Partnerships Coordinator

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. Partnerships Coordinator will technically supervise Partnerships Managers and/or Senior Officers, providing leadership and support at the field level in partnership with Field Coordinators. 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 technically 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

• Improve the IRC’s understanding of grassroots emergency-response action in conflict-affected areas of Ukraine including new L/NNGOs, volunteer groups and municipally-coordinated initiatives,
• 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,
• Establish and manage, under the oversight of the Partnership Coordinator, a dedicated inter-sectoral program steering committee for grassroots/local initiatives, responsible for setting the parameters of IRC engagement with such initiatives,
• 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.
  
  

Partnership Management

• Support the Partnership Working Group with facilitation and coordination of all partnership management processes to ensure well planned, timely, coordinated and coherent partnership management.
• Lead in the overall management of all partnerships in your portfolio and all PEERS processes / documentation.
• 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 the Partnership Working Group members to ensure timely and effective partner program, finance, and compliance review and reflection (monitoring).
• Support the Partnership Working Group members 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.
• Support the Partnership Working Group to ensure the smooth close out of partner projects, as applicable.
• Responsible for managing the relevant partnership email inbox
• Any other relevant tasks, set by the 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.
  
  

Mandatory

JOB REQUIREMENTS

• 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
• IRC PEERs experience is preferred
• 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 frequently 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: Sr. Partnerships Manager

Technical Reporting (Management in Partnership with Field Coordinator): Partnership Managers

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, Partnerships Department Staff, Finance team, Supply Chain team,

External: Partner staff.

Standard of Professional Conduct:The IRC and the IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – our Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, Accountability, and Equality.

Commitment to Gender, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: The IRC is committed to creating a diverse, inclusive, respectful, and safe work environment where all persons are treated fairly, with dignity and respect. The IRC expressly prohibits and will not tolerate discrimination, harassment, retaliation, or bullying of the IRC persons in any work setting. We aim to increase the representation of women, people that are from country and communities we serve, and people who identify as races and ethnicities that are under-represented in global power structures.