Grants Specialist - Partnerships

The Grants and Partnerships Specialist plays a key role in ensuring effective and efficient grants management, compliance, and partnership coordination for a multi-donor facility working on localisation in Sudan and the region. This position oversees the grants lifecycle, provides guidance to partners/local actors, and ensures compliance with donor regulations and Fund standards.

Responsibilities

• Support the development and execution of application processes, including guidelines, templates, and evaluation criteria.
• Support partners on proposal development, conduct due diligence and vetting processes for partner organisations, ensuring compliance with donor and Fund standards.
• Prepare and administer grant agreements and amendments in coordination with the Partnerships and Grants Manager and partner onboarding.
• Provide Technical Assistance Facility linkages, especially on partner monitoring and provide capacity building support to partners on grants management, compliance, and reporting.
• Oversee the development and roll-out of the Fund Grant Management System (GMS).
• Ensure partners comply with grant conditions, Fund Operations Manual, and donor requirements.
• Update and maintain the Fund risk register and dashboard, addressing high-risk areas.
• Monitor grant implementation, ensuring timely and quality submission of financial and narrative reports.
• Follow up in regular meetings with the partners and ensure timely escalation of risks and challenges.
• Liaise closely with the Operations Manager to ensure that grants are processed in a timely manner.
• Track partner spending against budgets and flag variances.
• Support partners in developing procurement plans, risk registers, capacity-building strategies, and staffing plans.
• Provide partner training on grant report writing, donor compliance, and operational procedures.
• Ensure all grant-related documents are appropriately uploaded and backed up in the GMS or other systems.
• Maintain detailed records of grants, including applications, reports, and feedback letters.
• Coordinate review meetings with partners and follow up on action points.
• Review partner reports on a rolling basis as per submissions and provide qualitative feedback.
• Coordinate with internal stakeholders, including MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning), TAF, support teams, to ensure robust oversight of projects.
• Provide an effective interface with prospective and current fund partners.

Requirements

• University degree in international development, business administration, political science, or a related field.
• Minimum 3 years of experience in grants management within the NGO/INGO or donor sectors.
• Proven expertise working with institutional donors (e.g., FCDO, EU, ECHO, SIDA, NORAD).
• Strong understanding of donor regulations and compliance.
• Experience working in Sudan and strong understanding of the Sudan context.
• Ability to prioritise workloads, meet deadlines, and adapt to complex environments.
• Previous experience in partnership management and capacity building.
• Fluent written and spoken Arabic language.
• Experience working with Dynamics, SAP, Oracle, or similar ERP systems (desirable).
• Familiarity with Power Apps or internal grants systems development (desirable).
• Experience working with Group Cash Transfer mechanism (desirable).
• Certifications in grants or partnership management are an advantage.

Skills

• Grants Management
• Donor Compliance
• Institutional Donor Relations
• Partnership Management
• Capacity Building
• Sudan Context Knowledge
• ERP Systems
• Dynamics
• SAP
• Oracle
• Power Apps
• Group Cash Transfer
• Grants Lifecycle Management
• Donor Rules and Regulations
• Multi-donor Facility Coordination

Languages

English, Arabic, French