Position Title: Senior Business Development Manager
Position Status: Full time
Vacancies: 1
Supervisor(s): Co-Executive Director or Director of Business Development
Location: Washington, DC
Salary: Determined by Collective Bargaining Agreement. PartnersGlobal offers a competitive salary and benefits package.
This position is in-person and is based in Washington, D.C. and employees must be based in or near Washington, D.C. for the tenure of their employment. This position is covered under a Collective Bargaining Agreement between PartnersGlobal and the Office and Professional Employees International Union, Local 2, AFL-CIO.
ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND:
PartnersGlobal (previously Partners for Democratic Change), established in 1989, is an international, non-governmental organization committed to building sustainable capacity to advance democratic institutions, civil society, and a culture of peaceful change and conflict management worldwide. PartnersGlobal specializes in organizational development and social entrepreneurship, having provided the seed capital and technical assistance to establish 21 independent, local Centers around the world.
PartnersGlobal adheres to the values of participatory decision-making, collaboration, and consensus-building as the fundamentals of an inclusive, democratic society; and we promote the application of these skills in all aspects of our work. The PartnersGlobal team includes process and technical experts, facilitators, and trainers who apply those collaborative skills to achieve concrete results in technical areas such as rule of law development, women’s empowerment, security sector reform, and natural resource management. Our network of local Centers is renowned for undertaking cutting-edge work and applying our process expertise to convene disparate parties to jointly tackle some of the most complex development challenges.
POSITION OVERVIEW:
PartnersGlobal is seeking one (1) Senior Business Development Manager (SBD Manager) to coordinate new business and proposal development across all major U.S. government, bilateral, and private funders. This is an exciting opportunity to work across regional and technical teams and in partnership with pioneering local civil society actors and activists around the world to design and develop high-quality programming in service of PartnersGlobal’s mission. The SBD Manager further cultivates relationships with funders and partners and advances thought leadership around the organization’s three focus areas—Civil Society Strengthening, Accountable Governance, and Conflict Transformation—through high-level external representation. Partners is committed to local leadership and trust-based partnership, and the SBD Manager serves as the organizational lead in promoting these values throughout the business development process.
DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
The SBD Manager’s responsibilities include but are not limited to:
BD Strategy
- Together with organizational leadership, coordinate the design and regular review of the organization’s BD strategy and definition of win themes.
- Ensure dissemination of the BD strategy and win themes across PartnersGlobal’s various teams and serve as a contact point on the BD strategy for all staff.
BD Capture
- Identify and select strategic opportunities for the organization based on organizational priorities and market analysis.
- Maintain opportunity records and develop appropriate systems, procedures, policies, and materials to effectively track opportunities.
- Serve as capture manager for select opportunities, leading teams in Go/No-Go discussions, analysis, and pre-positioning for upcoming proposals.
- Develop and support the implementation of opportunity-specific capture plans, including the development of win themes.
- Identify and cultivate relationships with local and international partners, including supporting the development of teaming arrangements with potential partners.
Proposal Management and Development
- Serve as proposal manager for select opportunities, leading teams through the full proposal development process, including kickoff meetings, design sessions, color team reviews, submission, and debriefs.
- Facilitate proposal design sessions and provide substantive and strategic feedback to contribute to innovative and competitive proposals.
- Ensure timely completion of proposal milestones.
- Contribute to proposal writing as needed.
- Facilitate budget development processes, coordinating across teams to ensure the submission of compliant and winning cost proposals.
- Ensure quality control and compliance with solicitation requirements to maintain eligibility of all bids.
- Submit proposals and lead funder follow-up.
- Analyze bid performance to ensure lessons and conclusions are shared and fed back into future bids.
Relationship Management
- Serve as point of contact and speak with authority on PartnersGlobal’s activities, including with funders, at external events, and through relationships with other organizations and individuals with whom PartnersGlobal shares complementary interests and competencies.
- Represent PartnersGlobal at key events and forums and provide institutional knowledge and support to program teams in meetings with donors.
- Design external events organized by PartnersGlobal in close collaboration with the Co-Executive Directors.
Process and Knowledge Management
- Contribute to the implementation and maintenance of process and knowledge management systems related to Business Development.
- Generate periodic reports and provide substantive commentary and strategic analysis on the BD Pipeline for Management, Board, and Organizational use.
- Update processes and approaches based on successes and lessons learned. Refine written process materials and provide staff and local partners with training and coaching on a regular and ad hoc basis.
Other Support Tasks
- Travel domestically and internationally to conduct BD scoping missions, meet with funders and partners, and conduct BD capacity strengthening.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS:
- Contribute to pipeline development for a portfolio of sectors or countries that advance Partners’
- Demonstrate a basic understanding of the context of programs/projects and issues in assigned area and uses increasing independence in processing of work and follow-up actions.
- Demonstrate initiative in the identification and resolution of issues/problems.
- Well organized, produces accurate reports, records and/or data, put together with general guidance.
- Know and consistently apply appropriate policies, guidelines, and procedures; and
- Effectively, and in a timely manner, liaise and interact with colleagues and relevant parties, both internal and external.
QUALIFICATIONS:
Experience
- 5-7 in the international development sector. Experience on a business development team preferred.
- Demonstrated experience and knowledge preparing competitive bids for USG, bi-literal and private funders to advance organizational goals and grow key programs.
- Demonstrated experience with project design, theory of change, and project monitoring and evaluation.
- Demonstrated ability to build and maintain partnerships and work through consortia with other organizations.
- Experience collaborating with diverse teams across geographies.
- Experience with constituent relationship management (CRM) platforms and/or other BD-related technology tools a plus.
- Experience with private philanthropy a plus.
Core Competencies
- Strong problem-solver who takes a creative approach to challenges.
- Highly organized, detail-oriented, and able to manage a variety of projects while maintaining focus on high-level organizational goals.
- Well-developed facilitation, communication, and negotiation skills.
- Excellent writer with experience proofreading and editing others’ work.
- Dedicated team player with exceptional interpersonal skills and cultural sensitivity, who demonstrates horizontal leadership skills, including the ability to harness the talents and focus of a global network of colleagues, including U.S. and foreign national staff and civil society, government, and private sector actors.
- Demonstrated competency using intermediate to complex levels of technology.
Education and Language
- Bachelor’s degree in International Relations, Regional Studies, Conflict Resolution, or related subjects, or at least 5 years of experience supporting and managing proposal development processes with similar organizations. Master’s degree preferred, but not required.
- Full professional fluency in written and spoken English; Spoken and written proficiency in Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish, or another language considered a plus.
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; and talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to stand, walk, and reach with hands and arms. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 20 pounds.
PartnersGlobal is an EEO Employer
At PartnersGlobal, we have a clear vision: to be the place where a diverse mix of talented people want to come, to stay and do their best work. Diversity is more than a commitment at PartnersGlobal—it is the foundation of what we do. We are fully focused on equality and believe deeply in diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, national origin and all the other fascinating characteristics that make us different. As an equal opportunity employer, PartnersGlobal recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, color, age, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, HIV/AIDS status, political affiliations or belief, pregnancy, or any other characteristic protected by law.
Reasonable accommodations are available to persons with disabilities during application and/or interview processes per the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please contact our Director of Human Resources & Talent Management, Edith Kardouni, at ekardouni@partnersglobal.org for assistance. We welcome the opportunity to discuss accommodation of your disability and ensure fairness in our hiring process.