Mercy Corps exists to alleviate suffering, poverty, and oppression by helping people build secure, productive, and just communities. The agency pursues its mission through emergency relief services, sustainable community development, partnering closely with civil society, and facilitating economic development. Mercy Corps has been present in the Middle East since the 1980s and currently has offices in Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq. Working in Lebanon since 1993, Mercy Corps has implemented community development programs focused on promoting economic development and increased opportunity for disadvantaged communities, while at the same time responding to emergencies as they occur in the country. In 2012, the program portfolio shifted in response to the massive refugee influx from Syria. Since then, Mercy Corps Lebanon has solidified its portfolio, integrating emergency response programming with longer-term development programming by focusing on the following key sectors: Child and Youth Protection, Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH), Local Governance and Conflict Mitigation, Agriculture, Livelihoods and Economic Development, and Food Security.
Program / Department Summary
The Performance and Quality Unit (PaQ) collaborates with program teams, supporting departments and partners to use evidence to design and deliver relevant and impactful programs that improve the lives of program participants. The PaQ unit supports team development and assists teams to manage grants and reporting, as well as to design and implement robust monitoring, evaluation, and accountability systems that prove impact, inform areas for improvement, and ensure accountability to the principles of good program management, as well as to our end participants and other stakeholders. The PaQ unit also actively contributes to the development of new programs. The PaQ unit consists of the PaQ Manager, the MERL technical specialist, the Reporting & IM Specialist and the Senior Accountability and Reporting Officer.
General Position Summary
The Mercy Corps team in Lebanon is looking to hire a Senior Grants & Reporting Advisor on a temporary basis (4 months temporary assignment) to support the Program Performance and Quality (PaQ) team. The primary function of this role is to assist with grants management, reporting and proposal development, while also refining and strengthening the grants management processes currently in place. Working closely with the PaQ Manager, they will be responsible for 1) supporting teams in making sure that all programs comply with program minimum quality standards; 2) building on current systems and identifying gaps and developing new tools and processes accordingly; 3) ensuring program information is systematically and safely stored; 4) coordinating report revisions and information gathering for external coordination mechanisms and 5) contributing to proposal development activities as needed. In addition, it is expected that the Senior Grants and Reporting Advisor will provide a detailed handover with the permanent team member upon her return from maternity leave to ensure capacity building on the newly developed grants management systems.
REPORTING
● Coordinate report revisions and information gathering for external coordination mechanisms
● Compile and maintain a database of the status of reporting for all active and recently closed grants (reporting tracker), and help produce statistics on report submission
● Communicate timelines for inputs into and review of reports, and help ensure adherence to key calendar deadlines through regular deadline reminders and escalating late reports as appropriate
● Carry out the initial review of all reports, and review all subsequent versions to ensure all comments have been addressed and revisions made as appropriate
● Liaise with Mercy Corps Headquarters to follow up on submission/review timelines
GRANTS MANAGEMENT
● Update and maintain Mercy Corps’ grants management systems
● Compile and share required donor requirements and templates a to responsible staff
● Work with teams to provide additionally requested information in relation to reports from donors and/ or Headquarters promptly and accurately and make necessary revisions based on feedback
● Ensure program information for existing and new grants is systematically and safely stored
● Support in the organization of program initiation meetings, program close out meetings and monthly Budget vs Actuals (BVA) meetings and ensure documentation is done accordingly
DOCUMENTATION AND ARCHIVING
● Maintain the centralized program filing system for Mercy Corps Lebanon on Google Drive, and manage access permissions for the G-Drive, in close coordination with the IT team
● Ensure all new programs adapt the suggested folder structure to respond to their needs, and designate who from their team is responsible for maintaining the different folders
● Complete the document retention tracker check on a quarterly basis and coordinate with the program teams, and manage the review process with supporting departments
● Support program teams during the close out phase to ensure all documentation (electronic and hardcopy) is in place and is filed appropriately
● Work with the operations team to ensure appropriate hard-copy filing for programmatic documents
● Maintain and regularly update the SOPs for maintenance of hard-copy filing to reflect any changes in management of archiving
PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT
● Support with coordination of proposal development processes, including partnership development, design processes, and ensuring that a workplan for proposal development is established and the proposal development team is on track
● Support with writing of proposals, including well-sourced context and background sections
● Ensure all new proposals under development have folders on the g-drive and ensure all submitted proposals are filed appropriately
COORDINATION & INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
● Lead on ensuring reporting for interagency coordination is completed in a timely and accurate manner (e.g., LCRP, UN, and LHIF reporting)
● Liaise with the Inter-Agency Coordination Unit, as well as the Lebanon Humanitarian INGO Forum (LHIF), and other working and coordination groups as a Focal Point on all reporting, including Financial, MEL, Programmatic updates, and others.
● Ensure all programs are reporting against ActivityInfo indicators: make sure each program has identified the ActivityInfo indicators they will report on during program initiation, send out reminder emails, and check whether we have uploaded for all relevant sectors on a monthly basis
PROGRAM QUALITY
● Support teams in making sure that all programs comply with program minimum quality standards
● Coordinate Project DPro, Program DPro, and FMD Pro certification training and tests, including invigilation of tests
● Support the Program Development and Quality Unit with other tasks as assigned;
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITY: None
ACCOUNTABILITY: Reports directly to the PaQ Manager
WORKS DIRECTLY WITH: Director of Programs, MERL Technical Specialist, Program Managers and program teams
Mercy Corps team members are expected to support all efforts toward accountability, specifically to our program participants, community partners, other stakeholders, and to international standards guiding international relief and development work. We are committed to actively engaging communities as equal partners in the design, monitoring and evaluation of our field projects.
● Bachelor’s Degree in a related field required; Master’s Degree desirable
● Minimum of two years’ experience from working in an INGO, preferably in both humanitarian and development programs
● Experience with grants management and reporting of an NGO
● Good understanding of the program design process, including capacity to prepare coherent and consistent documents (including log frames, workplans and budgets)
● Knowledge of key donors and their requirements, including the AFD, GAC, ECHO, UN agencies, FCDO, and OFDA/USAID, is a great asset
● Ability to analyze and summarize information, evaluate options and to think and plan strategically
● Experience with coordinating between different teams both at the national level and HQ level
● Demonstrated experience writing and reviewing quality English products under tight deadlines (please annex a writing sample to your submission)
● Experience with NGO proposal development processes
● Excellent organizational skills, great coordination capacities and ability to work autonomously
● Ability to work calmly under pressure in a rapidly changing, multi-cultural context, whilst adhering to strict deadlines
● Good interpersonal, communication and presentation skills
● Fluency in written and spoken English required, Arabic is a strong asset
SUCCESS FACTORS:
The successful Senior Grants & Reporting Advisor will be bright, energetic, hard-working and eager to learn. They will take a deep personal interest in humanitarian and development assistance. They will be attentive to detail and able to carry out assigned tasks in a timely manner and according to a very high standard of quality. They will be creative and flexible, contributing to developing and encouraging new and innovative solutions, but at the same time will not have any difficulty in adhering to systems and procedures. They will strictly follow all protocols related to safety and security, and holds self accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modeling Mercy Corps’ values
The position is based in Beirut, Lebanon. The country is currently going through an important economic crisis that has some effect on the living conditions, access to basic services and infrastructure.
In support of our belief that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities we serve, we empower all team members to dedicate 5% of their time to learning activities that further their personal and/or professional growth and development
This vacancy is archived.