Director, Donor Engagement

**Background**

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future. Founded in 1933, the IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities which support them, as well as those who remain within their homes and communities. At work today in over 40 countries and 22 U.S. cities, we restore safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted and struggling to endure. The IRC leads the way from harm to home.

IRC’s Crisis Response, Recovery & Development department (CRRD) leads and delivers the IRC’s work in crisis-affected contexts around the world. In the last year, we served approaching 20M crisis-affected people with high quality humanitarian programming. This was achieved by over 12,000 staff across 300 offices in 40+ countries, working to deliver more than 600 individual grants and contracts.

The Awards Management Unit (AMU) within CRRD is responsible for identifying, securing and managing funding from government donors for the IRC. AMU is a bridge between donors and the IRC’s work on the ground. The team leads donor engagement, provides expert technical advice to colleagues delivering our services around the world, ensures consistency and compliance with donor policies and procedures, and manages associated risk. They also support all IRC staff working on awards from government donors and partners.

**Global Business Development**

Within the Awards Management Unit, the Global BD team leads IRC’s public BD strategy and donor engagement for IRC’s international programs. The team brings together capacity across the organization to drive donor engagement and BD services to secure the public funding needed to deliver our work to clients. The team includes technical, operational and donor specialists able to lead our most complex proposals and manage our most important donor relationships.

**The Purpose of the Role**

The Donor Engagement Director manages a portfolio of critical priority donors for IRC. They will lead, guide and coordinate IRC’s funding focused engagement with these donors, that currently includes: the World Bank, UN agencies and governments including Canada, the US and those in Gulf states. The role will also develop a group of emerging partnerships with other key donors at different stages maturity. The role will be working alongside a counterpart, the Director of European Donor Engagement, who manages an equivalent portfolio of important donors and partners.

Managing a team of Senior Advisors, the Donor Engagement Director will be the strategic lead and oversee an internal and external “account management” function to oversee engagement with these donors. The role will be a lead expert, engaging with its portfolio of donors and holding high-level relationships, and leadership on donor relations.

It will work closely with technical and proposal development teams who will provide the operational BD capacity to secure funding from donors in its portfolio, through influential engagement and strategic outreach.

The Donor Engagement Director will lead the development and implementation of strategies for proactive donor and partner relationships. These strategies will be for the whole of IRC and will engage colleagues from technical, regional, country and operational teams as well as working closely with policy colleagues and the executive board.

**Major Responsibilities:**

**Strategy**

- Coordinate with senior leaders to lead the development of comprehensive multi-year engagement strategies for key donors within the portfolio.
- Oversee a team of advisors implementing these strategies coordinating actions with relevant stakeholders across every level of IRC.

**External Representation**

- Develop and maintain a network of senior stakeholders within relevant donors to ensure effective engagement, influence, and winning BD approaches.
- Undertake direct representation with donor officials, and support the development of IRC’s donor relationships, including brokering meetings between donors and IRC’s regional or technical Leadership, Country Directors or senior staff in head quarters. Support the preparation and follow up for these engagements, including working with AMU and cross-functional teams to ensure follow up, ensuring meetings are translated into business development or meaningful action.
- Participate in key meetings with donor officials, including Desk/Program Officers, Heads of Unit, Director-General/equivalent, advisors and other officials.
- Represent the IRC at external events, and forums including delivering presentations/briefings to senior donor representatives, forums and sector groups.

**Enabling cross organizational engagement with the donor portfolio**

- Proactively identify and broker relationships with key donor officials and stakeholders.
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