Finance & Awards Manager (Disasters Emergency Committee Funding)

£39,100 – £46,000 pa

Fixed Term Contract 12 months / Internal Secondment

Full time (flexible working options available)

United Kingdom

Ref: 5995

The job of a Save the Children UK’s Finance and Awards Manager (DEC Funding) is busy and varied.

• Do you have experience of managing award and financial aspects on large, complex donor awards and a strong understanding of the award (grant/contract) management processes from institutional donors.
• Are you experienced in partnerships management for Direct Spend awards, including proposal and budget development with partner agencies?
• Are you experienced of creating financial plans, budgets and reports with an understanding and experience of audit readiness/processes?
• Are you motivated by our vision of creating a world where every child doesn’t just survive, but thrives, and can go on to change the world?

If the answers to these questions are yes, we would love to hear from you!

About Us

The number of children requiring humanitarian assistance is rising as the climate crisis, entrenched conflict, and fragility, forced migration and infectious diseases all lead to an increase in the frequency, duration, and severity of catastrophic events. With needs continuing to grow and rapidly outpacing available resources, humanitarians around the world are once more forced to do more with less. Recognising the changing humanitarian risk landscape, the need to stay relevant, and to step up for greater impact, Save the Children has adopted a bold vision for the future of its humanitarian work and as part of this, there is an important role for SCUK to play in identifying and supporting next-generation collaborative initiatives that will ultimately deliver impact for disaster-affected children and their families.

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) as part of SCUK’s humanitarian department provides high-quality humanitarian capacity strengthening for the movement, as well as the wider sector, as part of our shifting the power agenda. The HLA’s mission, as a team within the humanitarian department, is to enable people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries, by providing quality learning opportunities.

The HLA’s approach spans from focused needs-based learning in countries hit by crises to the huge international reach of our learning platform, Kaya. They are a global team that has a full suite of in-house skills to provide and develop the offer; technical and learning experts, platform specialists, a digital and design studio, communications support and more. The HLA enables SCUK to offer the most effective and impactful humanitarian capacity strengthening resource for both the Save the Children movement, the wider humanitarian sector and beyond.

As part of Save the Children’s regional response for Ukraine, HLA is leading SCUK’s “Engine 2” response, funded through the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).

Job Purpose

The role will sit within the Operations team within the HLA, which is responsible for ensuring operational excellence and high performance. The Finance & Awards Manager will work closely with the Head of Operations, Operations Lead and HLA Finance Business Partner with finance and awards management responsibilities as part of SCUK’s DEC funded response to the Ukraine crisis.

The purpose of this role is to ensure both financial and awards management compliance for HLA’s DEC funding alongside the rapid implementation of our Engine 2 programming – which includes supporting delivery of quality programme implementation in accordance with the agreed donor budget, knowledge management and maintenance of all documentation audit trails, and oversight staff costs recovery.

The Finance and Awards Manager will ensure that SCUK standards and processes are followed across the teams and acting as the focal point for the finance and awards management and compliance activities of the team. You will also liaise regularly and consistently with HLA’s Operations Lead and Finance Business Partner, keeping up-to-date on all SCUK finance and awards management processes.

Main Accountabilities

The Finance and Awards Manager’s key duties will be to:

General and Award Management

• Lead on financial and award management for HLA’s Engine 2 DEC funding – throughout the project cycle ensuring at all stages that the control framework of the funding is consistent with the situation.
• Ensure robust award management systems are in place for the DEC award funding (e.g. procurement, contract amendments, income processing, and reporting) and that all donor compliance and SCUK quality requirements are met fully.
• Provide advice on donor relations strategy with the DEC, leveraging on funding opportunities, and managing donor expectations.
• Manage and process monthly HLA DEC staff salary recharges and maintain current recharge information on HLA’s recharge tracker.
• Ensure that awards management information systems are up-to-date and global and internal processes are followed.
• Ensuring that award risk assessments are completed and periodically reviewed, taking timely actions to mitigate risk when needed.
• HLA DEC lead for both internal and external audits.
• Periodically run award reviews to ensure that audit documentation is being adequately maintained and that all awards are compliant in case of audit.
• Liaise with HLA’s Operations Lead to address complex or systemic issues, coordinate communications to DEC stakeholders, and ensure needs and are effectively prioritised.

Finance

• Consolidate financial data across multiple HLA and SCUK stakeholders, plus external partners to deliver timely and accurate reporting to the DEC.
• Manage highly attentive and detailed monitoring of the DEC funding’s budget vs. actuals (BVA) data, including thoroughly explaining variances to the Finance Business Partner for the purposes of financial month-end commentary to the senior leadership team, and flagging all key issues in a timely fashion as they arise.
• Partner with the relevant HLA DEC programme managers (PMs), to provide consistent BVA information and spending planning
• Work with the HLA Finance Business Partner and HLA team to ensure that the DEC budget is effectively re-phased as needed at the time of the quarterly organisational (re)forecasting process
• Develop HLA and partner SCUK teams proposal budgets for future DEC programme funding.
• Provide high quality donor financial reports, and respond to donor financial report queries.
• Consolidate financial data from with various stakeholders across HLA, SCUK and external partners to deliver timely and accurate reporting to the DEC.
• Work closely with the HLA Finance Business Partner to ensure that the DEC funding is correctly processed at SCUK financial year-end.

Person Profile

Experience and Skills

• Experience of working with aid agencies’(such as the Disasters Emergency Committee) projects and funding
• Experience of managing award and financial aspects on £10m+ donor awards with multiple departments, stakeholders, and sub-grantees / financially managing a consortium of multiple partners
• Demonstrated partnerships management for Direct Spend awards, including proposal and budget development with partner agencies, compiling and reviewing Sub-grant Agreements, monitoring partners’ activities and creating donor financial reports.
• Demonstrated competency with financial plans, budgets and reporting including construction and monitoring of budgets.
• Project management experience and skills, with a knowledge of governance tools and techniques and experience of managing complex cross-organisational projects with multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent understanding of audit readiness and experience of the audit process.
• Experience of managing award and financial aspects on a large donor award with multiple stakeholders

Abilities

• Highly numerate with the ability to monitor and manage financial information.
• Excellent organisation and administration skills with the ability to plan and prioritise work for self and others.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to identify key points from complex material or information.
• Professional interpersonal and communication skills with ability to communicate to wide range of people at all levels of seniority from a variety of countries and backgrounds, partner organisations, donors and other external contacts.

Aptitude

• Strong understanding of the award (grant/contract) management including but not limited to institutional donors.
• Highly computer literate and confident with MS Office

Ways of Working:

Remote First – The majority of our roles can be performed remotely, however you may work from the office as often as you wish. Whilst you will be predominantly working from home, we may require you to come to your contracted office up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter (Note: This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team). This is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building.

On-site – There are certain roles that cannot be performed remotely and so your role will be based in an office location and you may occasionally be able to work from home.

Flexible Working – We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview**.**

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion:

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be “Free to Be Me”. We are not looking for just one type of person – we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think.

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences – of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability – help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here.