Digital Fundraising Specialist [Open to Tier 0, 1 & 2 applicants]

Tiered Approach

In line with the commitment to safeguard capacity and support personnel already in the Organization, a majority of UNDP UNCDF/UNV vacancies are advertised using a tiered application process whereby:

• Tier 0: UNDP/UNCDF/UNV IP staff holding permanent (PA) and fixed-term (FTA) appointments, whose posts will be abolished, or contracts will be terminated or not renewed during 2026.
• Tier 1: Other UNDP/UNCDF/UNV staff holding permanent (PA) and fixed-term (FTA) appointments
• Tier 2: UNDP/UNCDF/UNV staff holding temporary appointments (TA), personnel on regular PSA contracts, and Expert and Specialist UN Volunteers
• Tier 3 or no tier indicated: All other contract types from UNDP/UNCDF/UNV and other agencies, and other external candidates

Please make note of the Tier(s) indicated in the vacancy title, if any, and ensure that you satisfy the eligibility to apply.

Background

As the lead United Nations agency on international development, UNDP works in 170 countries and territories to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality. We help countries develop policies, leadership skills, partnerships and institutional capabilities to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s work is guided by four strategic objectives that together define our contribution to human development: expanding prosperity for all, strengthening effective governance, safeguarding a healthy planet and building crisis resilience. These objectives are enabled by three accelerators that drive transformative impact across our portfolio: digital and AI innovation, gender equality and sustainable finance. Through this integrated approach, UNDP supports countries to deliver tangible improvements in people’s lives and to advance sustainable development at scale.
Within the Global Policy Network (GPN), the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP's Strategic Plan. BPPS's staff provides technical advice to Country Offices, advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represents UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private dialogues, government and civil society dialogues, and engages in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. BPPS works closely with UNDP's Crisis Bureau (CB) to support emergency and crisis response. BPPS ensures that issues of risk are fully integrated into UNDP's development programmes. BPPS assists UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results-based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working. BPPS supports UNDP and partners to be more innovative, knowledge and data-driven including in its programme support efforts.

UNDP, through its Sustainable Finance Hub (https://sdgfinance.undp.org/), supports partners in promoting financing for SDGs. As an accelerator of the UNDP Strategic Plan, sustainable finance strengthens countries’ ability to mobilize, align and deploy finance at scale for national priorities. UNDP supports international and country level policy reform as a catalyst for system-wide change, stronger policy environments, better-functioning markets and more coherent financing strategies for sustainable development.

The Connecting Business Initiative (CBI) is a joint partnership between OCHA and UNDP dedicated to facilitating private sector engagement before, during, and after emergencies.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies. OCHA also ensures there is a framework within which each actor can contribute to the overall response effort. With its partners, OCHA contributes to principled and effective humanitarian response through coordination, advocacy, policy, information management and humanitarian financing tools and services. OCHA also manages the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and almost two dozen country and regional pooled funds, which are unique instruments that allow donors to support urgent life-saving interventions delivered by trusted local and international NGOs and UN agencies.

Scope of Work:

Under the umbrella of CBI, OCHA is launching a new strategy to increase resource mobilization from the private sector – broadly defined as corporations, foundations, and individuals – for OCHA and its pooled funds.

OCHA has two online fundraising platforms, crisisrelief.un.org and climaterelief.un.org. Donations to UN Crisis Relief go directly to relief organizations delivering life-saving aid at the front lines of the world’s most severe crises. UN Crisis Relief is run by OCHA with donations going to OCHA-managed global (CERF) and crisis-specific pooled funds. UN Climate Relief donations go to the CERF Climate Action Account and are used for anticipatory action, urgent life-saving relief, and strengthening resilience.

CBI is recruiting a Digital Fundraising Specialist who will be expected to significantly contribute to further shaping OCHA's approach to individual fundraising and corporate giving. The Digital Fundraising Specialist will have a key role in supporting the OCHA’s private sector fundraising strategy globally to grow OCHA’s public supporter base and income streams.

Duties and Responsibilities

Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the Digital Fundraising Specialist will be responsible for:

Lead Implementation of Digital Fundraising Marketing Strategy:

• Work closely with OCHA’s Public Advocacy and Campaigns section to ensure all public facing digital fundraising marketing activities are in line with OCHA’s Strategic Communications Strategy.
• Develop fundraising campaigns for key campaigns and priorities, as set out in the work plan, contributing to resource mobilization objectives
• Build compelling digital fundraising campaigns on OCHA’s Crisis Relief and/or Climate Relief online fundraising platforms and ensure their availability in key languages.
• Develop fundraising-specific content for key campaigns to post on social media to drive traffic to the platforms and advise on scheduling according to a strategic fundraising calendar or schedule.
• Contribute to implementation of a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for OCHA’s webpages.

Manage the implementation of digital fundraising initiatives and the development of strategic partnerships:

• Maintain control of timings and workflow across the projects, ensuring good quality of information to sponsors.
• Provide project updates on a consistent basis to review strategy, adjustments, and progress.
• Develop and maintain good relationships with key stakeholders.
• Boost fundraising revenues and return on investment (ROI) from planning and implementation to on-going optimization and post campaign review.
• Champion a strategic evolution of paid social advertising investments based on maximization of results (output vs input) through test & learn, constant optimization, machine learning automation and full leverage of first party data integration.
• Support OCHA’s Country Offices so that they can mobilize digital media quickly when emergencies strike. Support the improvement of processes so that quick responses become a key capability.
• Work closely with other fundraising Digital Specialists and with Data Analysts to build a solid framework for measurement and review of all campaigns. Represent paid digital advertising campaigns in the necessary level of detail for complete measurement and optimization in global market reports and analysis.
• Work with the social media and campaigns teams during planning and execution, to ensure relevant paid advertising expertise is utilized.
• Plan and execute centrally paid advertising campaigns, always to maximize income growth and ROI as defined by organizational needs.
• Provide technical expertise in any interaction with platforms (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, etc.) and service providers.
• Build and sustain engagement with individual donors through email marketing as per the digital fundraising strategy.

Moderation & Community Management:

• Moderate digital channels by closely monitoring reactions to fundraising content on digital channels, flag potential risks and work closely with the communication team to escalate when necessary.
• Identify high performing content for use in fundraising initiatives and other opportunities for conversion.

Ensure Analytics, Reporting and Facilitate Knowledge Sharing:

• Support team members in the preparation of analytics reports regarding the platforms and the performance of digital fundraising marketing efforts across all channels, to be shared within relevant teams.
• Identify, synthesize and document best practices and lessons learned that are generated from the project and implementing partners.
• Other Duties: Perform other digital fundraising communication and content management duties as required.
• Attend meetings on digital strategy and work closely with other OCHA campaigns and private sector teams.
• The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Competencies

Core:

Achieve Results: LEVEL 3:

• Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact

Think Innovatively: LEVEL 3:

• Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems

Learn Continuously: LEVEL 3:

• Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences

Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 3:

• Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands

Act with Determination: LEVEL 3:

• Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results

Engage and Partner: LEVEL 3:

• Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration

Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 3:

• Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity

Cross-Functional & Technical:
Business Direction & Strategy - System Thinking:

• Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system

Business Development - Knowledge Generation:

• Ability to research information and to turn it into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.
• Ability to apply existing concepts to new situations, and to develop new concepts to generate workable solutions and new approaches. Knowledge of relevant concepts, conceptual models, and theories that can be useful in addressing new situations.

Partnership Management - Private sector engagement:

• Ability to identify, conduct outreach, and manage relationships with the private sector

Business Management - Partnership management:

• Ability to engage with emerging partners, develop and manage a strategy and develop approaches to developing and managing these new strategic partnerships
• Knowledge and ability to forge multi-stakeholder partnerships, and remove any obstacles to resource mobilization and multi-stakeholder funding platforms
• Ability to identify, develop and manage partnerships Business Management that leverage private sector technical expertise and resources.

Business Management - Communication:

• Communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner both through written and verbal communication; to tailor messages and choose communication methods depending on the audience.
• Ability to manage communications internally and externally, through media, social media and other appropriate channels

Business Development - Knowledge Facilitation:

• Ability to animate individuals and groups, internally and externally, and to design and facilitate activities, to share and exchange knowledge, information and ideas.
• Knowledge of tools and approaches to stimulate active participation, contribution, and exchange.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Min. education requirements Advanced university degree (master’s degree or equivalent) in Communication, Marketing, Journalism, International Relations or other related field of studies is required. Or
• A first-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the above-mentioned field of study, in combination with an additional two (2) years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• Minimum of five (5) years (with master’s degree) or seven (7) years (with bachelor’s degree) of progressively responsible experience in digital fundraising, social media, marketing, or related areas is required.

Required skills:

• A track record of delivering successful digital fundraising campaigns. This should include planning, delivery, optimization and reporting.
• Experience in handling data and reports, with solid numeracy skills and the ability to interpret and present information effectively.
• Experience in developing on-brand digital content that resonates with unfamiliar digital audiences.

Desired skills:

• Experience in production of visual content for web platforms and designing original graphics is an asset.
• Professional work experience in humanitarian affairs, emergency preparedness, crisis/emergency relief management (complex emergency or natural disaster), rehabilitation, development, or other related area is an asset.
• Previous experience supporting engagement and collaboration between the United Nations and the private sector is highly desirable.

Required language(s):

• Fluency in English is required.
• Working knowledge of French and/or Arabic is an advantage.

Equal opportunity

As an equal opportunity employer, UNDP values diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate and, as such, we encourage qualified applicants from all backgrounds to apply for roles in the organization. Our employment decisions are based on merit and suitability for the role, without discrimination.

UNDP is also committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, are valued, can thrive, and benefit from career opportunities that are open to all.

Sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of authority

UNDP does not tolerate harassment, sexual harassment, exploitation, discrimination and abuse of authority. All selected candidates, therefore, undergo relevant checks and are expected to adhere to the respective standards and principles.

Right to select multiple candidates

UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Use of AI by candidates

Applicants are invited to read UNDP’s guidance for candidates on using AI responsibly in UNDP recruitment and selection

Scam alert

UNDP does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process. For further information, please see www.undp.org/scam-alert.

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