The Opportunity – Business Development Manager (BDM)
Post location: oPt Country Office (CO) located in Ramallah.
Contract Duration and Level of Effort: 12 months with possible extension.
***Due to the urgency to fill this role, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Kindly note that the position might be filled before the vacancy announcement is closed; therefore, early applications are encouraged.***
***This role will be contingent upon securing available funds, and we might use this vacancy to fill more than one post.***
ROLE PURPOSE:
The Business Development Manager (BDM) for the oPt Country Office (CO) will support the Country Director (CD) and Head of Business Development in business development in the CO by maintaining strategic relationships with donors and partners, actively tracking and analysing country pipelines and portfolios including linkages to broader regional initiatives, capture planning for key must win in-country opportunities, and for ensuring that well-coordinated and competitive proposal management processes are used.
The role will actively seek to grow the country office’s income and funding base through various strategic initiatives. This includes improving insights into country pipelines and new opportunities, linking them with broader regional initiatives; in collaboration with the Head of Business Development, leading on donor engagement planning and opportunity tracking, developing and reviewing strategic approaches to fundraising, and enhancing capture planning.
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: Head of Business Development
Staff reporting to this post: None, but the Business development Manager will be expected to support in building the capacities of the Proposal Coordinators**.**
Role Dimensions: The oPt CO operates in a highly complex context with multi-member interest, a funding ambition of $75 million, and approximately over 70 staff, which is rapidly expanding due to the current situation.
Key working relationships: Engages internally with the Resource Mobilisation team at SCI MEEE Regional Office (RO), Advocacy, Campaigns, Communications and Media, Programme Development and Quality (PDQ) and Technical Experts (TEs), Operations, Finance, Awards, Risk and Compliance and Human Resources (HR) teams to coordinate deliverables and responsibilities across the Country Office.
KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITY:
Key Area 1: Partnership and relationship management – 25%
- Maintains donor relationships, gathers business intelligence, and generates new funding opportunities.
- Supports donor engagement by developing external communications products, conducting donor research, and updating donor landscape study.
- Collect and analyse background information to develop prospect profiles and perform analysis to recommend donor’s giving capacity.
- Ensure strong relationships and regular communication with MOs.
- Works closely with Awards colleagues to ensure Awards Management System (AMS) is up to date and to ensure seamless handoff between proposal and agreement stages.
- Periodic participation in external working groups, roundtables, high level meetings, conferences, and sector events.
Key Area 2: Portfolio and Pipeline Management – 20%
- Coordinates the proposal development process for strategic or complex funding opportunities.
- Ensure the COs pipeline is up to date. Support in identifying thematic/programme gaps, co-financing gaps, and operational sustainability gaps.
- Support CO to conduct portfolio analysis, donor landscape mapping, and fundraising strategy development, as required.
Key Area 3: Capture Planning and Opportunity Preparation – 15%
- Ensure that the CO collaborates effectively with the RO and members to gather and assess donor, partner, and internal information relevant to upcoming major opportunities.
- Strengthen the CO capability on long-term capture planning for upcoming funding opportunities (i.e. competitor analysis, internal SWOT analysis, etc.) and support the development of donor specific communications/products.
- Conduct research into regional/sector trends as well as new and emerging donors.
- Establish a strong, collaborative, and efficient proposal process, as required, and proactively address challenges that may hinder the proposal development process.
Key Area 4: Capacity Strengthening & Knowledge Management – 15%
- With guidance and support from Head of Business supports CO BD, TE, Finance, Awards Management, PDQ staff with capacity building around BD.
- Provides support to Senior Proposal Officers, coaching them in bid management.
- Supports on the delivering of trainings to the CO on specific donors as well as best practice BD approaches and processes.
- Act as a source of knowledge, information on internal BD processes, and donor intelligence, requirements, and compliance considerations.
- Ensure best practice ways of working by attending Communities of Practice and embedding best practice into country ways or working.
- Regularly reviews standard inputs for proposals such as capability statements, country context and programmes experience, to ensure they are strong and relevant, and updates as needed.
Key Area 5- Proposal Coordination– 25%
- Coordinates the proposal development process for strategic or critical funding opportunities with PDQ Technical Specialists including MEAL, Operations, Security, Awards Management, Finance, and HR (as needed).
- Produce proposal development schedules and track timelines, ensuring and facilitating coordination amongst teams (i.e. PDQ/TE, Operations, Finance, Supply Chain, HR, and Security).
- Draft key sections of the proposals that are standard inputs – such as capability statements, country context, and programme experience, while drawing on the expertise of technical specialists, MEAL, Operations, Finance, HR and Security.
- Strengthen CO capabilities to facilitate effective in-person and online proposal design workshops, and undertake design workshop facilitation, including developing work plans and lessons learned.
- Review proposals for overall quality and compliance.
In order to be successful, you will bring/have:
QUALIFICATIONS
- Development Professional with a relevant Masters’ Degree and /or equivalent professional experience.
- Background in donor and relationship management, strategic portfolio analysis and planning, and change management required.
EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
Essential:
- 5+ years demonstrated professional experience in identifying and securing funding from major government donors, multilateral agencies, corporate donors and/or foundations or philanthropies (i.e. USAID, DFID/FDCO, DEVCO/ECHO, UNICEF, etc.).
- Demonstrated experience in coordinating and/or supporting with the development of funding proposals to institutional donors.
- Demonstrated ability to solve complex issues through critical thinking, analysis, definition of a clear way forward and ensuring buy in.
- Proven record of accomplishment in institutional, foundations, individual, and/or corporate partnership building.
- Experience in strategic decision making and planning, and the ability to analyse data and information with a focus on competitiveness.
- A high degree of attention to detail and the ability to lead key tasks (i.e. proposal development) to on-time completion under significant pressure.
- Highly developed networking skills and ability to form productive working relationships with a wide range of internal colleagues (e.g. program technical, awards compliance, finance, program operations) and external stakeholders.
- Well-developed interpersonal and communication skills including communicating with impact, influencing, negotiating, and coaching.
- Strong results orientation, with the ability to challenge existing mind-sets.
- A high degree of flexibility and adaptability in order to respond to changing needs. Ability and willingness to change work practices and hours in the event of major emergencies including travelling at short notice and for extended periods of time.
- Experience in project and change management related to organisational development projects and international, cross-functional teams with a proven history of delivering results.
- Highly developed cultural awareness and ability to work well with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.
- Fluency in English, both verbal and written.
- Commitment to Save the Children values, including willingness to abide by and enforce the Child Safeguarding policy.
Desirable
- Fluency in Arabic is highly desirable.
- Previous experience with capacity building, learning, or training initiatives, ideally in the BD sector.
- Proven ability to write persuasive, competitive, and compliant narrative proposals for institutional donors.
- A detailed understanding on funding mechanisms for development work such as Save the Children’s.
We offer a competitive package in the context of the sector**.**
Save the Children promotes a diverse and inclusive work environment, women and people with different abilities are strongly encouraged to apply.
The Organisation
Save the Children works in development and humanitarian contexts with children and partners to help families, communities, and governments identify and use innovations to ensure all children survive, learn and are protected.
We employ approximately 25,000 people across the globe and work on the ground in over 100 countries to help children affected by crises, or those that need better healthcare, education and child protection. We also campaign and advocate at the highest levels to realize the right of children and to ensure their voices are heard.
We are working towards three breakthroughs in how the world treats children by 2030:
• No child dies from preventable causes before their 5th birthday
• All children learn from a quality basic education and that,
• Violence against children is no longer tolerated
We know that great people make a great organization, and that our employees play a crucial role in helping us achieve our ambitions for children. We value our people and offer a meaningful and rewarding career, along with a collaborative and inclusive environment where ambition, creativity, and integrity are highly valued.