VSO International Job for a Programme Development & Funding Manager

VSO is the world's leading independent international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries. Our highimpact approach brings people together
to share skills, build capabilities, promote international understanding and action to change lives and make the world a fairer place.

VSO is recruiting to fill the position below:



Job Title: Programme Development & Funding Manager (PDFM)
Location: Abuja
Responsible to: Country Director
Purpose of Role

• To lead donor engagement and proposal development in line with VSO Nigeria strategy, including the development of partnerships and consortium, writing narrative proposals and developing project budgets.

• Ensuring funding strategy aligns to signature packages; work with country office and programme funding manager to ensure funding plans reflect programme strategy and appropriate national and regional donor mapping is up to date
• Support Country Office to respond to funding opportunities from institutional donors, trusts & foundations, the corporate sector and major donors (directly and/or through coordinated support from global funding and programme teams);
• Advise on, and support the development of, consortia with other I/NGOs to ensure VSO is well positioned for upcoming funding opportunities

• Support local engagement with partners and donors - advising the country team on appropriate and prioritized engagement strategies; participate in local INGO forums, thematic groups etc,
• Gather donor intelligence from partner and donor meetings to feed into country and regional planning
• Where necessary, provide presentation materials (e.g. signature packages, concept notes, briefings) for country office staff to use for donor / partner meetings

• Support the collation of evidence based Country Office programme design through the creation of programme strategy documents (including signature packages)
• Ensure programme design is informed by and aligns with donor trends and national development priorities - identify additional relevant development interventions, including advocacy, and cross cutting themes as appropriate
• Support the local contextualisation of VSO's global flagship frameworks

• Evaluate bids against country / programme strategy to support their go / no go decisions
• Write proposals and concept notes as required
• Participate as member of bid team including as: proposal lead, reviewer, content provider; facilitate proposal development workshops as needed

• For secured contracts, facilitate grant start up; support programme team to design and implement appropriate monitoring & evaluation systems
• Monitor spend rates and delivery toward agreed upon targets; write reports for donors, provide ongoing local donor / partner engagement during implementation,

• Support capacity building and training of country office team and local partners on proposal development and help conduct trainings to continually build capacity and promote effective and efficient processes
• Share learning, knowledge and tools with larger organisation to advance good practice and innovation

• Amount of proposals submitted and the value of those applications
• Success rate of applications

• Donor engagement strategies development and pursued in country
• Partnerships with consortia partners agreed (teaming agreements and MOUs signed)

• Evaluation feedback from CO and wider VSO team is positive
• Quality of documents and tools leads to replication and adaptation within VSO and beyond

• Signature packages are completed for country office
• Flagship frameworks are locally contextualised
• Information about CO fundraising priorities are shared with Donor Managers across VSO in market places & other forum

• Successfully leads proposals teams and participates as a reliable and positive team-member in all working relationships

• Requests and follows up on appropriate support from others; raises concerns about uncooperative colleagues in an appropriate way.

• Offers constructive advice to others and provides ongoing coaching throughout the proposal development process

• Builds confidence and excitement in VSO's work and vision, both internally and externally; suggests innovative projects.

• Advances strategic project

• Adopts a goal-oriented, problem-solving team mentality and ensures timely, high quality results.

• Inspires others by: advocating plans and ideas within and outside VSO;

• Leads initiatives that improve knowledge management; develops others' knowledge management skills

• Contributes ideas to improve processes, policies and approaches; is a role model for continuous learning and improvement.

• Organizes own and others' work to meet objectives; clarifies accountability of roles; seeks ways to generate and save money.

• Extensive experience in multi-sector programme design in several countries
• Experience with participatory research, evaluation and consultations as used in workshop facilitation and situational analysis
• Experience of preparing compelling, high quality documentation (concept notes, presentations, proposals, budgets, reports, etc) for different partner and donor audiences
• Strong interpersonal skills, including written, verbal and presentation skills used in international settings -experience of leading and facilitating workshops and training
• Ability to be self-directed and take initiative within organisational mandates - sound judgement and strong administrative and organisational skills
• Experience of establishing partnerships between organisations including teaming agreement and consortia bid development
• Proven track record in writing winning donor proposals for donors including USAID, EC, UKAID, SIDA and UN Agencies - including proven ability to develop log frames, monitoring frameworks, and theories of change

• Education at Bachelor's level or equivalent in development studies, social sciences and or relevant feild;
• IT skills including fluency in Microsoft office suite and database usage.