Partnerships Coordinator

More than 3.6 million people have fled across borders to seek safety in the 1st month since the escalation of conflict in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and over 6.5 million Ukrainians are reported to be displaced internally. As the vast majority of the displaced are women, girls, and boys, this could become the worst humanitarian crisis Europe has seen in decades.

Between February 7-23, 2022, an IRC team undertook a scoping mission covering Poland and Ukraine to better understand the context, humanitarian and civil society landscape, and anticipated service gaps in the event of an escalation of conflict in Ukraine and consequent displacement into neighboring Poland. As of February 24th, the IRC has pivoted to an emergency response, and have identified partner agencies in Ukraine to facilitate immediate assistance that can be used where it is the most needed. Simultaneously, the IRC is establishing operations across Ukraine to complement partner response services either in breadth or scale.

This position will be based in Vinnytsia and/or Lviv, with occasional travel to other locations in Ukraine as permitted and occasionally to Rzeszow Poland, and other locations. As this is a fluid and rapidly changing context, the location of this position and length of assignment may change based on the needs of the program.

The Partnership Coordinator will support the Ukraine Country Program in its strategic management and oversight of its robust partnerships across the country. The Partnership Coordinator will facilitate the Ukraine team’s delivery of high quality partnerships that are strategic for IRC, compliant with IRC and donor requirements in order to provide quality services and outcomes for the communities we serve, and consistent with the IRC’s PEER System. Working in close collaboration with the programs, grants and operations departments, the Partnership Coordinator will oversee all steps in the partnership management lifecycle ensuring that partnerships are appropriately integrated into the overall project cycle management.

Key Responsibilities:

Strategy and Program Approach

• Collaborate with technical coordinators to proactively identify potential partnerships with NGOs (Ukrainian L/NNGOs as well as INGOs), authorities, and private sector, including those that are led by women and serve women and girls, in line with relevant stakeholder strategies.
• Proactively engage partners in program development efforts.

Promote Effective Partnerships

• Establish and manage the Partnership Working Group (co-responsible for delivering the functions of the PWG), including referral of issues to Senior Management Team as appropriate.
• Promote and apply the IRC’s Partnership Excellence for Equality and Results system (PEERS). Contribute to building a strong understanding of PEERS throughout the IRC Ukraine country program, and ensure that IRC’s partnership principles, skills and approaches are applied by staff across programs and projects with partners.
• Facilitate systematic partner feedback on IRC’s management of the partnership relationship, including the documentation of, and response to partner feedback.

Partnership Management

• Lead facilitation and coordination of partnership management processes to ensure well planned, timely, coordinated and coherent partnership management.
• Assist in ensuring that program design (and Go/ No Go submissions) is consistent with the SAP partnership strategy; contribute relevant proposal content, and ensure appropriate budget resourcing for partner projects and support.
• Co-facilitate and guide competitive and non-competitive partner selection processes to identify new partners, as well as new applications from existing partners.
• Coordinate and co-lead Partner Identity and Background Review (Vetting) processes, including completion of the report for approval.
• Coordinate and co-lead Partner’s Project Capacity Review (PPCR) processes, including contributing to and facilitating the collaborative risk analysis and management.
• Determine appropriate partnership agreement type and draft agreement, taking into account the due diligence outcomes and specific project and donor requirements, liaising with HQ for review and approval (and obtaining donor approvals as necessary).
• Co-lead Partnership Project Opening, Review and Closing Meetings, together with the Technical Coordinator.
• Coordinate and participate in timely and effective partner program, finance, and compliance review and reflection (monitoring), and work with the Partnership Working Group to address any project performance issues.
• Coordinate narrative and finance reporting processes, including review and feedback.
• Liaise with finance and technical teams to achieve timely funds transfers and proper financial follow up and support for partners; work with finance to address any challenges in payments and raise proposed disallowed costs to SMT.
• Work collaboratively with partners and IRC staff to constructively resolve any issues that may arise.
• Where partner performance issues are identified, facilitate timely action by the IRC to address any areas of non-performance as they arise.
• Co-lead the review of the performance of the partner, of the IRC (including on the basis of partner feedback), and of the partnership, including successes, challenges and lessons learned, fostering ongoing partnerships beyond the sub-award project cycle.

Partner Support and Capacity Sharing

• Facilitate the collaborative development and delivery of the partner project support plan, ensuring that it appropriately addresses issues identified in the due diligence process, and coordinate with relevant departments for the timely, quality implementation of the plan.
• Ensure IRC understands partner capacity strengthening priorities, and identifies opportunities and plans for IRC to support partner capacity strengthening efforts.
• Support the resourcing of organizational development support where appropriate for partners; coordinate organizational development support to partners.
• Collaborate with technical coordinators to integrate technical capacity sharing approaches, including how IRC can learn from local partners.
• Promote and identify ways for continual learning between IRC staff and partners.

Human Resources

• Manage the Ukraine Partnership Manager, and suggest/recruit any other partnership staff needed for the expanding program.

Culture of Effective and Respectful Partnerships

• With the support of the senior management team, the Partnership Coordinator will also be a leader in building and promoting a culture, attitudes and values conducive to collaborative partnerships among the team, based on a clear and shared understanding of IRC’s role and approach, and core partnership principles.

Job Requirements:

Mandatory:

• BA degree or equivalent in International Development or Affairs, Finance, Business or related field; Advanced degree a plus – or equivalent work experience
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience with I/NGOs
• IRC PEERs experience is preferred
• Demonstrated successful experience working with partners
• Demonstrable understanding of project planning and management cycles, and strong program design skills
• Significant knowledge of key donor rules and regulations (in particular U.S. Government, Sida, and ECHO)
• Highly organized, close attention to detail, and ability to effectively prioritize tasks in a fluid environment
• Ability to work well independently but also coordinate partnership workloads of staff not under your direct line management
• Team leadership and supervision experience and skills
• Experience in training internal staff and partner staff.
• Willingness to travel frequently to field offices and partner locations
• Professional fluency in spoken and written English and Ukrainian/Russian; able to communicate concisely.
• Very strong English writing and editing skills; strong computer skills.

Position reports to: Deputy Director of Programs

Position directly manages: Partnership Manager and other TBD roles.

Other Internal and/or external contacts: The position regularly corresponds and attends meetings with external and internal audiences, thus a strong ability to communicate and maintain positive working relationships is highly desirable for this position.

*Internal:* Technical Coordinators, Partnerships Department Staff, Finance team, Supply Chain team,

External: Partner staff.

Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in the IRC Way – Code of Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Harassment-Free Workplace, Fiscal Integrity, Anti-Retaliation, Combating Trafficking in Persons and several others.

Gender Equality: IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including parental leave, gender-sensitive security protocols and other supportive benefits and allowances.

IRC is an Equal Opportunity Employer IRC considers all applicants on the basis of merit without regard to race, sex, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability.