Donor Relationship Manager at TearFund

Purpose of the Team

• The Programme Funding Team exists to support the building, funding, maintenance and growth of ambitious programmes to alleviate poverty and meet basic humanitarian needs globally. We do this by facilitating creativity, flexibility and focus; seeking to design effective programmes, increase income, expand Tearfund’s collaborations, and build stronger programme delivery capabilities. The Team has three subteams: (1) the Programme Design Team; (2) the Donor Relations Team; and (3) The Programme Quality Team:
  • The Programme Design Team’s purpose is to support country teams to turn their strategies into coherent integrated programming, which can ultimately attract funding from institutional sources.
  • The Donor Relations Team’s purpose is to ensure that globally we have effective relationships with key donors. Such donors include the bilateral development agencies (e.g. USAID/BHA, FCDO, etc), multilateral agencies (the UN system, ECHO etc) and high-compliance trusts and foundations.
  • The Programme Quality Team’s purpose is to provide all of the support necessary to help Tearfund manage large-scale and/or complex projects well, to learn from delivery and disseminate lessons to continually improve our performance.
• As well as facilitating effective programme design, ensuring excellent relationship management and providing programme support, the Programme Funding Team also maintains an overview of all bids to institutional funders and all secured funding for these projects.

Main Purpose of the Job

• Institutional Donors are important external stakeholders for Tearfund and therefore ensuring the entire relationship is healthy is critically important. The Donor Relationship Managers provide an important service
• helping to acquire funding from governments, multilateral agencies and high-compliance trusts and foundations
• globally. They do this by understanding the politics, strategies and procedures of these donors, and supporting Tearfund staff in their interactions with these donors.
• Recognising the complexity and global scope of donor relations, the Donor Relationship Manager will:
  • Play a pivotal role in leading and coordinating Tearfund’s global funding relationship with key institutional donors.
  • Work with others across Tearfund to ensure the wider relationship with key institutional donors is healthy and effective.
  • Provide senior representation and build funding relationships with key institutional donors, leading to the successful acquisition and reporting of appropriate funds.
  • Accompany and equip field staff to build in-country funding relationships with key institutional donors, leading to the successful acquisition of funding.
• The Donor Relationship Manager will have a defined portfolio comprising one or more donors. This will allow them to develop deep expertise and relationships with their donors. However, it is anticipated that, from time to time (e.g. to balance workloads, or when seeking new opportunities), DRMs will need to provide similar support for other donors.

Position in Organisation

• Reports to the Donor Relations Lead
• Represents Tearfund across key institutional donor funding streams, to appointed donor representatives, fund managers and other relief and development agencies.
• Engages regularly with the Head of Programme Funding, Executive Team and other key stakeholders to understand and set strategic direction for these critical relationships.
• Works closely with Tearfund’s Global Advocacy Team and staff across the organisation to coordinate Tearfund’s relationship with key institutional donors.
• Manages the global relationship with key institutional donors, overseeing funding from these donors and coordinating specific funding opportunities.
• Works closely with the Programme Design Team to support funding acquisition
• Works closely with the Programme Quality Team to advise on donor compliance
• Works closely with the Capability and Learning Coordinator to support organisational capability building engaging with key institutional donors

Tearfund’s Christian culture:

• We believe that prayer and discernment is fundamental to Tearfund achieving its mission of restoring relationships, ending extreme poverty and transforming lives. As a Tearfund staff member you are expected to:-
• Engage with Tearfund Prays and the Prayer hub
• Lead or participate in spiritual sessions of prayer and biblical reflection within your group
• Be committed to Tearfund’s Mission, Values and Beliefs statement and to be actively working and living in accordance with Tearfund’s Christian beliefs and theology of mission
• Maintain your own spiritual development, discover your gifts/callings and grow in discipleship

Organisational requirements:

• All staff are expected to live out Tearfund’s values as they represent Tearfund externally
• All post-holders are expected to fulfil their personal objectives set by their line manager, contribute to their team’s overall objectives, take responsibility for reviewing their ongoing personal development and maintain an awareness of Tearfund's strategy.
• All Tearfund staff share responsibility to promote and maintain a strong safeguarding culture, including identifying the key actions they should take given their role and responsibilities.

Scope of Job

• The Donor Relationship Manager will have oversight of Tearfund’s global funding relationship with a range of key institutional donors with a focus on:
  • Donor engagement approach
  • Donor Relations and Networking
  • Funding Acquisition
  • Institutional Donor Knowledge and Learning
  • Grant and Risk Management for specified projects (<30% of time)
  • Provide subject matter expertise in Donor Relations
  • Capability building of the wider Tearfund and Tearfund Family
• The DRM may also be given additional roles and responsibilities commensurate with their grade, skills and experience levels.

Duties & Key Responsibilities
Donor Engagement approach:

• Work with the Executive Team, policy leads and thematic experts to develop and outwork engagement approaches for key institutional donors informed by corporate and frontline needs, coordinating in particular with the International Group and the Advocacy and Influencing Group.
• Lead the coordination of Tearfund’s organisation-wide funding approach with key institutional donors, ensuring consistent application.
• Work collaboratively across the organisation, and particularly with the International Group, to guide the development and implementation of programme funding strategies to secure appropriate institutional funding, in line with Country Strategies.
• Support country leadership in the development of strategic relationships with in-country/in-region donor offices.
• Inform corporate strategic decisions through proactive research and dissemination of key institutional donor funding policies, priorities, mechanisms and opportunities, and analysing future trends.

Donor Relations and Networking:

• Proactively seek opportunities to raise Tearfund’s profile.
• Operate as a key contact with key institutional donors to develop funding relationships, providing senior representation and building strategic relationships.
• Support in-country donor relationships, with regular visits to Tearfund country offices.
• Initiate opportunities to strategically build relationships with key institutional donors.
• Act as the central contact with specific networks, to maintain donor knowledge and develop a range of networking contacts across the institutional funding sector, particularly with peer agency counterparts.
• Represent Tearfund where donors desire more active engagement with NGOs (e.g. through expert advisory panels for funding mechanisms) either on a one-off or ongoing basis as appropriate.
• In coordination with Programme Funding Managers, actively engage with potential consortium partners, in order to secure funding from key institutional donors.

Funding Acquisition:

• Proactively scope, capture, track and raise awareness of funding opportunities from key institutional donors.
• Provide rapid analysis of key institutional donor funding opportunities, including tenders, leading to conversion into action plans and bid development where appropriate.
• Proactively advise on domestic political issues pertinent to bids and engage with relevant funding sources processes as necessary.
• Guide and advise in-country teams on donor priorities and requirements leading to the successful development of proposals and acquisition of appropriate funding.
• Work with other Tearfund fundraising teams to maximise co-financing for successful proposals and to pursue alternate funding opportunities for unsuccessful proposals

Institutional Donor Knowledge and Learning:

• Understand the political landscape to maximise the opportunities for Tearfund to engage with key institutional donors to generate new funding.
• Maintain an accessible central source of donor knowledge, providing proactive advice across the organisation on donor funding.
• Track and monitor the outcome of relevant institutional donor funding applications, capturing lessons learned and funding trends to inform best practice and improve the success of future funding applications.

Grant & Risk Management for specified projects (<30%):

• This responsibility will be dependent upon the specific donor’s expectations, and where necessary may be negotiated on a case-by-case basis , however at a minimum it is likely to include:
• Maintain understanding of the current state of projects within the donor portfolio.
• In conjunction with designated staff, accompany Tearfund personnel to ensure compliance with donor regulations, minimising reputational and financial losses at audit.
• For designated projects, assure the submission of quality reports in accordance with requirements and Tearfund Quality Standards.
• Where required by the donor, formally represent the project to key staff within the donor.
• For designated projects, maintain contractual information to fulfil internal and external auditing requirements.
• For designated projects, monitoring of income and disbursement per contract in conjunction with finance staff.
• Highlight to the Programme Quality Team and/or the Head of Programme Funding issues with project and/ or financial management on donor-funded projects.
• In support of project teams, negotiate changes of budget/scope with the donor, as necessary.
• Sensitively communicate project issues to the donor and assure steps to manage these.
• Where relevant, sensitively communicate incident reports to the donor.

Provide subject matter expertise in Donor Relations:

• Bring an experienced perspective to donor relations to proactively identify and resolve issues across the project lifecycle.
• Act as a source of donor relations expertise.
• Maintain good documentation on effective donor relations for a defined set of donors.
• Support IG staff as they develop project inception workshops to ensure all relevant donor considerations are covered.

Capability building of the wider Tearfund and Tearfund Family:

• Support the wider Programme Funding Team’s capability building approach to develop skills for interacting with institutional donors across the whole of Tearfund.
• Participate in a learning culture to identify and embed lessons from donor relations.
• As necessary, lead focused training sessions and/or coach staff on key issues within the remit of the Donor Relations Team.

Qualifications
Essential:

• Degree, or equivalent relevant experience

Desirable:

• Master's in a development related subject

Experience
Essential:

• Experience of working in or with Institutional Donors and/or other large government agencies
• Proven track record of developing strategic relationships with large government organisations.
• Proven networking and relationship building experience, helping to collaborate and partner with other organisations.
• Experience of senior external representation to donors and/or other key stakeholders.
• Experience of developing and implementing engagement and/or programme funding strategies.
• Experience in leading on proposal and/or business case development, working with complex budgets and multiple internal/external stakeholders.
• Experience of submitting high-quality narrative and financial reports.
• Proven experience in building capability (e.g. leading training, capacity building) for staff and implementing partners.
• Collaborating and partnering with peer organisations.
• Comprehensive understanding of development issues and the role of INGOs.
• Experience of supporting institutionally funded projects.

Desirable:

• Experience of working for an institutional donor
• Experience of working overseas
• Experience working with large-scale projects.
• Experience in a government commercial function.
• Experience of securing funding from High-Compliance Trusts and Foundations is extremely desirable for this role.

Skills/Abilities:
Essential:

• Ability to analyse the internal and external politics of institutional donors.
• Knowledge of a range of institutional donor approaches, strategic directions, fvpriorities and procedures, including procurement policies.
• Proven ability to influence, galvanise and accompany senior colleagues in the development and execution of strategy.
• Leadership and communication skills to mobilise key stakeholders in a coordinated response to complete high-quality complex work.
• Ability to proactively scope and rapidly analyse funding opportunities leading to onversion into action plans.
• Outstanding written and verbal presentation and communication skills.
• Ability to bridge the gap between Christian and secular audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to build strong working relationships with external stakeholders, frontline staff and across headquarters.
• Ability to deliver at pace; working under pressure with minimal supervision, prioritising workload to meet multiple deadlines.
• Strong numerical and non-numerical analytical skills, helping to make effective decisions on funding opportunities and wider donor relations.
• Ability to review quality proposals, narrative / financial reports for submission to institutional donors.

Desirable:

• Experience in achieving commercial outcomes.

Personal Qualities:

• Committed Christian with a personal relationship with God
• Committed to Tearfund's Mission, Values and Beliefs

Other Comments:

• This role will require up to 4 weeks per year of global travel
• All roles require a DBS/Police check
• Tearfund is a member of the SCHR Misconduct Disclosure Scheme
• Personal identification information will be submitted against a Watchlist database to check against criminal convictions as a counter-terror measure