Senior Advisor, Emergency Funding

Role Description

The Senior Advisor, Emergency Funding provides technical oversight to the Emergency Unit’s Grants team, supporting the mobilization, management, and coordination of emergency funding across CRRD. The role is split broadly across three areas:

• Delivering pre and post award business development and awards management support to new country programs.
• Improving and overseeing the EmU’s emergency fund management function across mechanisms such as the CRF, emergency appeals, and other emergency funds.
• Fostering strong performance and a positive staff experience among Grants ERT and GST teams, prioritizing both operational excellence and the well-being of staff working in high-pressure emergency settings.

The Senior Advisor is responsible for managing the EmU led grants portfolio (approximately $75 million across 150 projects) and for driving improvements in system design, workflow efficiency, and operational consistency. In addition, the role provides early phase (first three months) pre and post award support to new country programs during emergencies, ensuring immediate and consistent pre- and post-award support for new offices until the relevant Regional Program and Award Support (RPAS) team is able to take it on. Operating across fundraising, systems design, and people management, the role ensures emergency funding systems are fit for purpose, donor and IRC requirements are met, and country teams are well supported to deliver high quality emergency programming.

Location: Kenya, Germany or U.S. This is open to candidates who are a national or permanent resident. Not an international posting.

Key Working Relationships

• Reports to Sr. Director, Finance and Fundraising in Emergencies.
• Manages the Emergency Unit Grants Coordinator, the ERT Grants Coordinator, and all Emergency Grant Coordinators within the Global Surge Team.

Key Responsibilities

Emergency Fund Management Systems

• Working closely with the Sr. Director of Finance and Fundraising in emergencies, ensure IRC’s emergency funding systems are functional, fit for purpose, and consistently applied across the CRF, emergency appeals, and other funds managed by EmU.
• Lead system design improvements and optimization to ensure CRF, appeals, and related funding mechanisms utilized across CRRD are efficient, user friendly, and decision relevant.
• Coordinate closely with the Quality in Emergencies team to ensure clear roles and coherent processes for data collection and emergency funding workflows, including emergency response plans, CRF project documentation and reporting, and key metrics tracking.
• Design and maintain sophisticated dashboards and reports to support analysis, transparency, and information sharing across stakeholders.
• Serve as the ER focal point during the launch of new appeals and for emergency funding reporting as required (CRF, appeals, and other funds).

Business Development

• Provide business development support and oversight to new country programs (primarily the first ~3 months following an emergency onset).
• Support donor engagement, intel sharing, positioning, and emergency pre positioning; participate in donor calls and work closely with country teams, technical units, Grants Coordinators, consultants, and consortium partners to design competitive proposals and bids.
• Lead or support the full proposal development lifecycle, including conceptualization, coordination of inputs, quality assurance, and compliance with donor requirements, IRC policies, and internal systems (e.g. PEERS); coordinate regional reviews, approvals, and partner proposal packages as required.
• Review proposal and pre award documents to ensure accuracy and compliance, support negotiations as needed, facilitate smooth handover to post award teams, maintain complete and accurate documentation and trackers, and deploy to country offices to provide proposal surge support as required.

Awards Management and Compliance

• Manage a portfolio of emergency and early recovery awards, ensuring timely, accurate, and high quality reporting and monitoring, in collaboration with relevant technical, financial, and country teams.
• Serve as a key post award advisory focal point for new country programs providing guidance on awards management, donor compliance, and IRC policies, systems, and procedures (e.g. OTIS, PEERS).
• Support the development, review, and quality assurance of award amendments, modifications, sub grants, and partnership agreements; lead or support negotiations in line with donor and IRC requirements.
• Manage donor relationships on contractual and compliance matters, coordinate with Compliance and Policy teams on ad hoc queries, ensure lessons learned are fed back into business development and future emergency responses, and coordinate closely with regional and global colleagues to ensure coherent support and planned handover to regional RPAS teams.
• Travel as needed to provide surge capacity or cover short term gaps.

People Management and Development

• Provide day-to-day management and mentorship to members of EmU’s Grants Team as well as GST when they deploy for emergencies (working in close collaboration with their deployment supervisors).
• Ensure that ERT and GST teams maintain high performance, collaborate effectively and are accountable for quality of work. Ensure sufficient record keeping for efficient handover when ERT and GST deployment ends.
• Manage assignments for emergency requests received through DMS.
• Build team capacity through coaching, mentoring, and targeted development opportunities, fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth.
• Onboard new country office Grants staff to assigned donors, policies and/or IRC processes, as requested.
• Empower team members by setting clear, measurable goals and responsibilities that align with shared organizational initiatives and strategic priorities.
• Champion inclusive and supportive leadership practices in line with People Manager Standards, promoting psychological safety, equity, and wellbeing across the team.

Team Culture

• Build and maintain strong working relationships across EmU, the External Relations department, AMU, and regional/country colleagues to promote a culture of partnership, collaboration and One IRC ways of working.
• Cultivate and maintain a positive, collaborative, safe and protective work environment, while additionally setting an example of ‘One IRC’-way of working within the team, EmU, and the wider organization.
• Contribute to efforts across EmU to promote gender equality, diversity and more inclusive practice across our programming and our ways of working.
• Promote and safeguard staff well-being and inclusive team culture across deployments.

Qualifications

• Fluency in English, with additional language skills in French, Spanish and/or German highly desirable.
• Significant (8+ years) experience with and a strong understanding of United States Government and European donor requirements required.
• Exemplar understanding of humanitarian aid and development programming.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a diverse team and handle a multifaceted workload.
• Good financial management and budgeting skills.
• Ability to analyze and synthesize information.
• Proven organizational skills, detail-oriented, ability to prioritize tasks, and to learn quickly.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to successfully and effectively liaise with people within and across departments in a multi-cultural environment.
• Ability to work independently in a very fast paced environment.
• A flexible work attitude and a calm manner.
• International work experience in the Global South is a plus.
• Excellent IT skills (Word, Outlook, Excel).
• Ability to travel internationally, sometimes on short notice and to insecure areas.

Requirements

• Experience in working at a distance and supporting country-based staff.
• Experience writing, reviewing and editing narrative and financial reports and excellent attention to detail.

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.