Regional Business Development Manager, West Africa at WaterAid

• The Regional Business Development Manager ensures WaterAid is well positioned within donor and consortium partner/key supplier markets as a “go to” partner for sustainable WASH programming. This position plays a key internal role, through monitoring, shaping and highlighting the country funding needs to WaterAid federation members and facilitating funding flows to countries.

Key accountabilities among others include:

Strategy

• Support country programmes in developing fundraising, donor and consortium partner strategies from a deep understanding of how to position WA’s programmes within the current donor marketplace

Pipeline development and management:

• Be responsible for growing and monitoring the pipeline of relevant funding opportunities to WA country programmes, coordinating with fundraising members to communicating donor intelligence, ensuring a balanced portfolio of funding types and ambition.
• Provide strategic support to the sign on of larger funding opportunities, ensuring that WA country teams are supported to negotiate favourable positions within consortia and are able to effectively assess and mitigate for delivery risk
• Support the improvement of cost recovery in restricted funding contracts through supporting country teams to communicate and negotiate with donors

Funding skills and capabilities development:

• Monitor the fundraising skills, capabilities and investment levels within country teams, and support the development of both funding focused roles and the capability of country Senior Management Teams to engage with donors and develop funding propositions
• Play a leading role in co-creating and embedding business processes, systems, and policies for restricted funding
• Build confidence in pursuing different funding modalities, including commercial contracts through accompanying country teams in the development of complex and novel bidding approaches (with the support of global teams and consultants)

Leadership and Line management

• Responsible for working with a high-performing team of Country Funding Leads and Donor Relationship Leads across the globe. The Regional Business Development Manager will contribute to strategic and operational planning processes; define and deliver an agreed set of team performance targets; and providing guidance, coaching and support in helping peers achieve optimum performance.
• Responsible for the matrix management of the Heads of Funding and Business Development at the country level.
• Lead on promotion of the cross country and regional learning and best practices on business development and bid development and management.

To be successful, you will need the following:

• Master’s Degree level qualification in international development, economics or a related discipline, or equivalent work experience.
• Approximately 10 years of experience in planning, securing and managing funds from institutional donors such as USAID, EC, UK Government, International Financial Institutions such as the WB, AfDB, local and international corporates, trust and foundations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation etc.
• Substantial experience and knowledge of the institutional funding space and a deep understanding of bilateral and multilateral donors’ routes to market
• Demonstrable track record of developing and delivering on strategies for restricted income growth.
• Strategic networker with the ability to identify and transform opportunities into tangible results
• Ability to work in a flexible and agile way to identify opportunities and address challenges
• Ability to take complex information and simplify for audiences
• Being bilingual will be an asset