IRC: Partnerships Coordinator – Kyiv

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world”s worst humanitarian crises, helping to restore health, safety, education, economic wellbeing, and power to people devastated by conflict and disaster. Founded in 1933 at the call of Albert Einstein, the IRC is one of the world”s largest international humanitarian non-governmental organizations (INGO), at work in more than 40 countries and 29 U.S. cities helping people to survive, reclaim control of their future and strengthen their communities. A force for humanity, IRC employees deliver lasting impact by restoring safety, dignity and hope to millions. If you”re a solutions-driven, passionate change-maker, come join us in positively impacting the lives of millions of people world-wide for a better future.

Job Overview:

The Partnerships Coordinator reports to the Sr. Partnerships Coordinator and is responsible for supporting the Ukraine country program in the management and oversight of partnerships. The Partnerships Coordinator will directly supervise Partnerships Managers and Senior Officers. The position is responsible for facilitating the delivery of high-quality partnerships with local organizations and will ensure compliance with IRC and donor requirements and consistency with the IRC’s partnership management system, Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results System. Working with the programs, grants, and operations departments, the Partnerships Coordinator will supervise the Partnerships team to oversee all steps in the partnership management lifecycle and will ensure that partnerships are appropriately integrated into overall project cycle management. The Coordinator fosters and promotes attitudes and values conducive to collaborative partnerships across IRC’s functional departments. This includes promoting long-term, principled partnerships that shares power, resources, and learning and elevates the knowledge and expertise of each partner.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy and Program Approach

• Support Technical and Field Coordinators in identifying and engaging with new potential partners, in line with IRC Ukraine’s strategic priorities.

• Introduce the IRC, our mission, principles and humanitarian response strategy in Ukraine to local responders and identify and cultivate relationships with groups who have similar objectives,

• Proactively engage local responders in program development and strategy validation efforts.

Promote Effective Partnerships

• Promote and apply the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results system (PEERS) with specific attention to modalities available for collaboration with local initiatives. Contribute to building a strong understanding of PEERS throughout the IRC Ukraine country program, and ensure that IRC’s partnership principles, skills and approaches are applied by staff across programs and projects with partners.

• Support the IRC Ukraine Country Program to identify and rectify implicit institutional biases when working with initiatives/groups that may not have the strategic ambition of institutionalizing, while balancing minimum requirements for safety and security, safeguarding and other key concerns in acute humanitarian response.

• Facilitate systematic partner feedback on IRC’s management of the partnership relationship, including the documentation of, and response to partner feedback.

• Create Ukraine-specific SOPs and other guidance documents, based on needs of country program staff and capturing best practices for institutional documentation.

• Represent IRC at external localization-focused events, including partner-facilitated events.

Partnership Management

• Support Sr. Partnership Coordinator in overall management of partnership portfolio.

• Support the program team in facilitation of Partnership Project Opening, Review and Closing Meetings.

• Coordinate narrative and finance reporting processes, including reviews and feedback.

• Support Partnership Managers to ensure timely and effective partner program, finance, and compliance review and reflection (monitoring).

• Support Partnership Managers to ensure project support plans are implemented in line with agreements.

• Maintain complete and organized partnership files for each partner.

• Maintain up to date Partnership Project Tracker / Monitoring Schedule.

• Process sub-awards modifications in a timely manner ensuring that the relevant IRC units (in-country and at the HQ) provide their inputs and approve the modification.

• Ensure the smooth close out of partner projects, as applicable.

• Any other relevant tasks, set by the Sr. Partnerships Coordinator.

Partner Support and Capacity Sharing

• Facilitate the collaborative development and delivery of the partner project support plan, ensuring that it appropriately addresses issues identified in the due diligence process, and coordinate with relevant departments for the timely, quality implementation of the plan.

• Ensure IRC understands partner capacity strengthening priorities, and identifies opportunities and plans for IRC to support partner capacity strengthening efforts.

• Support the resourcing of organizational development support where appropriate for partners; coordinate organizational development support to partners.

• Collaborate with technical coordinators to integrate technical capacity sharing approaches, including how IRC can learn from local partners.

• Promote and identify ways for continual learning between IRC staff and partners.

Culture of Effective and Respectful Partnerships

• With the support of the Partnership Coordinator, the Sr. Partnership Manager will also be a leader in building and promoting a culture, attitudes and values conducive to collaborative partnerships among the team, based on a clear and shared understanding of IRC”s role and approach, and core partnership principles.

• undefined

JOB REQUIREMENTS

Mandatory:

• BA degree or equivalent in International Development or Affairs, Finance, Business or related field; Advanced degree a plus – or equivalent work experience

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience with I/NGOs

• Demonstrated successful experience working with partners

• Demonstrable understanding of project planning and management cycles, and strong program design skills

• Significant knowledge of key donor rules and regulations (in particular U.S. Government, Sida, and ECHO)

• Highly organized, close attention to detail, and ability to effectively prioritize tasks in a fluid environment

• Ability to work well independently but also coordinate partnership workloads of staff not under your direct line management

• Team leadership and supervision experience and skills

• Experience in training internal staff and partner staff.

• Willingness to travel to field offices and partner locations

• Professional fluency in spoken and written English and Ukrainian/Russian; able to communicate concisely.

• Very strong English writing and editing skills; strong computer skills.

Position reports to: Sr. Partnership Coordinator

Position directly manages: Partnership Managers and Senior Officer

Other Internal and/or external contacts: The position regularly corresponds and attends meetings with external and internal audiences, thus a strong ability to communicate and maintain positive working relationships is highly desirable for this position.

Internal: Technical Coordinators, Finance, Supply Chain, MEAL

External: Partner staff

PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS

All International Rescue Committee workers must adhere to the core values and principles outlined in IRC Way – Standards for Professional Conduct. Our Standards are Integrity, Service, Equality and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Safeguarding, Conflicts of Interest, Fiscal Integrity, and Reporting Wrongdoing and Protection from Retaliation. IRC is committed to take all necessary preventive measures and create an environment where people feel safe, and to take all necessary actions and corrective measures when harm occurs. IRC builds teams of professionals who promote critical reflection, power sharing, debate, and objectivity to deliver the best possible services to our clients.

#li-1