Consortium Finance Lead at International Rescue Committee (IRC)

Position Overview

• The Consortium Finance Lead is a key position for the DFID consortium which provides support to IRC programs implemented through consortium. The position is primarily responsible for providing oversight and day-to-day financial management of the IRC led consortium, in very close coordination and cooperation with the IRC Nigeria Finance Team. The position will be responsible for capacity building of consortium members, to build their financial management and administrative capacity. Consortium Finance Lead will work in close collaboration with staff in the Program teams, DfID Consortium team and Finance teams. The Consortium Finance Lead will provide support to the DfID Consortium team to review partners budgets at the proposal stage, participate in pre-award vetting processes, document all financial matters related to sub-awardees’ finances to assure audit readiness at all times, and manage sub-awardee finances documents/reports including budget review, financial report review, providing guidance and training related to finance to sub-awardees in order to strengthen their capacity. The Consortium Finance Lead acts as the focal point for financial and compliance aspects of the DfID Consortium for sub-awardees, including ensuring high-quality financial monitoring of sub-awardees. This position reports directly to the Assistant Finance Controller and Senior Consortium Coordinator.

Specific Responsibilities:

• Financial Management
• Participate in partner’s proposal review and modification process focusing on sub-awardee budget
• Verifies partners’ financial reports and supporting documentation, making sure that expenses are reasonable, allowable and allocable to the approved budget and comply with donor’s regulations.
• Communicate findings to partners, and ensuring timely follow-up to provide solutions and documenting the findings.  Reviews must be based on partner risk and sampling or review of full documentation, as required.
• Ensure proactive communication with sub-awardees about the submission of their financial reports according to terms of their sub-awards.
• Ensure tracking of sub-awardee submission of financial reports, communicating delays to the Senior Consortium Coordinator
• Review and validate spending plans from partners against reported expenditures, following-up with sub-awardees as needed.  
• Submit summary of reported expenditures and spending plans to Senior Consortium Coordinator and Assistant Finance Controller and Finance Controller, outlining follow-up steps.
• Making sure that the sub-awardee financial reports are approved (signed) by the appropriate authority within IRC, preparing the Journal Voucher, fully coded and submitting to the Abuja finance team in hard and soft copy for posting into the SUN system.  
• Respond to questions that arise from the Assistant Finance Controller and IRC HQ/UK regarding submitted financial reports.
• Prepare Payment Requests for Sub-Awardee payment (advances and reimbursements), respond to questions that arise from the Abuja finance team and IRC HQ regarding submitted payment requests.
• Ensure timely follow-up on the status of payments release, tracking them and informing sub-awardees in a timely manner on the status of the payments. Follow up with IRC HQ and sub-awardees confirm transfer and receipt of payments respectively.
• Ensure the financial monitoring and spot check visits to sub-awardee offices is conducted according to IRC requirements and standards.
• Ensure monitoring visit plans drafted and submitted ahead of visits to Assistant Finance Controller to review and share monitoring visit reports in a timely manner to partners.
• Participate in case management meetings with the program, finance, supply chain and other staff to respond to regular issues as they arise within partner management and ensuring properly coordinated and managed responses to sub-awardee issues as they arise.
• Reconciling the sub-grantees advances on monthly basis, reports to the Assistant Finance Controller on all over-due, unliquidated advances, update on monthly basis all tracking sheets for sub-grants finances.
• Ensure that a sound, accurate and organized archiving system is in place, both hard and soft (electronic) copies for all financial reports and their supporting documents.
• Work with Assistant Finance Controller to collaborate internal and external audit to ensure proper compliance with all regulations and to ensure that all sub-awardee files in hard and soft copy are 100% audit ready at all times.
• In coordination with Senior Consortium Coordinator and Assistant Finance Controller, develop or revise sub-awardee financial templates (including proposal budget formats, monthly/quarterly reporting templates, and other documents, as need).
• Contribute to provision of guidance notes to sub-awardees for use of appropriate templates, overall budget drafting and submission as part of calls for proposals sent to partners. Depending on nature of call, provide appropriate level of support current and potential sub-awardees to ensure proposal budgets and budget narratives meet IRC and donor requirements within set deadlines for submission.

Sub-Grant modifications:

• Review all sub-awardee budget modifications in coordination Senior Consortium coordinator, and Consortium Grants Manager ensuring clear action points for follow-up are communicated.
• Vetting and Capacity-Building of Partners
• Ensure Pre-Award Financial Assessment (PAAs) is conducted for all new potential partners, as well as update the PAAs for all existing partners, on annual basis. Report to the Assistant Finance Controller and the Senior Consortium Coordinator on the findings and provide recommendations for improvement.  
• Support in developing risk management action plan and suggest corrective actions to address/mitigate risks identified during the PAA process.
• Design, update and deliver financial management training for partners’ staff, working closely with the Assistant Finance Controller on the training materials according to the needs in order to build the organizational capacity of the partner.
• Conduct finance and general compliance monitoring visits to partners together with Consortium Grants Manager and prepare monitoring report and action plan to submit to Senior Consortium Coordinator and share with partners in timely manner for each visit.

Management:

• Take the lead on the finance section of the Grant Opening, Review and Closing meetings, making sure that the partners are fully aware of donor regulations, all financial reporting requirements in terms of required documentation, reporting templates and deadlines.
• Represents Finance in Sub-Grants Workshops, being the key facilitator and presenter for all Sub-Grants’ finance related sessions.  

Other

• Provide assistance with requests from IRC headquarters as directed by the  Finance Controller
• Any other duties as assigned
• Fluency in English.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, finance, or any related field.
• Minimum 7 years of progressive work experience in a non-profit setting overseeing and managing partners’ projects funded by major institutional donors, particularly DfID.
• Detailed knowledge of DfID rules and regulation
• Experience in training, capacity building, and mentoring of staff, NGOs/CBOs.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to present to groups of all sizes.
• Self-starter with ability to work independently and part of a team.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively under pressure and handle multiple simultaneous tasks and demands coming from multiple sources.
• Willing to travel within the Nigeria.
• Hard-working, sharp and detailed oriented.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills; tact, patience, diplomacy, and appropriate assertiveness.
• Proficiency in MS Office software suite – including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
• Experience working with databases and/or other tracking systems

 Key Working Relationships:

Position Reports to: AssistantFinance Controller

Position directly supervises: Consortium Finance Manager

Indirect Reporting: Senior Consortium Coordinator

IRC WAY-Standards for Professional Standards