Vacancy title:
Grants Manager

[Type: FULL_TIME, Industry: Nonprofit, and NGO, Category: Management]

Jobs at:
Norwegian Refugee Council

Deadline of this Job:
Monday, July 21 2025

Duty Station:
Kenya | Nairobi | Kenya

Summary
Date Posted: Monday, July 7 2025, Base Salary: Not Disclosed

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JOB DETAILS:

What we are looking for:

Join NRC as a Grants Manager (East & Southern Africa + focus)!

In this dynamic role, you’ll take the lead in managing multi-country, regional, and high-risk/high-value grants, ensuring full compliance with donor and internal requirements, driving quality reporting, and shaping strong, competitive proposals. You’ll be the go-to expert for NRC’s Project Cycle Management (PCM) approach, providing strategic support to country offices and ensuring everything runs smoothly from grant revisions to external communications.

Working as part of our global Grants Management team, you'll help refine systems, boost compliance, and build capacity across the region through training and mentorship. With a focus on the East and Southern Africa (ESA) portfolio, you’ll play a key role in securing funding, supporting quality programming, and influencing positive change across the region. Ready to lead from the centre of it all? This is your opportunity.

The ideal candidate must have the right to live and work in Kenya. NRC is unable to support with visa applications. 

What you will do:

Some of your general responsibilities include:

• Lead the process of developing concept notes, proposals and reports (donors and internal reports, narrative and project budgets) for multi country and regional based grants and other projects in the designated portfolio to ensure accurate, transparent and timely delivery of narrative and financial documents, in line with NRC PCM framework and donor’s rules and regulations through working collaboratively with country, regional and global colleagues.
• Ensure compliance to NRC’s PCM Framework and facilitate relevant PCM activities, including the inclusion of cross-cutting programme elements, MEAL, Finance and other support functions throughout all stages of the project cycle. This can be go/no go consultations, proposal planning, grants opening, review and closing meetings, as well as coordinating relevant revisions and inclusion of partners (consortia or implementing), and liaising with relevant colleagues at CO, Regional, Global and Rep Office level as need be.
• Build collaborative working relationships with programme and grants management teams in country offices in the relevant geographical portfolio, to coordinate and support the full cycle of projects from development of high-quality multi- country, regional and other funding and partnership proposals, using relevant NRC Grant Management tools and guidance, through to implementation and finalisation and reporting. 
• Collaborate with the CO finance team and global resources to ensure donor budget lines as per the contract are in line with the financial system (i.e., amounts have not changed as a result of new income instalments at different rates being received), highlight critical financial issues such as under/overspends to project focal points and provide technical support to relevant CO focal points on monitoring issues and budget revision (if required).
• Responsible for providing or organizing training and capacity building of programme and support staff on NRCs grants management, proposal and report writing, donor rules and regulations, and Project Cycle Management (PCM) in coordination with the Grants Mngt pool and based on needs in relevant countries. Work with the Grants Management global function and relevant Institutional Partnership Advisers to contribute to revision and updates to training and capacity building on grants mngt, PCM and internal and donor compliance requirements. 
• Coordinate and take overarching responsibility for delivery of timely, quality inputs for each project from proposal, revision, and final reporting stage internally and to donors, including contributing to the review of donor contracts, working with the legal team and flag any points that might challenge NRCs procedures and support contract negotiation, this also includes monitoring grant payment schedules and income requests for respective portfolio, working closely with finance to ensure this is done in a timely manner.
• Act as an internal helpdesk on donor related issues, including donor rules and regulations, proposal and report writing, working in partnership in addition to the PnP and Private Fundraising Departments.
• Maintain overview over all grants in the designated portfolio and ensure a correct and up-to-date grants management information in Cycles and GORS, review data to identify relevant funding trends, donor mapping exercises, and development of Capacity Statements.
• Gap fill or provide specific grant support as per request and availability, depending on workload and other responsibilities, as agreed with the Head of PCM and Grants Mngt and the relevant region/country.
• Compliance and adherence to NRC policies, guidance and procedures, (if a function role) and a specific responsibility for the functions policies and procedures.

Some of your specific responsibilities include:

• Undertake delegated donor representation, including liaising with consortia partners, supporting new business negotiations, and funder reporting in relation to multi-country grants.
• Lead on organisational assessments of Partners as per NRC’s Grants Management procedures and contribute to partner capacity building as required and identified in partner assessment.
• Identify gaps in quality and practice, and common development needs in relation to PCM and grants management within CO’s and the project portfolio and work collaboratively with colleagues in the Grants Mngt function to develop learning initiatives to build skills and capacity.
• Serve as a member of relevant Major Projects Committee or High Value Committees as appropriate. 
• Support the roll-out and uptake of Cycles. 
• Contribute to the review of donor contracts, working with legal and risk and compliance colleagues, and flag any points that might challenge NRC’s procedures, and support contract negotiations. 

What you will bring:

• Minimum 4 years of experience of donor relations and grants management within a relevant context (e.g., with institutional humanitarian and development donors).
• Knowledge of institutional donors’ rules, regulations, priorities, and compliance requirements – Norad, Sida, GFFO, SDC, ECHO etc. 
• Track record of report and proposal development, or similar in funding or partnerships, working with multiple donors and consortia.
• Experience from working in complex and volatile contexts, with preference for previous experience working with displaced populations.
• Strong planning and organisational skills, including ability to coordinate the inputs of self and others to meet a variety of deadlines for different proposal, budgetary and reporting requirements.
• Good interpersonal skills, and ability to build collaborative working relationships with a wide range of colleagues internally and externally.
• Good cultural awareness and sensitivity.
• Highly proficient computing skills, including all Microsoft office (word, excel, ppt), online/cloud-based information management and sharing systems, and databases.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English. French is a definite asset. (Other languages such as Arabic, Spanish is positive).
• Ability to build staff capacity in grants management in country offices.
• Willingness to travel to field offices and work in difficult environments as required
• Fluency in English, both written and verbal. French is a specific asset.
• Ability to work under pressure, independently and with limited supervision. 
• The post holder enjoys shifting between leading others, developing things individually and contributing to work of others, and has excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Significant experience in managing coordination and communication within multipart or complex environments, alongside excellent interpersonal abilities.
• Knowledge about the regional context is highly desirable.

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 48

Level of Education: bachelor degree

Job application procedure

Interested and qualified? Go to Norwegian Refugee Council on ekum.fa.em2.oraclecloud.com to apply

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