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VSO is the world’s leading international development organisation that uses volunteers to fight poverty and reduce inequality.
Our vision is simple: a world without poverty. Our approach is unique: sending skilled volunteers from sectors such as health, education and business to work with partners who have requested our help. VSO enables a two-way e...
Fixed Term: 2 years
Full Time: 38 hours per week
Purpose of Role
- To provide business development leadership and coordination for identified VSO Country Offices (Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone); responsible for optimizing income generation and business development from a diverse range of donors in support of VSO’s programmes and regional operations
Responsibilities
Funding strategy aligned to programme priorities:
- Lead on researching new funding opportunities, strengthening and sustaining partnerships with INGOs, private sector, government institutional donors, trusts and foundations and major donors that have a regional presence.
- Provide intensive support to regions and country offices to develop, implement and monitor ambitious funding strategies that deliver agreed restricted income targets.
- Liaise with donor managers and ensure funding strategy aligns to programme priorities; work with regional teams/country offices to ensure funding plans reflects programme strategy and appropriate national and regional donor mapping is up to date
- Contribute to a global, coordinated fundraising strategy, centered around VSO’s Core programme areas and Signature Programmes and ensure consistency and coherence in funder and partnership engagement across funding portfolio in region
Pre-positioning, donor and partner engagement: Externally:
- Support CO staff to identify priority partners and support on this engagement including with I/NGOs and other development actors, government etc in support of joint programming and consortia opportunities;
- Prepare materials needed to facilitate donor engagement and bolster VSO’s reputation and credibility with potential funders and consortia partners.
- 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-bid opportunities at the national and regional levels;
Prepositioning: internally
- Share analysis on funding opportunities, Pipeline Matrix, and pipeline health (proposal tracker) with regional and country teams to inform regional planning and pre-positioning
- Ensure that an accurate and timely overview of funding priorities and pipeline health and analysis are shared across VSO’s business development colleagues to ensure smooth and effective prioritization of funding opportunities;
- Support VSO country offices to develop signature packages, the local contextualisation of flagships frameworks and donor engagement plans ensuring full donor intelligence gathering, learning and sharing
- Maintain up to date concept note bank and Priorities Matrix ; showcase projects at internal marketplaces, provide quarterly analysis and recommendations to strengthen strategic business development
Bid development:
- Evaluate bids against country / programme strategy to support their go / no go decisions
- Participate as member of bid team including as: proposal lead, reviewer, content provider; facilitate proposal development workshops as needed in country portfolio as well as others in the global VSO network
Other:
- Participate as a core member of the Funding Strategy and Engagement team (within the Programme Funding Department) to share learning and harmonize processes and support a VSO-wide approach to mobilizing resources and building strategic partnerships.
- Support capacity building and training of country office teams and local partners in business development and funding
Key Performance Indicators
Strategic planning:
- All countries have funding strategies which demonstrate a clear path to year on year growth in income to advance strategic priorities
- Robust and ongoing monitoring of strategies which enable the focus countries to meet the target of 80% of overall CO expenditure funded from restricted income
Funding opportunities:
- Number of proposals submitted
- Quality/Success rate of proposals increases
The region’s donor base is deepened and diversified
- The number of major donors, trusts & foundations and institutional donors (directly or via NGO partners) supporting focus countries increases
- VSO’s existing donor and strategic partner relations in the region are managed effectively and are sustained
Role in VSO’s global business development efforts
- Appropriate project outline information is developed and shared across VSO networks
- VSO Donor Managers across VSO are fully engaged in the region’s fundraising effort Region’s fundraising effort informs – and is informed by - VSO’s global fundraising experience
- Fundraising activity in the region is tracked, analysed and key metrics reported on.
Capacity building:
- Increase in confidence in country office teams in relation to funding strategy development, partner and donor engagement and proposal development
Competencies
Working together - Strength:
- Successfully works with Country, regional and global teams and develops others’ team-working skills
Communicating & influencing - Strength:
- Inspires others by: advocating plans and ideas within and outside VSO; maintaining a wide, influential network; coaching
Managing Knowledge - Adds value
- Proactively seeks out new knowledge sources and uses and shares this effectively
Striving for excellence - Strength:
- Leads initiatives to improve monitoring, evaluation and learning; is a role model for continuous learning and improvement.
Managing Resources:
- Strength Leads others to pursue significant funding opportunities; dins creative ways to allocate funds on complex projects effectively
Managing People - Adds value:
- Builds an effective team with clear objectives; allocates work appropriately and deals with poor performance
Developing People - Aware:
- Is a role model for coaching, mentoring and developing others
Leading for the Future - Adds Value:
- Builds confidence and excitement in VSO’s work and vision, both internally and externally; leads innovative projects.
Thinking Strategically - Adds Value:
- Understands the context of own role; considers impact of own work on that of others
Delivers Results - Strength:
- Analyses objectives, considers options, plans and manages appropriately; holds self and team accountable for achieving goals
Skills/Experience Required
- Experience of developing funding strategies and delivering income against targets
- Proven ability to research 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 USAID, EC, UKAID, SIDA and UN Agencies – including proven ability to develop log frames, monitoring frameworks, and theories of change
- Experience of preparing compelling, high quality documentation (concept notes, presentations, proposals, budgets, reports, logframes, theories of change etc) for different donor and partner audiences
- 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 – strong administrative and organisational skills
- Experience of establishing partnerships between organisations including teaming agreement and consortia bid development
- Strong administrative and organizational skills: ability to be self-directed and take initiative
- Strong analytical and financial and skills
Qualifications Required
- Educated to post-graduate degree level in International Development - 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). Portuguese, French or other language desirable
- Ability to travel globally (estimated 30-50% travel required
Interview/Assessment Date(s)
13th December, 2016.
Start Date
1st February, 2017.
Click here for more Information (pdf)
go to method of application »
Purpose of Role
- To provide business development leadership and coordination for identified VSO Country Offices (Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone); responsible for optimizing income generation and business development from a diverse range of donors in support of VSO’s programmes and regional operations
Responsibilities
Funding strategy aligned to programme priorities:
- Lead on researching new funding opportunities, strengthening and sustaining partnerships with INGOs, private sector, government institutional donors, trusts and foundations and major donors that have a regional presence.
- Provide intensive support to regions and country offices to develop, implement and monitor ambitious funding strategies that deliver agreed restricted income targets.
- Liaise with donor managers and ensure funding strategy aligns to programme priorities; work with regional teams/country offices to ensure funding plans reflects programme strategy and appropriate national and regional donor mapping is up to date
- Contribute to a global, coordinated fundraising strategy, centered around VSO’s Core programme areas and Signature Programmes and ensure consistency and coherence in funder and partnership engagement across funding portfolio in region
Pre-positioning, donor and partner engagement: Externally:
- Support CO staff to identify priority partners and support on this engagement including with I/NGOs and other development actors, government etc in support of joint programming and consortia opportunities;
- Prepare materials needed to facilitate donor engagement and bolster VSO’s reputation and credibility with potential funders and consortia partners.
- 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-bid opportunities at the national and regional levels;
Prepositioning: internally:
- Share analysis on funding opportunities, Pipeline Matrix, and pipeline health (proposal tracker) with regional and country teams to inform regional planning and prepositioning
- Ensure that an accurate and timely overview of funding priorities and pipeline health and analysis are shared across VSO’s business development colleagues to ensure smooth and effective prioritization of funding opportunities;
- Support VSO country offices to develop signature packages, the local contextualisation of flagships frameworks and donor engagement plans ensuring full donor intelligence gathering, learning and sharing across VSO’s business development colleagues to ensure smooth and effective prioritization of funding opportunities;
- Support VSO country offices to develop signature packages, the local contextualisation of flagships frameworks and donor engagement plans ensuring full donor intelligence gathering, learning and sharing
- Maintain up to date concept note bank and Priorities Matrix ; showcase projects at internal marketplaces, provide quarterly analysis and recommendations to strengthen strategic business development
Bid development:
- Evaluate bids against country / programme strategy to support their go / no go decisions
- Participate as member of bid team including as: proposal lead, reviewer, content provider; facilitate proposal development workshops as needed in country portfolio as well as others in the global VSO network
Other:
- Participate as a core member of the Funding Strategy and Engagement team (within the Programme Funding Department) to share learning and harmonize processes and support a VSO-wide approach to mobilizing resources and building strategic partnerships.
- Support capacity building and training of country office teams and local partners in business development and funding
Key Performance Indicators
Strategic planning:
- All countries have funding strategies which demonstrate a clear path to year on year growth in income to advance strategic priorities
- Robust and ongoing monitoring of strategies which enable the focus countries to meet the target of 80% of overall CO expenditure funded from restricted income
Funding opportunities:
- Number of proposals submitted
- Quality/Success rate of proposals increases
The region’s donor base is deepened and diversified:
- The number of major donors, trusts & foundations and institutional donors (directly or via NGO partners) supporting focus countries increases
- VSO’s existing donor and strategic partner relations in the region are managed effectively and are sustained
Role in VSO’s global business development efforts:
- Appropriate project outline information is developed and shared across VSO networks
- VSO Donor Managers across VSO are fully engaged in the region’s fundraising effort Region’s fundraising effort informs - and is informed by - VSO’s global fundraising experience
- Fundraising activity in the region is tracked, analysed and key metrics reported on.
Capacity building:
- Increase in confidence in country office teams in relation to funding strategy development, partner and donor engagement and proposal development
Competencies:
- Working together: Strength Successfully works with Country, regional and global teams and develops others’ team-working skills
- Communicating & influencing: Strength Inspires others by: advocating plans and ideas within and outside VSO; maintaining a wide, influential network; coaching
- Managing Knowledge: Adds value Proactively seeks out new knowledge sources and uses and shares this effectively
- Striving for excellence: Strength Leads initiatives to improve monitoring, evaluation and learning; is a role model for continuous learning and improvement.
- Managing Resources: Strength Leads others to pursue significant funding opportunities; dins creative ways to allocate funds on complex projects effectively
- Managing People: Adds value Builds an effective team with clear objectives; allocates work appropriately and deals with poor performance
- Developing People: Aware Is a role model for coaching, mentoring and developing others
- Leading for the Future: Adds Value Builds confidence and excitement in VSO’s work and vision, both internally and externally; leads innovative projects.
- Thinking Strategically: Adds Value
- Understands the context of own role; considers impact of own work on that of others
- Delivers Results: Strength Analyses objectives, considers options, plans and manages appropriately; holds self and team accountable for achieving goals
Skills/Experience Required:
- Experience of developing funding strategies and delivering income against targets
- Proven ability to research 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 USAID, EC, UKAID, SIDA and UN Agencies - including proven ability to develop log frames, monitoring frameworks, and theories of change
- Experience of preparing compelling, high quality documentation (concept notes, presentations, proposals, budgets, reports, logframes, theories of change etc) for different donor and partner audiences
- 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 – strong administrative and organisational skills
- Experience of establishing partnerships between organisations including teaming agreement and consortia bid development
- Strong administrative and organizational skills: ability to be selfdirected and take initiative
- Strong analytical and financial and skills
Qualifications required
- Educated to post-graduate Degree level in International Development-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). Portuguese, French or other language desirable
- Ability to travel globally (estimated 3050% travel required.
Interview/Assessment date(s)
13th December, 2016.
Start date
18th November, 2016
Click here for more Information (PDF)
go to method of application »
Duration: 18 Months
Job Purpose
- The Agribusiness Advisor will develop sustainable and market oriented programmes for farmer collectives.
- He will design, facilitate, coach and mentor farmer collectives on business development and ensure that they have the right business philosophy, develop a business plan targeting their desired market, and have adequate skills to meet the market needs.
- Ultimately the role will contribute to local farmers companies winning more contracts and employing more people and therefore ensuring farming benefits more local people in the three communities in Niger State in which VSO is based.
Responsibilities
- Develop capacity building training to support implementing partners in the area of agribusiness development.
- Ensure adequate linkages to local public and private sectors stakeholders.
- Provide overall support for market and agri-business development to the program.
- Provide technical leadership to program activities related to targeted agribusiness.
- Ensure the quality and appropriateness of activities to achieve the target indicators in a cost-effective, timely, and sustainable manner.
- Ensure that activities have a strong private sector orientation so that the Maize, Soy Bean and Livestock Value Chains make progress towards becoming market-oriented for poor marginalized farmers.
- Assist growers and processors to adopt new technologies and techniques to increase the quality and quantity of production.
- Facilitate enhanced domestic marketing through more rigorous packing, and post-harvest methods.
- Strengthen the linkages among actors in the respective value chains and foster cooperation through strengthened industry associations.
- Build the availability, quality, capacity, and sustainability of business service providers and public and private extension services.
- To support to prepare business plan and identify market actors
- To prepare the follow up the groups activity and business plan reviews
Key Performance Indicator
The Key performance indicators of this placement are that:
- Target beneficiaries are able to sustain their livelihoods and the livelihoods of their families. This includes managing their own businesses, supply their produce to the markets and are always able to meet the market demands by having adequate produce for identified markets.Below includes other indicators:
- Improvements made in the operations of farmers collective or business operation
- Number of problems addressed and solutions recommeded
- Objectives will be confirmed in a three way discussion between the volunteer, employer and VSO in the first three months of the placement.
Competencies
Building and Sustaining working relationships:
- The social skills to build and actively maintain working relationships that foster teamwork and collaboration with others for the benefit of a common goal.
Open Minded and Respectful:
- A non-judgemental approach that values other people and culture.
Seeking and Sharing knowledge:
- Recognition that learning is a two-way and continuous process.
Facilitating Positive Change:
- The ability to analyse problems and develop lasting solutions in line with VSO approaches.
Adaptability:
- A flexible approach and the ability to adapt behaviour to different situations.
Resilience:
- The self-confidence to work with a variety of situations, diverse people and ambiguity.
Skills and Knowledge
Essential:
- University degree or equivalent in Development Policy and or Agribusiness related disciplines (agriculture economics, agribusiness administration, public administration, agriculture policy).
- At least 3 years of professional experience in agribusiness, and/or value chain and market access related , and/or analysis/research of agribusiness and/or socio-economic development projects;
- Hands on experience in supporting the development of farmers’ and their groups’ supporting services;
- Experience in planning and assessment of extension service components;
- Basic understanding of business operations and various areas of business
- Skills in training and facilitation
- Strategic planning skills
- Ability to think innovatively and analytically
- Sound computer skills
- Report writing and documentation
Desirable:
- Ability to speak Hausa
- Previous work experience in West Africa would be an added advantage
Interview/Assessment Date(s)
TBB
Start Date
TBD
Application Closing Date
31st December, 2016.
Click here for more Information (PDF)
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