The Purpose of the Role

The Program/Business Development Advisor will work on a team to contribute to IRC’s overall new business development efforts by engaging with global, regional, country, and technical staff throughout the business development cycle from opportunity tracking and capture planning to proposal development, and submission. The PDA will serve as proposal manager for large and complex institutional donor opportunities, as well as support positioning and capture efforts. The ideal candidate will have a successful track record of leading large-scale and complex new business efforts in international development with particular emphasis on FCDO and USAID. Although this role will focus predominantly on FCDO and USAID, the successful candidate will serve an important surge support function and may work with other donors including ECHO, SIDA, World Bank, and others.

Key Working Relationships

• Country Teams, Technical Units, Peer agencies, Local Partners

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES

Bid leadership and coordination (70%)

• Lead and support proposal development for primarily FCDO and USAID opportunities, including capture strategy, management of proposal teams, calendars, and deadlines; strategy development with technical staff; partner identification and negotiations; recruiting; writing; production; and after-action reviews.
• Collaborate with IRC’s pricing team, ensuring technical coherence with the cost proposal.
• Review and/or draft expressions of interest, concept notes, and proposals to ensure quality and compliance with donor standards.
• Occasionally serve in support role for other IRC donors including ECHO, SIDA, World Bank and others. Support may include short term capture, submission, or quality review.

Business Development process improvement and knowledge management (10%)

• Conducts After Action Reviews and captures learning to disseminate to wider organization
• Contributes to and models the use of standard business development processes, tools, templates and information.

Partnerships and Strategy (20%)

• Conducts landscape analyses to identify most strategic partnerships in FCDO and USAID markets with a particular focus on fostering local partnerships.
• Strengthen collaboration with internal stakeholders including country teams, technical units, and other team members.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Essential

Skills, Knowledge and Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field, including international relations, political science, public administration, and communications.
• At least two years of focused experience working with UK and US Government donors.
• Training or familiarity with Shipley Proposal Development process highly desirable;
• Fluency in English with proficiency in one other language (French, Spanish, German, Arabic) highly desirable.

Experience:

• Successful track record leading large proposal teams on complex subject, multi-year, multi-partner proposals with minimal supervision.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, including the ability to effectively manage a variety of relationships in a multicultural environment;
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate equally effectively with colleagues in ‘remote’ and diverse teams, including as team leader for proposals;
• The ability to work productively and accurately while under pressure in a fast-paced, demanding environment;
• Ability to travel internationally (up to 20% of time);