Manager, Resources Management and Grants

Job Title : Manager, Resources Management and Grants

Reports to Position Title :Director of Operations

Research Project Title : Faculty/ Department The Dallaire Institute

FTE (based on 35 paid hr work week) 100%

Duration : 1 year

About the Dallaire Institute

Lt. General Romeo Dallaire founded the Child Soldiers Initiative in 2007 and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, provided a home to the Initiative in 2010.  In 2020, the Initiative became the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security, an international repository of expertise, research, and advocacy to prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed violence.  The Dallaire Institute is the co-developer of the 2017 Vancouver Principles on Peacekeeping and the Prevention of the Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers. As part of Dalhousie University, the Dallaire Institute hosts a prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair on International Peace, Security and Children and offers undergraduate and graduate courses. Through academic and practitioner training and community engagement, the Dallaire Institute’s interdisciplinary and applied research advances innovative strategies for preventing the recruitment and use of children in armed violence.  The Dallaire Institute is supported through private, public and international contributions.   

To achieve this important objective, the Dallaire Institute conducts activities on four fronts:   

·  World-class, interdisciplinary research to build and share knowledge, which in turn leads to new solutions. 

·  High-level advocacy activities to create and promote the political will to end the use of children in violence as central to the achievement of global peace and security. 

·  Education and programming to sustain the efforts to make the recruitment and use of children as soldiers unthinkable by inspiring leaders, educators, and policy makers to implement new approaches, conduct research, and actively share their knowledge on the prioritization of the children’s rights upfront approach.   

·   Comprehensive, prevention-oriented training to security sector actors, in the service of broader security sector reform, as well as collaboration with civil society to create and implement tools that protect children from the dangers associated with recruitment

Duties and responsibilities

The role will have five main areas of responsibility:

Strategic Portfolio Planning & Budgeting

•Design and deploy financial forecasts based on thematic program plans

•Develop operational plans for business development, coordinating input into proposals, and contributing to writing or editing proposals, including budget development in compliance with donor requirements.

•Coordinates on the needs required to support philanthropic donor proposal development and reporting needs

•Develops budget estimates for proposals for review by the Headquarters Director of Operations

•Proactively coordinates with program teams and the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration to ensure that the financial forecasts are in line with departmental work plans and the organization ensures full cost recovery

•Ensure all regional grants follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SoPs) for financial budgeting, forecast and implementation, coordinating for this to the ACoE and LACoE Project Managers.

•Ensure accurate and up-to-date financial information on the grants portfolio is readily available to the Executive Team and for All Staff Meetings (ASM)

•Ensure the DI has a clear framework for master budget development, cost allocation, monitoring of budgets, phasing and forecasting, in particular ensuring alignment between the master budget and funding tracker

•Ensures that necessary risks are taken knowingly with appropriate mitigating actions

•Is responsible for the global proposal development and review processes, ensuring all staff inputs happen in a timely and effective manner and advising on donor compliance requirements to ensure high-quality and on-time proposals

•Design, agree and implement grant amendments as needed

Financial Reporting

•Participate with the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) Manager at HQ and ACOE M&E reporting officers to meet the quarterly internal reporting requirements

•Participate with the Project Managers & Officers in international locations to fulfil reporting needs

•Create narrative and financial reports, plans and adjustments, meeting set deadlines for reporting and ensuring communication with philanthropic donors is supported with relevant documentation

•Works with the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration to jointly oversee project spending and advises staff on cost allocations and eligibility, ensuring compliance at all times. This includes holding and documenting monthly Budget vs Actual Meetings.

•Works with the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration in forecasting and reconciling monthly budget expenditures, and project forecasting to meet rigorous donor requirements

•In the absence of a Project Manager, leads the quarterly financial reporting to donors with support from the Deputy Director of Finance and Administration at Dallaire Institute HQ

•In charge of the communication and setting of agreements with Legal and Finance colleagues at Dalhousie University to follow up on legal, financial and budget requirements, including providing timely project reports for review by Dalhousie finance staff to meet contract deadlines

•Acts as a bridge between Finance and Program teams to keep everyone informed and engaged

•Conducts country office visits to ensure financial management reviews and internal audits as needed

Awards and Grants Management

•Leads new Project Kick-Offs to ignite timely start-ups and work planning and to ensure that project information is shared effectively with relevant staff across the organization (including field offices) and partners

•Leads on liaising across teams and convening relevant staff on overall project workplans, schedules and activity reporting commitments, updating, and modifying as required, and ensuring they remain in line with the Dallaire Institute’s core values and Strategic Plan

•Participates in ensuring work-planning processes to match activity calendars and deliverables are met for each project.

•Act as a team leader for the Headquarters Operations Team on project-specific legal, financial and procurement matters.

•Co-design, oversee and maintain procurement plan and control process flows for hiring of consultants at HQ and liaising with regional offices to provide support from HQ on the same plans

•Leads the processes for donor reporting to ensure that reports are high quality, delivered on time and supported by auditable records. This includes assessing and making recommendations to improve the reconciliation process (reporting assurance mechanism) between Finance, Programs, and MEAL that will ensure accountable reporting to donors.

•Identify, assess, input, and recommend the existing and desired reconciliation process (reporting assurance mechanism) between Finance, Procurement, Logistics, and MEAL to ensure accountable reporting to donors.

Partnerships / Contracts with Consultants

•In collaboration with the Programme Managers and HR Manager, have the Grants management support in undertaking consultants’ assessments, legal vetting (if required) and preparation of partners’/consultants’ agreements to ensure donor compliance requirements are factored into this

•Capacity building and compliance support with all new and existing partners/ consultants, including regular monitoring and systems in place so that partner delivery meets donor expectations and requirements, in collaboration with programme operations

Donor Compliance

•Ensure all donor requirements are met and there is a complete audit trail of the implementation and reporting for all awards

•Ensure that key contributing staff have a clear understanding of donor requirements and expectations at the agreement, kick off, implementation, amendment, reporting, close out and audit stage of projects/awards

•Ensure that key processes are in place so that formats, eligibility, compliance, reporting, receive optimum attention at the various stages of the award life cycle with a view to securing donor satisfaction

•Work with the finance team and provide technical advice to strategic donor costs allocation with a view to minimizing compliance requirements where possible (timesheets, co-financing, etc.)

•Ensure potential issues and amendment requests are flagged promptly to donors. This may include developing business cases where donor waiver/derogation requests need to be more thoroughly articulated or negotiated with donors.

•Ensure that all new staff receive an orientation to DI grants management processes, systems, tools, and donor compliance requirements that are relevant to the role

•Co-coordination of responding to all internal and external auditors as necessary.

Other Responsibilities

•Coordinate for its team and proactively participate in planning and performance processes as outlined in the Employee Handbook including annual appraisals, regular meetings, and ensuring that annual reviews are an integral component of workplans and priorities for employees and consultants

•Promotes a safe and secure work environment in line with the organization’s core values, and fosters strong communication between teams within the organization

•Demonstrates an ongoing commitment to child protection and commitment to the Protection from Sexual Harassment, Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA)

•Complies with Dallaire Institute’s financial and operational requirements and upholds high standards of honesty and integrity in personal conduct.

•Contributes to the organization’s systems and project improvements

Qualifications

Required

•Master’s Degree or demonstrable experience in a relevant field, including Business Administration, International Development, Commerce, Public Administration, or other relevant field.

•5 years of experience managing multinational teams and as a leader of multidisciplinary teams.

•Experience in successful project delivery and coordination in complex or fragile environments (minimum 7 years), including delivering and closing projects and communicating with donors and partners

•Proven experience (minimum 5 years) in managing budgets and multiple administrative and finance tasks in fast-paced environments

Demonstrated experience working with large donor contracts ($10M USD Annual budgets), within the philanthropic sector, government, multilateral organizations, or multinational corporations

•Demonstrated ability to work effectively across multicultural, multilingual, and multidisciplinary teams

•Experience communicating project impact in a complex stakeholder environment

•Excellent planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organize a workload comprised of varying and changing tasks and responsibilities and work under pressure for itself, its team and other departments.

•Experience using the MS Office 365 suite, including Outlook, SharePoint and Microsoft Teams, is required, including MS Project

•Strong written and verbal communication skills in English

•Excellent attention to detail

•Excellent ability to forge relationships at all levels and work across multiple project teams

•Enthusiasm, creativity and flexibility with excellent interpersonal skills and team spirit

Highly Desired

•International working experience will be an asset

•Experience in successfully supporting projects remotely or from the headquarters level

•Familiarity with Earned Value Management

•Able to communicate in French, Spanish or Portuguese.

Working conditions

•The position will be based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

•The Manager, Resources Management/Grants may be required to travel to international sites and will develop a strong familiarity with the Dallaire Institute staff in the international sites as well as their operational requirements

•The Manager, Resources Management/Grants represents the Dallaire Institute as the first responsible for all the duties listed in this document, in front of internal and external parties.

1. Hybrid role: The successful applicant will be eligible for hybrid work (combination of in-person work on site and remote work) as agreed by all parties based on operational requirements and Institute guidelines.

Supervisory/managerial

This position will supervise and/or manage a local Officer and multidisciplinary teams as a Matrix Supervisor.