Awards Officer

The Opportunity – Awards Officer

Post location: oPt Country Office - Ramallah

Contract Duration and Level of Effort: 1 year (Renewable)

ROLE PURPOSE: The purpose of this post is to support the Country Office (CO) in the planning, securing and managing of both development and humanitarian awards. This role will work collaboratively with Members and other departments of the Country Office programme to ensure the development of quality proposals, and smooth management and donor compliant development and humanitarian programme awards, sub awards and contracts. The person will manage a discreet portfolio of awards. The Award Officer will be responsible for ensuring that the SCI programme adheres to all its award management obligations internally within Save the Children and externally with donors.

The post holder will work closely with Program Implementation/ Operations, PDQ ACCM and Finance on proposals, financial and narrative reporting, monitoring and analysis, and compliance processes.

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.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: CO Awards Manager

Staff reporting to this post: NA

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:

Developing self and others; working effectively with others

• Build relationships with other teams to support the resolution of issues and coordination of deliverables, (i.e. proposals, reports, etc.)
• Support Awards Manager in delivery of capacity building to other teams in the CO and to partner organizations.
• Build relationships with Members, the Region and Centre and support the Awards Manager to escalate issues if required.

Communicating with impact, negotiation and coordination

• Engage with and coordinate across multiple stakeholder groups to support the development of high quality proposals.
• Support the development of high quality proposals through planning and coordination with PDQ, Finance, OPS and other teams.
• Coordinate and review donor reports including adequate planning with Budget Holders, Senior Programme Managers and Director of Operations to ensure deadlines are met.
• Communicate and coordinate with Member contacts to understand and record any changes related to donor compliance requirements and reporting dates.
• Organize and support facilitation of key awards meetings (kick off, award review, close out, etc.) with relevant budget holders, including a focus on donor requirements.
• Coordinate with auditors as necessary.

Compliance (systems, processes, donor)

• Understanding of SCI processes and key donor requirements, communication and adherence to them; support teams across CO to ensure all opportunities, proposals, donor agreements, partner agreements, contracts and amendments follow SCI processes.
• Understanding of the Awards Management System (AMS) and reporting functions, and ensure AMS is up to date to drive data quality.
• Accountable for driving AMS data completeness and quality for relevant awards.
• Ensure that all appropriate donor formats are available in-country and staff have a clear understanding of donor requirements/expectations throughout the award cycle.
• Responsible for communication of donor compliance requirements across the CO and partners.
• Ensure all partners and sub-award agreements undergo legal vetting, are input into and approved through AMS, and work with relevant staff to ensure relevant donor requirements are understood by implementing partners.
• Support close out process with relevant budget holders and work with Members to ensure awards are closed out on time.

Monitoring and Analysis

• Critical review of proposal budgets to identify budget lines for review or omitted costs.
• Work with OPS team, budget holders and Finance to coordinate the development of well costed budgets.
• Provide analysis through monitoring award processes, highlight financial issues to senior staff or Awards Manager and Budget Holders, and perform further analysis to resolve issues identified.
• Ensure regular award monitoring and facilitate regular meetings with key stakeholders to ensure individual award performance is being tracked effectively, and that risks and issues are being recognized and action taken.
• Responsible for tracking and raising issues related to: amendment requests needed; contractual/donor compliance adherence; delays in deliverables that need to be communicated to Members (proposals, reports, close out); variances against phased budget; issues regarding audits and evaluations.

Portfolio Management and Strategy

• Support Awards Manager to perform portfolio level monitoring and analysis, and follow up and resolve issues identified.
• Produce management reports and escalate identified portfolio issues in a timely manner.
• Support Awards Manager on the regular award review processes on designated awards.
• Support development of donor strategies and scoping potential opportunities to support the CO fundraising strategy.