The Grants & Partnerships Manager leads the organization's resource mobilization efforts by identifying funding opportunities, developing high-quality proposals, and maintaining a robust pipeline of institutional and corporate donors. They oversee the entire grant lifecyclefrom pre-award proposal design to post-award compliance, reporting, and closeout. Serving as a key relationship builder, this role fosters strategic collaborations with local partners, consortia, and funding bodies to maximise project impact, ensure strict adherence to donor regulations, and drive the organization's long-term sustainability.
Roles and responsibilities
- Compliance and adherence to SGDI's policies, handbooks and guidelines and a specific responsibility for Grants Management and Partnership Management policies and procedures.
- Develop and maintain an overview of all grants, donor requirements, rules and regulations, and deadlines, including filing of grant documents.
- Responsible for the administrative and technical line management of Grants & Partnership staff. This includes performance management, workforce planning, recruitment, staff induction and development and Duty of Care as per SGDI policies.
- Lead the process of developing concept notes, proposals and reports in close collaboration with programme and support teams across the Head Office and Area Offices to ensure timely and high-quality submission.
- Contribute to the development of the Head Office fundraising and business development strategy in support to the Consortium Manager.
- Manage the internal help desk on donor-related issues, including donor rules and regulations and partnership-related issues, including adherence to the local actor partnership handbook.
- Responsible for setting up and continuously improving internal grant management systems, internal ways of working and processes for partnerships; analyse and share learning from proposal and reporting processes, the downstream partnership toolkit and compliance with donor rules and regulations.
- Represent SGDI with relevant partners, donors, and other external stakeholders, as delegated by the Response Coordinator.
- Support the Programme to identify partners, assess their capacity, develop capacity-building plans, conduct and document due diligence, and transfer relevant SGDI experience and tools.
- Capacity building of staff on PCM and partnership SOPs, and donor regulations.
Specific responsibilities
- Accountable for maintaining an up-to-date Grants Tracker and sharing it with the relevant stakeholders.
- Responsible for overall quality control of SGDI's reporting and overseeing the coordination and consolidation of inputs for all donor reports. This includes ensuring consistency between narrative and financial reports, maintaining quality standards, and ensuring donor requirements are satisfied.
- Ensure that any critical financial or compliance issues are raised formally to the relevant budget holder through the PCM meetings.
- Responsible for overseeing the coordination of project revisions and modifications with the relevant stakeholders.
- Identify SGDI's organisational and donor compliance requirements and communicate them to the relevant staff members at the Head Office and area offices.
- Provide an internal helpdesk on donor rules, regulations, and templates.
- Responsible for overseeing the training and capacity building of field staff on PCM, reporting and proposal writing and ensuring delivery of required capacity building trainings in coordination with the Consortium/Program Manager.
- Contribute to the identification of lessons learnt and incorporate them into the next round of programming together with the M&E and programme teams.
- Responsible for leading the development and update of grant tools and SOPs for efficient internal grants management systems, in consultation with relevant internal stakeholders.
- Accountable for the Grants department maintaining standardised information management/filing systems for all grants documents, including SGDI's grants management system -Cycles.
- Responsible for the administrative and technical line management of Grants & Partnership Team. This includes developing work and development plans, regular performance reviews, leave approvals and Duty of Care as per SGDI policies.
Fundraising and Business Development
- Support the Consortium Manager and Response Coordinator in developing and updating the Head Office fundraising strategy and donor engagement plan, including mapping potential new funding opportunities.
- Lead and oversee all PCM processes related to fundraising and business development, including Go/NoGo meetings, proposal planning, and coordination of proposal development with internal programme and support departments.
- Coordinate the review of donor contracts and support negotiations, raising concerns on any clauses that may pose risks or challenges for SGDI.
- Oversee proposal development coordination with external partners and stakeholders, ensuring timely submission of inputs, partner participation in planning meetings, and support with negotiation on fundraising issues.
- Lead the development of the Head Office partnership strategy and relevant SOPs, aligned with SGDI's global partnership policy and tools for working with local actors.
- Support programme teams in partner identification, capacity assessments, due diligence, and capacitybuilding plans, ensuring documentation and transfer of SGDI tools and experience.
- Provide technical support to partners and coordinate with programme and support colleagues to proactively resolve conflicts and address issues arising in partnerships.
- Oversee SGDI's partnership and localisation approach, ensuring use of the downstream toolkit across the project cycle and managing the overall partnership portfolio.
- Based on Organisational Assessment Tool (OAT) results, lead the identification of partner capacitydevelopment needs and design and implement capacitybuilding initiatives in coordination with SGDI and partner staff.
- Review and provide quality assurance of partnership agreements and contractual documents required for project implementation.
- Ensure rollout of PCM processes to local partners and adherence to SGDI SOPs and contractual requirements by all SGDI partners, including national, local, and communitybased organisations.
- Advise the programme teams on partnershiprelated risks and support the development and implementation of mitigation measures.
- Maintain strong relationships with partners through regular engagement, effective communication to strengthen collaboration, address challenges proactively, and support the achievement of shared objectives.
Professional competencies
- At Minimum 5 years of experience from a grants and/or partnerships management position in a humanitarian/development context
- Experience working with humanitarian and development donors
- Experience working with implementing partners and consortiums
- Good knowledge of humanitarian donor guidelines and fundraising approaches
- Proven skills and experience in report and proposal development and working with multiple donors and partners;
- Strong communication, coordination and interpersonal skills
Context-related skills, knowledge and experience
- Contextual knowledge of the Northeast, including NGO operations within the humanitarian sector
- Fluent in English, both written and verbal
- Experience in working with INGOs, national or local NGOs
- Strong leadership skills managing teams and partners
- Strong planning, organisational, communication and interpersonal skills
- Highly approachable, trustworthy and confidential
- Strong communication, interpersonal and leadership skills
SGDI is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality, and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups, and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply.
Please note: Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
SGDI reserves the right to close the advertisement before the stated closing date if a suitable candidate is identified.
SGDI has a PSEA Policy that the successful candidate will be expected to comply with and promote.