Location: Democratic Republic of the Congo (the) (Kinshasa)
Closing date: 31 May 2008
Job Description

The IRC DRC Grants Coordinator (GC) plays a central role in supporting IRC DRC program compliance within the entire country, with a specific focus on reporting requirements. The GC supervises the Grants Unit that comprises at present 3 expatriate and 1 national staff person. The Grants Unit (1) supports the focal point of each of the IRC DRC grants in producing high quality (complete, accurate and on time) donor reports, (2) provides them with proactive donor and IRC regulations compliance advice and supports the country office in producing the project proposals required for its development. The Grants Coordinator also supports grants focal points in tracking that the required data are appropriately and regularly collected for monitoring and reporting purposes.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:
Strategy
Become familiar with the IRC Program Framework and with the IRC DRC Strategic plan, incorporate their outputs in his/her work and contribute to their institutionalization processes.

Donor Reporting Support
This element is the main and key responsibility of the Grants Unit. The expectation is that IRC DRC submits all its required donor reports on time.
- Ensure up-to-date tracking of donor reporting requirements in IRC financial and management tracking and reporting tools;
- Allocate reporting support workload throughout the unit such as to ensure that grants focal points receive the appropriate level of support and that donor reports are produced with a high level of quality (completeness, accuracy and timeliness of submission). This includes ensuring him/herself direct reporting tasks including developing reports templates, mentoring program staff, translating, editing and publishing reports and obtaining in-country and HQ technical reviews – all tasks normally performed by other staff within the Unit – when the workload requires it;
- Review all reports before submission to ensure quality and ensure submission after senior management approval;
- Ensure that all donor reports and reporting materials are appropriately filed in up-to-date, clean, consistent soft and hard libraries available in all IRC DRC offices.
Compliance Support
- Maintain, through self- and formal training, reading and exchanges a broad and deep understanding of IRC DRC donor (focus on DFID, World Bank-IDA and USAID, with also UNICEF, EuropeAid, Irish Aid, SV / Dutch Government, Comic Relief, CIDA) policies, regulations and procedures;
- Develop and maintain the appropriate tools to make this knowledge available to IRC DRC staff, this including at minimum an up-to-date soft and hard library, briefing notes on each grant and memos on key/recurrent compliance issues;
- Proactively identify compliance risks/issues throughout the portfolio and proactively offer advice to grants focal points and other IRC DRC staff (senior management, finance, procurement, etc.) as relevant – alert senior management on compliance issues when programs or other departments are potentially exposing IRC to compliance risks;
- Contribute to building skills in compliance issues across the IRC DRC team.

Proposal Support
As IRC DRC has a portfolio mostly made of relatively long-term grants, and has, from a fundraising perspective, achieved most of its growth strategy, the country office is not expected to process many proposals each year until at least 2009. However, work on cost extension proposals, on smaller add-on grants, and on the renewal of certain components of the portfolio is required in the shorter tem.
- Under the supervision of the Deputy Director for Programs, keep track of IRC DRC current and upcoming proposals with standard IRC tracking and reporting tools;
- Support proposal focal points in the planning, writing, translating, editing and publishing of required proposals, and ensure the processing of these proposals through the standard IRC review, approval and submission processes – the design of the projects itself and purely programmatic and financial decisions remain with the IRC DRC senior management, the sectors’ Heads and the Finance Department;
- For larger scale, complex proposals, and especially competitive bids, IRC typically hires a short-term proposal team – the Grants Coordinator might, as required, integrate these teams as a writer;
- Ensure that all proposals and related materials are appropriately filed in up-to-date, clean, consistent soft and hard libraries available in all IRC DRC offices.

Data collection and M&E Support
M&E and data collection remains the responsibility of the IRC DRC program staff, as they remain accountable for overall program implementation and quality. However, as data collection and M&E also relates to reporting and other compliance issues, the Grants Coordinator supports Sector Heads in tracking that the required M&E processes are in place and the necessary data collected.
- Keep track of reporting and other donors’ requirements as regard with data collection and M&E for each proposal and grant. Put in place the appropriate checks and tracking tools to ensure that proposals and projects comply with these requirements;
- Verify on a regular basis that each grant of the portfolio effectively has the necessary data collection and M&E systems and tools in place to comply with its expected reporting and compliance requirements –provide feedback to Sector Heads and Senior Management on any issues identified and track effective implementation of corrective actions;
- Maintain IRC DRC compliance with the institutional memory component of its survey policy, and to this end maintain a soft and hard library of all past and current surveys, studies and significant data collection processes conducted by the country office.

Other Responsibilities
- Be the primary interlocutor for the HQ-based (NYC and London) DRC focal points as regard with reports submission, proposal processing, compliance and other grants-related functions;
- Contribute to the setting up and maintenance of a nationwide intranet, as it relates to areas of responsibility;
- Provide translation, editing and publishing support to the country office, this going beyond only reporting and proposal issues, mainly by supervising a Translation Assistant;
- As requested, ensure appropriate dissemination of information throughout the country office – this includes for example the monthly distribution of Budget Versus Actuals for each grants, diffusion of new or updated forms, procedures and guidelines as they are made available by Senior Management or HQs, etc;
- In collaboration with senior management, engage in donor-relation and representation functions on behalf of IRC DRC; produce information, communication and other documents and presentations; organize donor and other field visits as required;
- In close collaboration with the Deputy Director for Programs, organize and/or support Grants Opening/Closing workshops, produce and circulate their reports and track – and as relevant support – the implementation of the actions decided during these meetings.

Human Resources
- Line Manage 2 expatriate staff, at distance, as well as a Translation assistant;

Security
- Achieve competency in use of all communications equipments;
- Be fully capable of implementing emergency response procedures without assistance.

REQUIREMENTS:
- Professional fluency in spoken and written French and English;
- Excellent English writing skills;
- Prior professional experience, preferably in Africa in a post-conflict and/or conflict setting, preferably with an international NGO;
- Prior knowledge of relevant donor regulations an advantage;
- Strong capacity to learn and apply new knowledge;
- Strong capacity to mentor and build capacity of staff;
- Flexibility to adapt to changing requirements;
- Strong organizational and analytical skills;
- Ability to work independently while being a strong team player;
- Be culturally sensitive and have the ability and interest to identify and work with a multi-ethnic team;
- Ability to work well under unstable security environments, and administrative and programmatic pressures;
- Advanced knowledge of usual desktop software such as Word, Excel and Outlook.
Vacancies Contact
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