Senior Business Development Specialist - Food Security, Agriculture, and Livelihoods

Job Title: Senior Business Development Specialist – Agriculture and Livelihoods

Dept/Location: Resource Acquisition Department

Reports To: Food Security Unit Team Leader

Band:E

Background

The Resource Acquisition Department (RAD) provides leadership and guidance to HQ and field staff to acquire public funding for CRS’ programs worldwide. Team members promote efforts related to each of the three parts of the CRS Business Development Cycle: prepositioning, pursuing opportunities, and leveraging results.Prepositioning involves gathering information about the funding environment, taking action to improve CRS’ competitiveness, cultivating donor and partner relationships, and identifying potential funding opportunities.Pursuing opportunities involves using a systematic process to produce funding proposals that are both responsive to the public donors’ needs, and that articulate CRS’ unique capabilities. Leveraging results involves documenting and marketing information about what CRS accomplishes through its current projects, in order to secure new funding.

Within RAD, the Food Security Unit (FSU) supports and guides resource acquisition specifically in the area of food security, with an emphasis on high-value and strategic funding opportunities from USAID, USDA, the United Nations, and other major public donors. In so doing, the FSU collaborates closely with multiple units in CRS’ Overseas Operations division: country and regional staff (responsible for program development and implementation within CRS’ decentralized management structure); and Program Implementation and Quality Assurance (PIQA) sectoral teams (responsible for supporting and promoting CRS technical excellence and enhanced positioning, leadership and influence in core program areas). The FSU also supports RAD’s broader relationships with other CRS divisions – including HR, Finance, USOPS, and CGA – to guide and strengthen the agency’s resource acquisition efforts and maintain its position as a well-resourced, influential, and highly regarded actor in the fields of humanitarian aid and development.

The Senior BD Specialist is a seasoned professional who brings deep business development experience, technical programming knowledge, and confident, capable leadership and productivity to generate new business for the agency. S/he will lead capture and proposal teams; build CRS’ knowledge base on donors, partners, and trends in the foreign aid landscape; contribute to CRS’ agency strategic priorities and profile within the humanitarian and development communities; contribute to the design and writing of technical narrative proposals and related proposal content; and build the capacities of CRS staff worldwide.
Primary Function:

The Senior BD Specialist – Agriculture and Livelihoods will support and guide CRS’ acquisition of public donor resources, focusing mainly on diverse areas of food security, agriculture and livelihoods programming. S/he will provide business development expertise and leadership to cross-discipline and cross-functional staff teams in the development of public donor proposals to ensure the highest quality standards and competitiveness. S/he will lead and support internal learning processes that improve CRS’ business development practice, enhance the agency’s value propositions, and produce innovative and evidence-based project design and proposal content elements. As a member of the RAD and the agency’s broader business development community of practice, s/he will also provide field and HQ staff with capacity building, mentorship, and modeling to improve their skills in proposal development, representation to donor and partner organizations, donor and partner intelligence-gathering, and marketing of CRS’ capacities to enhance our competitiveness. This position will work closely with other Food Security-focused BD staff and members of the Agriculture and Livelihoods technical team within PIQA. The Senior Business Development Specialist – Agriculture and Livelihoods will also work in collaboration with the RAD Knowledge Management (KM) unit to develop and deliver capacity building materials and events for country programs, regions, and HQ units, in areas relevant to business development in general and within the Food Security, Agriculture and Livelihoods sectors.

Job Responsibilities:

1. Provide direct and remote support to field and HQ staff in capture planning and proposal development, with a key emphasis on food Security, agriculture and livelihoods-focused funding opportunities.
2. Serve as Proposal Coordinator or other lead role as appropriate on strategic priority funding opportunities.
3. Contribute to the design and writing of technical narrative proposals and related proposal content to ensure highest quality standards and competiveness.
4. Work closely with PIQA/Agriculture and Livelihoods and other relevant technical staff, and with operations, finance, programming, and other business development staff, to effectively position CRS to pursue and win new business from traditional and non-traditional funding sources.
5. Support and promote resource acquisition efforts for the Agriculture and Livelihoods Signature Programming Area (SPA) and related Strategic Investment Priority (SIP) areas.
6. Monitor emerging trends, programming priorities, best practice guidelines, and promising innovations of major Food Security, Agriculture and Livelihoods donor agencies, including USAID, USDA and the USAID/FFP. Ensure CRS staff have access to this information and utilize it effectively to produce competitive, responsive applications for funding, and to support CRS’ donor engagement, influence and advocacy efforts.
7. Lead and support the BDT’s collaboration with the Agriculture and Livelihoods team, country programs, regional offices and the business development to support and document technical learning, innovations and best practices; develop future proposal content, update capacity statements and past performance references; develop cost drivers and budget standards relevant to the Food Security, Agriculture and Livelihoods sectors, and design tools and resources reflecting evidence-based project design elements and implementation methodologies.
8. Monitor relevant regulatory revisions, proposal guidelines, and application requirements for priority food security, agriculture and livelihoods donors, together with other relevant departments. Ensure HQ and field staff involved in food security, agriculture and livelihoods proposals are aware of these requirements and that technical proposal narratives adhere to them, in conjunction with the food security-focused BD staff.
9. In collaboration with the Agriculture and Livelihoods team, monitor the relevant dimensions of new donor-driven initiatives, such as Feed the Future, and help articulate and represent CRS’ expertise within the context of these initiatives.
10. Coordinate processes and mentor staff to ensure timely submission of high quality proposals that are responsive to and compliant with donor technical requirements, and with CRS technical application standards.
11. Support field and HQ staff in negotiating consortium arrangements based on lessons from similar experience. Coordinate closely with PIQA, Opex and field staff to identify new and non-traditional partnerships, including universities, for-profit companies, research institutes and other actors.
12. Provide capacity building and mentorship to team members with less background in the food security sector. Deliver capacity building materials and events for country programs, regions, and HQ units in areas relevant to food security resource acquisition.
13. Provide support to the FSU Team Leader in a deputy capacity, ensuring advancement of team objectives and well coordinated, high quality service to the field.

Key Working Relationships:
INTERNAL: Program Impact and Quality Assurance Department; Operational Excellence and Systems Integration Department; Country and Regional technical and business development staff; Deputy Regional Directors for Program Quality and other key regional staff; Country Representatives and Heads of Programming
EXTERNAL: Public donor representatives; business development officials of collaborating partner organizations.

Agency-wide Competencies (for all CRS Staff):

These are rooted in the mission, values, and guiding principles of CRS and used by each staff member to fulfill his or her responsibilities and achieve the desired results.

· Serves with Integrity

· Models Stewardship

· Cultivates Constructive Relationships

· Promotes Learning

Qualifications:

· Masters in International Development, International Relations, Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, Rural Development or Economics or relevant field.

· At least eight years of international development experience, including at least four years in a developing country.

· Demonstrated ability to think and plan strategically.

· Experience with USG proposal development; experience with RFAs required, and with RFPs highly desirable.

· Familiarity with the funding mechanisms and technical programming priorities of USAID, and USAID/FFP required. Familiarity with USDA and WFP desirable.

· Proposal team leadership and program staff supervision required.

· Project management experience in food security, agriculture and livelihoods preferred.

· Excellent interpersonal and cross-cultural oral and written communication and negotiation skills.

· Demonstrated experience managing people and processes, leading teams to produce deliverables under tight deadlines and at exceptional quality.

· Ability to represent CRS and negotiate a favorable position for CRS to potential partner organizations.

· Exceptional writing ability.

· Strong analytical skills.

· Ability to articulate the agency’s principles, including respect for and willingness to work within CRS HIV/AIDS policy and Catholic Social Teaching.

· Knowledge of CRS programs, justice agenda and Catholic Social Teaching principles a plus.

· Knowledge of Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, Outlook, and Internet) required; experience with Access or other database programs a plus.

· Ability and willingness to travel overseas as needed, up to 30% of job time.

· Fluency in English required; working ability in French, Spanish or Portuguese preferred.

This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skills, efforts, duties and responsibilities associated with the position.

How to apply:

To apply, please visit:

https://www5.apply2jobs.com/CRS/ProfExt/index.cfm?fuseaction=mExternal.s...

EOE/M/F/D/V