships to strengthen the national office pre-positioning and elevate WV’s profile with government, foundations, multilateral, private sector and donors.
2. Work with and through RO and in collaboration with SOs colleagues, to maintain strong donor relationships at country level, developing engagement strategies for each donor or a group of donors.
3. Build cross functional team in the NO for proposals development, including LCs.
4. In conjunction with Communications department, develop key marketing material and external audience mapping to assist the NO to preposition WV in Malawi for a sustainable pipeline of grants. Seek a 68% and above win rate.
5. Build relationships and credibility with donors at country level, using previous success and documented best practices in grant management
6. Monitor the donor competitive landscape, and use the funding forecasts from RO to organize prepositioning meetings with donors.
7. Work with the IPD and support in prepositioning meetings with bilateral, multilaterals, foundations, Public Private Partners, etc.
8. Provide support and guidance in the development of capacity statements to be utilized during prepositioning meetings with donors.

Grants Management & Compliance:

1. Mobilize cross- functional support for GAM performance (finance, operations, People & Culture, strategy, technical, Quality Assurance) in resolving grants implementation and audit issues.
2. Coordinate with cross functional support, to ensure on time submission of key grant documents as per the agreement (semi & annual reports, mid-term and final evaluation reports, quarterly financial report etc.) and a successful close out of large scale grants.
3. In conjunction with finance ensure compliance in key grant areas (e.g. eligibility, CAM, match, grant decision making powers, etc)
4. Ensure grants are within the NO programme strategies, and NO annual targets are established for grant acquisition.
5. Monitoring of NO grants portfolios, targets and grant management/implementation. Define and review NO fundraising targets.
6. Track, monitor and ensure successful grant and contract management and fulfillment, in accordance with donor requirements to increase refunding rates.
7. Produce systematic performance indicator reporting to inform management as to progress, roadblocks, and other relevant performance details.
8. Track and map key grant implementation ensuring burn rate is at least 95%, disallowable costs are under 2%, risk issues are mapped and mitigated. Work with the GAM Team to ensure quarterly reporting and that all GNOD indicators are in green.
9. Lead the development of key grants database for performance monitoring portfolio management in NO
10. System/Database for past performance (All grants, US, EU, DFID, Global Fund etc).
11. Support NOs in making the Go/no go decision and integrating the process with the “Risk Assessment for Grant Approval Form”.
12. Work with the IPD to ensure support that the NO upon receiving large grants that appropriate systems and absorption capacity exists.
13. Build relationships and credibility with donors at the national level, using previous success and documented best practices in grant management.
14. Depending on size of grant, profile and donor requirement, work with P&C to hire high performing staff (i.e. Chief of Party, Deputy Chief of Party etc.).

Collaborations and Learning: 

1. Promote continuous learning in the field of resource development at NO level and ensuring that staff in the NO take up good practices.
2. Share learning, innovations and better practices across the region and GAM.
3. Facilitate stronger SO/RO /NO cooperation/collaboration in grant acquisition and management.
4. Ensure GAM is contributing to CWB reporting and breaking silos between sponsorship and grants.
5. Active engagement in GAM

Mentoring and Coaching (Capacity Building)

1. Lead, manage and provide capacity building support to employees in the GAM department by ensuring clear goals and accountabilities are established and achieved.
2. Ensure individuals’ performance and development needs are met, and employees are high performing and engaged. Identify capacity gaps in NOs in grants acquisition and management and other factors leading to poor win rates and grants implementation and work with SLT to address them.
3. Facilitate/Lead start-up workshops for new grants according to the grants minimum standards,
   Champion/Facilitate grants management training in various government and multilateral donors’ regulations

KNOWLEDGE SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Master Degree in Development Studies, Social Science, International Development, Finance, MBA or its Equivalent
• Bachelor’s Degree in Social Sciences, Humanities, development studies, International Relations or its equivalent
• 5-8 years of senior leadership experience in grant acquisition (with a strong track record of winning grants)
• Demonstrated experience in project management with government and multilateral agencies grant funded projects
• Advanced knowledge/practice of design, monitoring, and evaluation approaches
• Excellent knowledge of grant compliance procedures for major bilateral and multilateral donors and ability to pay attention to detail
• Demonstrated team management experience that includes coaching staff to high levels of performance
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English with strong competency in proposal writing
• Demonstrated abilities to engage effectively with diverse teams (cross cultural & cross functional) to achieve shared goals
• Ability to engage at a strategic level and build collaborative relationships with donors and other NGOs
• Must be a committed Christian, able to stand above denominational diversities.

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