BD Director, Long-Term Funding

The Purpose of the Role

• The Long Term Funding Director leads the organization’s Long Term Funding strategy, a key pillar of the organization’s BD. Through a team of specialist staff; proposal leads, recruiters, writers and prices, the team undertakes extensive monitoring, capture and proposal leadership with colleagues across the world.  
• The team of almost twenty staff are responsible for leading and delivering on some of the organization’s largest and most complex funding opportunities, This includes competitive, long-term awards, contracts, multi country and regional opportunities. The team raise funds from many of the world’s largest institutional donors, including  USAID, FCDO, World Bank, GAVI and European and other international governments. 
• The Long Term Funding Director is a member of the Business Development Management Team and the wider AMU Leaders Team. 

Overall:The role provides strategic and operational leadership across IRC’s Long Term Funding portfolio of BD, leading the Long-Term Funding strand of IRC’s Global BD Strategy. 

Strategic Leadership:The role is accountable for the Long-Term Funding Strand of the BD strategy. This is a task that requires a cross organizational effort and will therefore work closely with individual donor engagement leads, technical staff, country and regional leadership to build a strong vision and lead achievement of strategic goals. 

Team:Building an effective, engaged and well supported Long-Term Funding BD team. Promoting a culture where staff are informed, involved and valued and where IRC’s organizational culture is promoted. The BD Director will line manage a number of senior direct reports and provide leadership across the Long-Term Funding team. The role will manage BD proposal leads, writers, recruiters and also a key team of pricing leaders able to produce effective cost proposals. 

Opportunity Leadership:The role will oversee resource planning for the team and ensure capacity is available for all priority opportunities, supporting early positioning and capture, through bid development. The Director will play a role in quality assurance and escalation, working with deputies and with opportunity leads to resolve challenges and ensure high quality business development. The Director may sometimes play a direct role in bid development. The director will track and be accountable for a number of performance against parts of the organizations’ business development strategy, reporting to the Senior Director. 

Grant contract and partnership review and negotiation: The Long-Term Funding team play an important role in concluding business development by ensuring that successful bids are effectively negotiated and contracted with the right levels of due diligence and- through partnership with the compliance and policy teams- are in a position to be effectively handed over to post award colleagues for implementation. 

Capacity strengthening:The BD Director will contribute to many organizational initiatives to strengthen capacity for effective Business Development; this will include serving on cross cutting committees to improve BD processes, strengthen capacity for long term funding, and contributing to improved donor relations by supporting donor specific Donor Engagement leads. The Director will also have responsibility to cultivate the talent and knowledge base of the Long Term funding team, ensuring team members consistently emulate proposal best practices and continuously deepen their donor knowledge. 

Partnerships and relationship management: The Director works with a range of other teams including regional and technical teams to maintain a strategic view on BD priorities and plan for long term resource requirements to meet the needs of the organizational strategy. Externally the BD director will use their networks with donors and peers to position IRC as an effective consortium member and credible implementer of donor funding.

Scope and Authority Authority: the post-holder is expected to demonstrate initiative, make decisions and provide support and advice autonomously but in line with parameters laid out by the Senior Director, Business Development. The post holder will manage the Long-Term Funding team, as well as occasionally provide bid leadership for a particular proposal; and is accountable for the outputs and outcomes of the section.

Key Accountabilities and Major Responsibilities

• Manage the entire Long-Term Funding Team, contributing to a positive work culture for all team members, and to the wider department working culture reflective of IRC values. 
• Represent IRC/participate in donor/NGO events and provide feedback to relevant staff
• Participate in/deliver sessions for regional and technical events
• Oversee development of standard guidance for staff working on proposals, including but not only overview sheets on donor rules and preference and standard language/approaches for proposals
• Manage a pipeline of upcoming opportunities and circulate to key organizational staff
• Ensure upcoming donor engagement opportunities are identified and assessed in collaboration with the Donor Engagement Leads for specific donors
• Accountable for providing business development and/or donor-specific perspective as appropriate to other IRC units/initiatives
• Contribute to all identified priorities in the BD workplan, contributing towards the wider mission of the department.
• Occasionally take lead on proposals, including interpreting donor solicitations and managing the BD process to conclusion. 
• Building psychological safety within the team, promoting a listening culture and one that welcomes feedback and responds accordingly. 
• Contribute to strengthening IRC’s approach to promoting gender, diversity, equality and inclusion within the Business Development team and as part of the wider IRC. 

Person specification

• Please note that diversity of experience counts (i.e., paid and volunteer work; lived experiences; transferable skills from another industry etc.)

Essential:

Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively manage a variety of relationships in a multicultural environment;
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate equally effectively with colleagues in ‘remote’ and diverse teams, including as team leader for proposals
• The ability to work productively and accurately while under pressure in a fast-paced, demanding environment
• Flexible work attitude: the ability to work in a team environment and independently
• Ability to work autonomously and under remote management.

Experience:

• Strong leadership experience, managing and working with teams, influencing a complex organization and representing the organization at the highest levels. 
• Significant high level experience in managing capture and proposal development for opportunities that are complex or high-value nature, in particular with FCDO and/or USAID; Experience with other humanitarian donors is also a distinct advantage. 
• Experience of working in development and/or humanitarian contexts, preferably for an INGO or international organization (e.g. UN, major donor), preferably with some time spent in the field;
• Experience in proposal budgeting
• Experience in building partnerships for development and humanitarian funding as well as negotiation of programmatic and financial contractual arrangements with donors and partners.

Desirable:

• The ability to work (read and write) in Arabic, French or Spanish
• Ability to travel for short periods of time 
• Ability to facilitate project design processes, including applying theories of change and project logic to design, and develop work- and management plans accordingly
• Longer term field experience in a relevant context
• Interest in and understanding of policy and advocacy work.