Overview
The Senior Advisor, Emergency Funding provides technical oversight to the Emergency Unit’s Grants team, supporting the mobilization, management, and coordination of emergency funding across CRRD. The role is split broadly across three areas: delivering business development and awards management support, improving and overseeing emergency fund management, and fostering strong performance and positive staff experience.
Key Responsibilities
- Provide technical oversight to the Emergency Unit’s Grants team.
- Support the mobilization, management, and coordination of emergency funding.
- Deliver pre and post award business development and awards management support to new country programs.
- Improve and oversee the EmU’s emergency fund management function across mechanisms such as the CRF, emergency appeals, and other emergency funds.
- Foster strong performance and a positive staff experience among Grants ERT and GST teams.
- Manage the EmU led grants portfolio (approximately $75 million across 150 projects).
- Drive improvements in system design, workflow efficiency, and operational consistency.
- Provide early phase (first three months) pre and post award support to new country programs during emergencies.
- Ensure emergency funding systems are fit for purpose, donor and IRC requirements are met, and country teams are well supported.
- Ensure IRC’s emergency funding systems are functional, fit for purpose, and consistently applied.
- Lead system design improvements and optimization.
- Coordinate with the Quality in Emergencies team for clear roles and coherent processes.
- Design and maintain sophisticated dashboards and reports.
- Serve as the ER focal point during the launch of new appeals and for emergency funding reporting.
- Provide business development support and oversight to new country programs.
- Support donor engagement, intel sharing, positioning, and emergency pre positioning.
- Participate in donor calls and work closely with country teams, technical units, Grants Coordinators, consultants, and consortium partners to design competitive proposals and bids.
- Lead or support the full proposal development lifecycle.
- Review proposal and pre award documents to ensure accuracy and compliance.
- Support negotiations as needed.
- Facilitate smooth handover to post award teams.
- Maintain complete and accurate documentation and trackers.
- Deploy to country offices to provide proposal surge support as required.
- Manage a portfolio of emergency and early recovery awards.
- Ensure timely, accurate, and high quality reporting and monitoring.
- Serve as a key post award advisory focal point for new country programs.
- Provide guidance on awards management, donor compliance, and IRC policies, systems, and procedures.
- Support the development, review, and quality assurance of award amendments, modifications, sub grants, and partnership agreements.
- Lead or support negotiations in line with donor and IRC requirements.
- Manage donor relationships on contractual and compliance matters.
- Coordinate with Compliance and Policy teams on ad hoc queries.
- Ensure lessons learned are fed back into business development and future emergency responses.
- Coordinate closely with regional and global colleagues to ensure coherent support and planned handover to regional RPAS teams.
- Travel as needed to provide surge capacity or cover short term gaps.
- Provide day-to-day management and mentorship to members of EmU’s Grants Team and GST.
- Ensure that ERT and GST teams maintain high performance, collaborate effectively and are accountable for quality of work.
- Ensure sufficient record keeping for efficient handover when ERT and GST deployment ends.
- Manage assignments for emergency requests received through DMS.
- Build team capacity through coaching, mentoring, and targeted development opportunities.
- Onboard new country office Grants staff to assigned donors, policies and/or IRC processes.
- Empower team members by setting clear, measurable goals and responsibilities.
- Champion inclusive and supportive leadership practices.
- Build and maintain strong working relationships across EmU, the External Relations department, AMU, and regional/country colleagues.
- Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment.
- Contribute to efforts across EmU to promote gender equality, diversity and more inclusive practice.
- Promote and safeguard staff well-being and inclusive team culture across deployments.
Required Experience
- Significant (8+ years) experience with and a strong understanding of United States Government and European donor requirements required
- Exemplar understanding of humanitarian aid and development programming
- International work experience in the Global South is a plus
- Experience in working at a distance and supporting country-based staff
- Experience writing, reviewing and editing narrative and financial reports and excellent attention to detail
