Senior Grants Manager

Based in Beirut, with some travel to other regions where IRC projects are implemented, this position will be critical part of the grants team. Reporting to the Grants Coordinator, this position will work closely with sector leads, finance, and operations on compliance, donor regulations, reporting, and business development. In addition, this role will work alongside the Partnership unit to ensure that IRC’s local partners are effectively engaged at each stage of the award cycle in alignment with the IRC’s partnership strategy.

Major Responsibilities:

Award Management:

• Manage a portfolio of multi-sectoral projects and ensure that IRC awards in Lebanon are well-administered and implemented in compliance with the relevant donor regulations and IRC procedures.
• Take the lead on internal and external reporting with programs and finance, ensuring high-quality, well-written and timely reports meeting donor and IRC requirements. Maintain close collaboration with all relevant departments in preparation of donor reports.

• Work closely with Partnership colleagues to ensure forward planning and preparation for donor report writing, adherence with IRC-NY and IRC-UK requirements and timelines, and timely submission of sub-grantee reports.
• Ensure quality information management related to grants by overseeing the regular maintenance of reporting calendars, and updating of internal IRC documentation and Grants team tools and processes.
• Lead monthly grant monitoring meetings to ensure that awards are implemented in compliance with the IRC and relevant donor regulations and to ensure strong financial management, proper operational openings and closings of grants, and monitoring and evaluation of programmatic progress. Support the follow-up on action points from meetings.

New Business Development:

•  Lead program design meetings for new business development opportunities with relevant program, finance, operations and field staff.
• Lead on proposal development processes for new opportunities, including coordination of inputs from Coordinators and the review process by HQ.

• Engage with senior management to address any issues during the proposal development process.
• Work with Grants Officer to ensure proposals are tracked with standard IRC tracking tools (e.g. FM01, OTIS).
• Assist in compiling and editing budgets and ensure communication and coordination between all departments (finance, programs, and operations) in drafting and development of budgets according to both IRC and donor regulations.

Donor Engagement:

• Represent the IRC to possible new donors, demonstrating strong communication skills and understanding of both donor and IRC programming priorities.
• Maintain responsive and clear communications with donor focal points on ongoing projects within portfolio.
• Develop strategic and responsive pitches and programming materials to support proactive fundraising efforts.

Compliance and Knowledge Management:

• Maintain a broad and deep understanding of donor policies, regulations, and procedures and build this knowledge among grants team members.
• Proactively identify compliance risks throughout the portfolio and advise programs, operations, finance and senior management on necessary actions. Assist program technical leads and operations staff with understanding the reporting and other compliance requirements on their grants.
• Build capacity of other IRC staff in report writing, proposal development, budget management, indicator tracking, IRC-specific tools, and other topics as/if needed.
• Conduct monitoring visits to field locations to observe and understand the progress of project implementation, security protocols permitting.
• Keep documentation of institutional knowledge and program activities in coordination with relevant sector supervisors and coordinators.
• Organize and facilitate grants meetings to be held in the field.

Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to:Grants Coordinator
Position directly supervises:NA

Indirect Reporting: NA
Other Internal and/or external contacts: describe the nature of departments or groups the position influences or requires support from to accomplish objectives.

Internal: The Senior Grants Manager will coordinate grants meetings and review/submission of documents to IRC HQ and/or donors with Program units, Supply Chain, Finance and HR, as well as the senior management team and work closely with the Partnership team to ensure reporting and grant-specific requirements are being met by local partners.

External:The Senior Grants Manager will liaise with donors and local NGO partners.