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Côte d'Ivoire Grants Management Director

Job Purpose To ensure the compliance with donors’ requirements at all stages of the grants management cycle for all approved sources of funding.

Reporting to the Country Director the Grants Management Director (GMD) is responsible for providing efficient and effective management of the programme’s overall grant portfolio. S/He is a member of the country programme core Management Team & Senior Management Team. S/He is responsible for ensuring quality grant management, assessing needs and developing quality grant management capacity of field teams, ensuring compliance with donor and internal organisation requirements, and overseeing information management related to grant and programme implementation, including on time and quality reporting. The GMD is the key donor contact for the country programme and coordinates the information about the donors’ relationships. S/He plays a key role in supporting the Director of Programme Quality & Advocacy in proposals development, thus contributing to the timely submission of quality proposals to donors, by ensuring compliance of narrative proposals and related budgets to donor’s rules, regulations and priorities.

Line Management: A National Grant Officer and a National Compliance Officer (tbc). 

Key Accountabilities: Grant Management systems and donor compliance: • Ensure full compliance with SCS minimum operating standards for grant management and work with implementing partners when required. • Implement and manage SCS process for grant management, equitable cost recovery, grants close out and sub-grant management when required. • Act as a central point of organisational expertise on donor compliance requirements, ensuring that relevant staffs of all departments are fully aware of donor requirements; work closely with all departments to ensure compliance. Provide technical support to assess donor eligibility/allow ability of planned expenditures and identify related compliance requirements. • Coordinate grant management between field-based programme staff, Abidjan-based coordination staff, headquarters and regional offices. • Organise and participate in grant opening, mid-term review and closure meetings. • Work with Budget Holders and Finance Team to monitor all grant budgets to ensure compliance with donor requirements; review budget realignment and plan cost and/or no-cost extension requests; and also monitor expenditures to ensure compliance with budgets.
• Monitor and compile grant management monthly and quarterly tools (such as, but not limited to, the project implementation plans, donor mapping, funding tracker, etc). • Develop, with the support of the Country Director, a mechanism to hold Budget Holders accountable for deviations from the grant contracts. • Maintain a reporting tracking system to ensure that responsible staff are aware of upcoming deadlines. • Verify that financial and narrative reports are coherent and adhere to donor and SC standards before submission. • Maintain and manage the grant filing and retrieval system to ensure that it provides easy and immediate access to information on these grants at country office level. Support the field based staff to develop a field based filing system for the grants in their area of responsibility. • Ensure the programme data base system is updated (PMDb). • Contribute to ensure strong relationship with donors. Attend donor meetings as required. • Ensure the debt tracking system is working, follow up all income requests from donor and establish control to receive income on time.

Grant proposals 

• Support the Director of Programme Quality & Advocacy in the proposal development process for all proposals. • Relay funding opportunities to relevant staff in a timely manner. • Ensure that information is provided in a timely fashion and relevant staff are involved in the proposal development process (schedule). • Disseminate donor and SC standards to relevant personnel at the beginning of the process. • Ensure that a system is in place to analyse overhead and shared programme cost so that all aspects have been taken into account. • Verify that proposals adhere to donor and SC standards and that narrative is cohesive with budget. • Ensure that all proposals, contracts and amendments with donors follow internal procedures.

Training of & support to staff: • Ensure Budget Holders, Finance Officers and field staff are provided with the information and training they require in order to understand donor guidelines, compliance issues and the SC grant management procedures. • Conduct regular visits to field offices and project sites. • Conduct internal audits of grants processes and protocols to advise Budget Holders on compliance levels in the field bases. • Ensure key donors compliance checklists are available, provide orientation to Budget Holders and follow up the implementation.

Support to local partners: • Develop tools for local partners’ assessment and train SC programme staff in their use. • Supervise proper procedures are set in place for sub-granting process to local partners. • Support local partners to ensuring proper utilisation of project funds as per sub-grant agreement and the development of procedures, particularly in terms of procurement and finance management. • Review and approve reports submitted by local partners.

Audit: • Ensure all budgets include the necessary funds for audit and that all grants are audited as per donor rules and regulations. • Assist the Country Director in responding to internal audit requirements.

Leadership: • Directly lead, manage, evaluate and motivate the the staff directly line-managed ensuring they have clear work plan, learning and development plan and objectives, with regular supervision and performance review. Support and coach field-based grants officers (when existing), including through frequent visits to field offices. • Coordinate the development, implementation and review of the organisational funding strategy for the country programme. • Participate in the Management Team & Senior Management Team meeting and lead on the Finance/Grants Meetings. Participate to other meetings as necessary. • Contribute to the country strategic and operational planning and reporting.

Person specification o High level skills in teaching, mentoring, capacity building, team development, around management of accountabilities and compliance in relation to donor funding. o Ability to work as a team with programme and coordination staff at all levels. o Demonstrated ability to assist and influence senior managers in effective decision making. o Fluency in written and spoken English and French. o Knowledge of compliance requirements for major donors, including US Government (USAID, OFDA…), UN, World Bank, ECHO, EU and EC and ability and skills to establish compliance systems with SC staff. o Ability to and experience of establishing partnership management and monitoring protocols with local NGO partners. o Ability to present, discuss and supervise compliance with grants monitoring protocols with team members of varying levels. o Demonstrated ability to write and edit proposals and reports to donors in a timely manner and to manage the related correspondence. o Demonstrated ability to consolidate financial and narrative reports for a range of projects. o Demonstrated ability to develop and maintain effective project files for accountability and audit purposes. o Demonstrated ability to develop project proposals with teams and to successfully negotiate acceptance of agreements with donors. o Demonstrated experience to conduct donor’s audits. o Experience working in insecure environments. o Experience working in an international organisation preferably in West Africa.

Duration: 6 months with possible renewal Closing date: 23rd December 2011 Starting date ASAP

Termes et Conditions: Consultancy contract.

How to apply:

To apply Please apply as soon as possible but not later than 23rd December 2011. At c@ci.savethechildren.se with subject: Grants Management Director IC, and please insert your availability and daily consultancy fee