Head of Awards, Localisation and Partnerships

The Opportunity –Head of Awards, Localisation and Partnerships

Post location: Ramallah - Country Office

Contract Duration and Level of Effort: 1 year

This role will work collaboratively with members and other departments of the oPT Country Office programme to ensure smooth management of development and humanitarian programme awards, sub awards and contracts, focusing on donor compliance and accountability. This position will also be responsible to build the capacity of staff and partner organizations.

In the event of a major humanitarian emergency, the role holder will be expected to work outside the normal role profile and be able to vary working hours accordingly.

Reports to: Director of Programme Operations.

Staff reporting to this post: Awards Coordinator, Localisation & Partnerships Transformation Manager, and technical supervisor for the Awards Manager in Gaza.

Budget Responsibilities: NA

• Ensure that award management systems and processes are successfully implemented across the life of an award and key controls are in place to support effective management of the funding portfolio and compliance with the donor requirements.
• Provide coordination to proposal development and review processes when necessary, ensuring all staff inputs happen in timely and effective manner and advise on donor compliance requirements to ensure high quality and one time proposals.
• Play a leading role in Award Kick-Off meetings to ensure that all award information is shared effectively with relevant staff across the field office and country office including partners.
• Establish required systems for regular monitoring of relevant awards across the country office and respective implementing states and facilitate regular meetings with key stakeholders to support the Program Implementation Managers to ensure that performance on individual awards is tracked effectively, risks and issues are flagged and action taken as appropriate.
• Monitor the amendments required on current awards; ensure this is communicated to members and donors in a timely fashion and clear completion plans are in place for revised budget and activities.
• Support the finance team on master budget development, cost allocation, monitoring of award budgets, phasing and forecasting, in particular ensuring alignment between the master budget and funding tracker.
• Co-ordinate with respective budget holders to ensure budgets are correctly phased.
• Regularly analyse financial issues i.e. variances and resolve by collaborating with Program teams.
• Exhibit strong financial skills including budget development, and monitoring of spend across award portfolio.
• Handle issues of concern on portfolio (sustainability, compliance etc).
• Coordinate the processes for donor reporting to ensure that reports are high quality, delivered on time and supported by auditable records. This includes assessing and making recommendations to improve the reconciliation process (reporting assurance mechanism) between Finance, Supply Chain, Distribution, MEAL that will ensure accountable reporting to donors.
• Maintain a reporting tracker, awards tracker and share regularly with stakeholders within Save the Children in oPT.
• Responsible and accountable for award closeout planning and processes and work with FO, CO, Regional Office and Members to ensure awards are closed out on time.
• Maintain effective communications with Save the Children members, providing them with timely updates on their awards and flagging potential issue promptly.
• Provide regular management information to the Director of Programme Operations on the performance of the country office portfolio.

• Support all functions to ensure donor requirements are understood and complied with.
• Ensure that all appropriate donor formats are available in-country and that key contributing staff have a clear understanding of donor requirements and expectations at the proposal, kick off, amendment, reporting, close out and audit stage of awards.
• Ensure potential issues and amendment requests are flagged promptly to Director of Programme Operations and follow up to ensure that this is flagged up via the relevant Save the Children member and then the donor. This may include developing business cases where donor waiver/derogation requests need to be more thoroughly articulated or negotiated with donors.
• Work with internal and external auditors as necessary.

• Advance the localisation strategy and promote a locally led response, ensuring national partners play a central role in assessment, design, implementation, and decision-making, with capacity-sharing and equitable partnership principles embedded across all programs.
• Work with relevant program staff to ensure all implementing partners undergo legal vetting and capacity assessment prior to commencing work with Save the Children, are engaged with appropriate agreements and effective monitoring systems are in place so…