Business Pursuit Manager at VSO

Responsible to: Senior Business Pursuit Lead
Contract type: Fixed Term
Full Time: 35 hours per week
Start date: 06/06/2019

Purpose of Role

• Provide business pursuit leadership and secure funding to deliver VSO’s global products in Nigeria and support large, significant impact opportunities in the West African region from time to time. The position will focus on Nigeria, 80-90% and other countries, 10-20%.

No. of direct reports:

• No permanent reports, but manages partner relationships and proposal development processes with 8-10 senior level colleagues operating as bid team members

Role Overview

• The Business Pursuit Manager (BPM) will be a key part of the senior management team and lead on all fundraising activities.
• S/he will provide business pursuit leadership and secure funding to deliver VSO’s global products in Nigeria, delivering £5-10 million in secured funding per year.
• The BPM will also support large, significant impact opportunities in the West African region from time to time. As an expert in your field, you will be responsible for optimising income generation and business development from a range of institutional donors (e.g. EU, UN, DFID, USAID etc) in support of VSO’s programmes.

Responsibilities
Funding strategy aligned to programme priorities:

• Understand and act on donor trends in the country/region and identify new opportunities for funding for VSO’s global products;
• Contribute to a global funding strategy as required from time to time and ensure consistency coordination and coherence in funder and partnership engagement across the funding portfolio in the country/region;
• Drive VSO’s business pursuit activities including ensuring a strong opportunities pipeline and healthy portfolio of proposals and ensuring BP data is accurately reflected in our systems.

Pre-positioning, donor and partner engagement:

• Continuously build a strong brand position for VSO and our Volunteering for Development approach among donors and partners in the country and region;
• Deliver strong relationships via frequent meetings/interaction with institutional, foundation and corporate donors and partners including commercial contractors, INGOs, government regional government entities and other development actors, governments in support of joint programming and consortia opportunities;
• Prepare materials needed to facilitate donor engagement and leverage the use of VSO’s microsite for external meetings and communications;
• Provide leadership and support to advance VSO’s visibility and reputation with identified strategic partners globally (among donor communities, private sector and development networks) in support of joint-proposal opportunities at the national and regional levels.

Pre-positioning: internally:

• Work with programmatic and implementing teams to understand our strengths and align proposed solutions with funding opportunities;
• Conduct country level analysis to understand the funding environment / trends and inform the direction of programming to ensure alignment with donor priorities;
• Share analysis on funding opportunities and pipeline health (proposal tracker) with country, regional and global teams to inform planning and pre-positioning;
• Ensure accurate and timely overviews of funding priorities and pipeline analysis are shared;

Bid Development:

• Deliver confirmed funding through strategic positioning and submission of high quality, large ticket (£Ms) proposals;
• Lead development of specific proposals, coordinating with donor management, proposal development and programme teams;
• Provide leadership to country teams on bid development processes and ensure laid out procedures are followed for each proposal submitted at country level;
• Lead negotiations with partners to ensure financial and programmatic needs are met;
• Review proposals and provide assurance to ensure quality submissions;
• Write specific proposals and provide content/input when required.

Marketing:

• Liaise with marketing teams so that they support the delivery of a strong brand position for VSO and our Volunteering for Development approach in country and region;
• Ensure visibility of VSO in the region/selected countries by attending/or ensuring attendance of workshops, meetings and networking events that provide an opportunity to showcase its work, provide leadership in the volunteering for development space and build new partnerships.

Capacity building:

• Build country office capacity to network, engage and pre-position through own efforts or in collaboration with other business development team members.
• Work proactively with Country Directors and other country/regional leadership in Business Pursuit, Programmes, CPAs/Global Products and Finance to successfully grow VSO’s opportunities and programming in Nigeria and West Africa.

Business development coordination:

• Coordinate the activities and contribution of various business development teams in the region/countries including public fundraising, marketing, and donor teams.

Qualifications Required

• Educated to post-graduate degree level in International Development, Business or related discipline;
• IT skills including fluency in Microsoft Office suite and database usage;
• Experience of living and working internationally (4+ years required);
• Fluency in English (written and spoken);
• Ability to travel locally and globally.

Skills/Experience Required:

• More than 6 years managing business pursuit activities within the international development sector for an INGO or development consulting firm;
• Experience developing funding strategies and delivering £5-10 million annually;
• Proven ability to identify new funding opportunities and to make appropriate judgements about their potential to realise significant restricted income;
• Experience of establishing and cultivating strong donor relationships that have delivered substantially increased income;
• Proven track record in writing winning donor proposals for donors including DFID, USAID, EC, SIDA and UN Agencies - including proven ability to develop log frames, monitoring frameworks, and theories of change;
• Familiarity with M&E tools; theories of change, monitoring frameworks, and basic evaluation techniques;
• Strong interpersonal skills, including written, verbal and presentation skills used in international settings – experience of leading and facilitating workshops and training;
• Ability to be self-directed and take initiative within organisational mandates;
• Experience of establishing partnerships between organisations including teaming agreement and consortia bid development;
• Strong analytical and financial and skills;

Performance:

• Deliver £5-10 million in secured funding per year. Other performance metrics for this position include maintaining a healthy pipeline of opportunities, number and quality of proposals submitted, proposal conversion rates, proposal/award value, donor/partner engagement and events participation among other metrics as agreed from time to time.

Salary
Annual Salary N13,101,849.