Head of New Business Development

The Opportunity

The Head of New Business Development (NBD) will support the Country Director, PDQ Director, and other country programme staff to grow/diversify Save the Children Afghanistan funding and partnerships in order to resource the Country Strategic Plan (CSP).

To achieve the country’s programme ambitions in line with SC’s Global Breakthroughs, the Head of NBD will be responsible for coordinating the development of the annual funding strategy, developing an engagement plan across members, donors, implementing partners and other necessary stakeholders, and creating and managing an efficient system (including leading portfolio analysis, donor landscape scanning) to identify, develop and capture new funding opportunities. For specific business opportunities and pursuit, s/he will lead proposal development process.

The post holder will be expected to work across the Movement (Regional Office, Members, and other Country Offices as necessary) in achieving the country funding strategy and be the primary link with Regional Office for all NBD best practices and capacity building efforts.

KEY AREAS OF ACCOUNTABILITIES:
Funding Strategy and New Business Development – 40%
* Analyse the current portfolio, identify trends and approaches that inform a better funding strategy and grow the business opportunity pipeline.
* Lead design and delivery of high quality Country Funding Strategy and Donor Engagement Plans which aligns program demand (CSP) and funding supply (donor landscape).
* Drive and accelerate sustainable portfolio growth for Save the Children Afghanistan, working in alignment with the regional funding strategy.
* Implement the funding strategy and ensure coordination and synergy among country office teams in undertaking approaches and actions that deliver agreed restricted funding targets.
* Drive interdepartmental and member coordination for proposals development and participate in project design and proposal development, and monitoring of the proposal development calendar.
* With guidance and support from regional resource mobilisation team, supports country TE, Finance, PDQ staff with capacity building around business development.
* Ensure best practice ways of working and continuous learning to improve future BD efforts.

Relationship Management – 20%
* Support the Country Director, PDQ Director, and Technical teams to build strong relationships and funding partnerships.
* Direct and proactively engage on a strategic basis with institutional donors at country level in order to build relationships, facilitate technical programme exchanges, influence policy and thinking, and identify key areas of potential cooperation, including programme funding.
* Together with respective Member Offices, lead donor engagement by establishing positive relationships with government offices, scanning of funding opportunities and raising profile of SCI within government leading to increased funding from the government.
* Represent Save the Children Afghanistan as needed with key institutional, corporate, foundation and other donors and support to advance SCI Afghanistan visibility and reputation.
* Ensure teams have best practice approach and system to planning, and undertaking stakeholder engagement with identified prospects and ongoing key partnerships.

Strategic Portfolio Planning – 30%
* Understand and effectively communicate the country’s pipeline and priority funding gaps, as agreed with the country leadership. These may include thematic/program gaps, co-financing gaps, and operational sustainability gaps.
* Identify and track relevant upcoming funding opportunities through desk-based research, advance intelligence gathering, donor websites and strategy papers for INGOs, private sector, government institutional donors, trusts and foundations and major donors that have a national or regional presence.
* Maintain and build capacity in systems or processes for collecting donor, implementing partner, and competitor intelligence and information.
* Proactively work with the regional resource mobilisation team to drive improvement in strategic portfolio planning.
* Assess competitiveness, gather all relevant data & make reommendations in order to help SMT make informed Go/No Go decisions, and adequately resource teams build for pursuing all strategic funding opportunities.

Forming Partnerships – 10%
* Proactively guide and support PDQ and TE teams to rigorously assess the strengths and weaknesses of potential strategic partnerships for programme development and implementation.
* Support country leadership’s strategic decision making to form programming consortia which strengthen both programming and resource mobilization outcomes.

BEHAVIOURS (Values in Practice)
Accountability:
* Holds self-accountable for making decisions, managing resources efficiently, achieving and role modelling Save the Children values
* Holds the team and partners accountable to deliver on their responsibilities – giving them the freedom to deliver in the best way they see fit, providing the necessary development to improve performance and applying appropriate consequences when results are not achieved.
Ambition:
* Sets ambitious and challenging goals for themselves and their team, takes responsibility for their own personal development and encourages their team to do the same
* Widely shares their personal vision for Save the Children, engages and motivates others
* Future orientated, thinks strategically and on a global scale.
Communication & Collaboration:
* Builds and maintains effective relationships, with their team, colleagues, Members and external partners and supporters by adapting effective communication strategies considering the context.
* Values diversity, sees it as a source of competitive strength
* Approachable, good listener, easy to talk to.
Creativity:
* Develops and encourages new and innovative solutions
* Willing to take disciplined risks.
Integrity:
* Honest, encourages openness and transparency; demonstrates highest levels of integrity

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
Background in business development, donor and relationship management, strategic portfolio analysis and planning in non-profit management or related discipline.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS
Essential
* Minimum of 8 years’ experience working in a both emergency and development contexts, with solid experience in more than one of the Save the Children priority sectors: education, child protection, child poverty, child rights governance, health and nutrition.
* 5+ years demonstrated experience identifying and securing funding from government donors, multilateral agencies, corporate donors and/or foundations.
* Demonstrated experience in leading assessments of funding landscapes, and developing programme funding strategies to meet strategic goals.
* Demonstrated experience in leading the development of large-scale proposals, including the development of project budgets greater than $1 million.
* Strong commercial business acumen and risk management skills.
* Knowledge of the requirements of major institutional donors including budgeting, eligibility issues, compliance management, and reporting; experience of engaging with donors at a strategic level
* Highly developed networking skills and ability to form productive working relationships with external donor agencies.
* Highly developed interpersonal and communication skills including communicating with impact, influencing, negotiation, and coaching.
* Demonstrated people leadership skills, able to effectively manage both direct reports as well as staff in a matrix management relationship.
* Strong communication (written and spoken) in English, with ability to summarise and present information.

Desirable
* Experience in donor mapping and knowledgeable on the Afghanistan context of donor landscape.
Knowledge of bidding for commercial contracts and grants

Application Information

Please apply using a cover letter and up-to-date CV as a single document. Please also include details of your current remuneration and salary expectations. A copy of the full role profile can be found at www.savethechildren.net/careers

Closing Date for Application: 04 June 2023
We need to keep children safe so our selection process, which includes rigorous background checks, reflects our commitment to the protection of children from abuse.

All employees are expected to carry out their duties in accordance with our global anti-harassment policy.