ActionAid – Officer

ACTIONAID INTERNATIONAL DIRECTORATE: Fundraising and Communications Position: Grants and Compliance Officer Location: Johannesburg or London Duration: 2 years fixed term contract Salary: £31 617 per annum on International Grade C Local Terms and Conditions and salary will apply as per base Location of the candidate Purpose of the Role: The Grants and Compliance Officer works as an integral part of the International Partnership Development ( IPD) team and collaborates with other functions and AAI members to support effective institutional fundraising and contract management. This includes supporting donor proposal budgeting; setting up compliance monitoring systems; tracking donor contract income, expenditure and reporting; producing compliance reports; working as system administrator for the interim Contract Management Database and the global Contract Management System when fully developed; and contributing to capacity building of relevant federation staff on contract management.

Key responsibilities include but not limited to:

• Prepare and review budgets for single country, small to medium size proposals ensuring high quality standards and optimum cost recovery in alignment with organisational and donor requirements
• Under the guidance of the Grants and Compliance Manager communicate with donors or AAI donor account managers to help resolve specific problems or respond to donor information requests
• Contribute to the development and embedding of the Programme Led Funding planning approach across the federation
• Provide technical guidance and support in setting up systems to monitor adherence to financial and procurement rules eg co-financing, exchange rates, interest and budget rules in line with contractual requirements.
• Support to ensure partner sub-grants are disbursed and accounted for in line with contractual requirements – eg pre-assessments, budget tracking, procurement, reporting and capacity building.
• Provide technical support to ensure effective income tracking including cash flow, pre-financing, timely and accurate payment requests and tracking outstanding amounts due from donors.
• Track, document and disseminate donor reporting trends, quality assurance issues and feedback from donors
• Coordinate the collation of institutional grants and contracts information required to comply with the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and other donors like DFID, EC and USAID
• Support contract management capacity development through inception workshops, coaching, mentoring, online training and other support as required
• Participate in community of practice on institutional income planning and contract management
• Regular monitoring and management reports against key indicators, taking appropriate action where necessary including flagging risks for appropriate management action.
• Guidance on and review of narrative and financial reports to ensure quality assurance before submission to donors.
• Technical guidance and support in preparing for and managing donor audits including liaison with auditors and negotiating contested findings where appropriate.
• Overseeing financial archiving procedures to ensure all required expenditure support documentation is properly maintained and availed when required

Desired Skills & Experience The successful candidate will have:

• Minimum undergraduate degree and/or professional qualification in Accounting, Finance, Business Studies, Auditing or related field
• English Language proficiency
• Experience of managing grants/contracts from institutional donors such as EU, ECHO, DFID, USAID and UN with ability to provide clear guidance on donor policies and procedures to other staff
• Experience of setting up and managing donor compliance monitoring systems, developing and implementing relevant tools
• Strong financial skills encompassing proposal budgeting, income tracking, budget monitoring and financial reporting.
• Experience of working in a global team and distance support
• Willingness to travel up to 25% of the year
• Knowledge of Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA)
• Knowledge of French, Spanish and/or Portuguese

Application Procedures Applications should be sent with your CV, motivation cover letter by no later than 17th November 2014. You are requested to highlight in the motivation letter how specifically you meet the criteria for this role.  Please clearly indicate which position you are applying for. External Applications to be sent to: frcomms.jhb@actionaid.org Due to high volumes of applications received, we can only correspond with short listed applicants.  Should you not have received feedback on your application within two weeks of the closing date, please consider your application unsuccessful.  ActionAid International will not consider candidates from recruitment agencies.  We reserve the right to withdraw any of our vacancies at any time.   ActionAid International promotes diversity and welcomes applications from all section of the community.