The Grants Coordinator, in close collaboration with the Deputy Country Director Programs and members of the mission’s Senior Management Team, will ensure regular oversight, monitoring, and support to the management of the Mission’s grant portfolio, throughout all stages of the project lifecycle, from early discussions with the donor and/or organisational partners, proposal preparation, to grant compliance checks, donor visibility requirements and reporting.
The Grants Coordinator will take the lead and coordinate the process of development of high-quality funding proposals, concept notes and reports in compliance with donor regulations, and shall follow HQ and mission-level related established processes, and ensure all documentation is in line with Action Against Hunger’s internal Guidelines.
To ensure efficient processes and contract monitoring, the Grants Coordinator is expected to create and maintain tools and grant files and records, including the GESPRA system and stay updated on donor requirements. In addition, the Grants Coordinator, with support of the Grants Manager will take the lead mapping potential partners, carrying out Action Against Hunger’s partner verification procedures, and drafting and signing partner MOUs.
This is an extremely dynamic and rigorous role, requiring strong coordination and organisation skills, to ensure that all deliverables are produced in a timely manner, which can be a challenge at times. The Grans Coordinator will keep in regular contact with all staff involved in the implementation of grants, as well as donors’ focal points in charge of tasks related to the management of contracts, reporting, communication and monitoring.
While the organisation will at times hire consultants for proposal development procedures, the Grants Coordinator should have demonstrable experience in leading proposal development processes, as well as the drafting of the narratives themselves. Additionally, the Grants Coordinator is the last line in quality control of concept notes, proposals and reports that are submitted to donors, ensuring that they are aligned with organisational quality standards.
Objective 1: Identification, coordination, preparation, writing and submission of quality and timely proposals/concept notes, following Action Against Hunger’s validation processes and considering the donor guidelines
Tasks
- Under the direction of the Deputy Country Director Programs, and in consultation with Technical Coordinators (WASH/Health/FSL), MEAL Coordinator, Logistics, HR, and Admin/Fin Coordinator, the Grants Coordinator will design, coordinate, gather inputs, collect relevant information to draft full proposals (including proposal narratives, and other required annexes, such as the budget and PPP) or Concept Notes to be presented to donors. The Grants Coordinator will ensure that the proposals are written, validated and submitted on time.
- The Grants Coordinator will assist programme teams in designing Project proposals in response to various proposals such as Call for Proposals (CFP), Requests for Proposal (RFP) or Concept Notes (CN), and as such, will participate to early technical discussions with the donors, when and if feasible.
- The Grants Coordinator will follow Action Against Hunger’s Lebanon Strategic Framework and promote the harmonization of indicators and means of verification. The coordinator will ensure the respect for Action Against Hunger’s Lebanon standard operating procedures and the validation procedure defined by HQ. The coordinator will ensure that proposals take into consideration Gender, Protection and Accountability Guidelines, according to Action Against Hunger policies.
- The Grants coordinator will ensure that proposals and concept notes are drafted in accordance with donor frameworks, guidelines and language and are at the highest quality.
- The Grants Coordinator will coordinate any donor feedback and ensure timely submission of requested feedback and resubmission
- The Grants Coordinator will liaise with ACF HQ and donors in following-up/tracking of submitted proposals, to support the Mission’s budgetary planning.
- The Grants Coordinator will lead and support the drafting process of proposals and concept notes together with the Technical Coordinators
- The Grants Coordinator will track donor strategies, present them at the bi-monthly SMT meetings, and will ensure comprehensive follow up of changes in donor guidelines with support of the Grants Manager.
Objective 2: Coordinate and lead the production and submission of quality and timely donor reports
Tasks
- Coordinate donor reporting processes as outlined at mission and HQ level, with the relevant departments to collect the information/inputs and ensure the timely submission of high-quality programmatic reports
- Coordinate with Admin/Finance Coordinator or Deputy Country Director to ensure timely submission of financial reports.
- Assist field teams in drafting of donor reports by ensuring that reports are in accordance with donor requirements and are submitted on time
- Liaise with either HQ or donor in following-up/tracking of submitted reports
- When feasible, ensure that reporting requirements are kept minimal for the Mission and that processes are streamlined and efficient.
- Follow up on the reporting Tracker, ensure the Grants Manager presents them to all relevant departments on a weekly basis, and oversees the presentation of the Reporting Tracker at the SMT meetings
Objective 3: Grant Management & Donor relations and Intelligence
Tasks
- Maintain an updated calendar of project report obligations and project development, and ensure key staff are aware of it and respect the deadlines by sharing it regularly with the SMT and HQ project manager. This includes the maintenance of the related sections in GESPRA (Online Project Management Tool), at least on a weekly basis.
- In coordination with the Deputy Country Director Programs, liaise with HQ staff (throughout the Action Against Hunger International network, including the Donor Relations Unit and with Madrid HQ Operations) on potential funding opportunities, as and when requested, including donor’s mapping/intelligence.
- Support the Deputy Country Director Programs in booking regular meetings with the International Donor Relations Unit (iDru) to share regular updates regarding strategic directions of donors, potential upcoming calls and other relevant donor intelligence
- Ensure comprehensive grant files are created and regularly updated and are available for use. Provide briefing papers and support the development of external communication tools relevant for donor visits/meetings.
- Set up and constantly update database for donor guidelines and regulations and create fact sheets for main donors.
- Inform programme and support teams on any changes to existing donor guidelines and regulations
- Act as a focal point for the Mission for external communications with donors for all grant management and reporting matters
- Act as focal point with the Bases (Beirut, Zahle, South) for organising donor field visits, preparing agendas and submitting them to donors
- Coordination with Admin/Finance Coordinator on donor compliance issue and contractual issues
- Follow up with Programme Managers and Technical Coordinators on Programme Implementation and collection of data according to means of verification, from kick-off meeting to contract closure, to allow pro-activeness in the monitoring of the grant and related tasks (such as ad-hoc donor requirements or extension/amendment requests)
- Support Programme Teams (and if applicable, communication officer) in ensuring donor visibility requirements are met and, in the planning, and organisation of donor field visits.
- If time allows: Efficiently coordinate with and provide support to Deputy Country Director Programs in coordination tasks with consortium partners and organisational partners (sub-grants)
Objective 4 : Partnerships
- Lead with coordination with the Technical Coordinators and the Deputy Country Director Programs on developing a comprehensive partnership strategy and mapping of new and existing partners
- Conduct the Action Against Hunger Partner validation procedure on all new and upcoming partners for Action Against Hunger programs
- Prepare and ensure the validation of MOUs with new partners, comprehensive revisions of contents of the MOUs, and signatures for all procedures related to partnership
- Ensure partnership strategy is well aligned with external agreements
- Participate in the LHIF localisation working group and other relevant external foras
Objective 5 : Security
Tasks
- Respect the security rules specified in the mission and base security plan, see to it that the team under his/her responsibility complies with the security plan and perform the security management tasks that can be assigned in its protocols.
- Communicate to the security managers of the working location any security related information or noncompliance with the security plan
Objective 6 : Support humanitarian activities of Action Against Hunger
Tasks
- Support the emergency interventions of the organization as per the employee’s abilities.
- Support any activity that helps reaching our humanitarian goals, as per the employee’s abilities.
- Promote gender equality within the humanitarian and/or development work