With 75 years of experience, our focus is on helping the most vulnerable children overcome poverty and experience fullness of life. We help children of all backgrounds, even in the most dangerous places, inspired by our Christian faith.
Come join our 31,000+ staff working in nearly 100 countries and share the joy of transforming vulnerable children’s life stories!
Key Responsibilities:
Job Purpose:
World Vision International Ethiopia (WVIE) is operating in a more competitive and constrained funding environment. The Resource Acquisition and Management (RAM) team is expected to be more focused, better coordinated, and more disciplined in how it positions with donors, develops proposals, manages active grants, and documents institutional learning.
The RAM Specialist is responsible for supporting resource acquisition and grant portfolio management across development, humanitarian, and fragile contexts. The role leads assigned donor, Support Office, sector, or portfolio engagement, and ensures that WVIE develops high-quality, feasible, and competitive funding opportunities aligned with the FY26-30 strategy, Integrated Programming Framework, donor priorities, and operational realities.
The role also supports strong grant management by working closely with Operations, Technical Teams, MEAL, Finance, Supply Chain, Support Offices, and partners. The RAM Specialist is expected to maintain clear documentation, follow up on active actions, support donor compliance, and contribute to learning that improves future positioning, proposals, and portfolio performance.
The position requires strong proposal writing, donor engagement, coordination, documentation, and follow-through. It also requires the ability to work across teams and support integrated, layered, and practical programme design that delivers measurable impact for children and communities.
Major Responsibilities
Resource Acquisition and Donor Positioning
- Lead or support donor and Support Office engagement for assigned portfolios, sectors, or opportunities.
- Maintain updated donor intelligence, funding pipeline, partner mapping, and opportunity tracking information.
- Support proactive donor positioning, including gathering intelligence, preparing briefs, identifying entry points, and coordinating follow-up actions.
- Lead or contribute to Go/No-Go processes, ensuring strategic alignment, feasibility, cost recovery, risk, compliance, and partner considerations are clearly documented.
- Coordinate the development of concept notes, proposals, expressions of interest, and grant applications.
- Ensure proposal designs are aligned with WVIE’s FY26-30 strategy, Integrated Programming Framework, donor priorities, and operational capacity.
- Work closely with Technical Teams, Operations, MEAL, Finance, Supply Chain, Security, Communications, and partners to ensure proposals are realistic, integrated, and costed properly.
- Support proposal timelines, workback schedules, section assignments, review processes, and final submission readiness.
- Ensure proposals include strong evidence, field input, value for money, safeguarding, GEDSI, localization, climate resilience, conflict sensitivity, and sustainability where relevant.
- Support budget development and budget narrative alignment with Finance and technical teams.
- Upload or support submission of proposals through donor portals and ensure submission records are properly documented.
- Document proposal development lessons, donor feedback, and process learning for future use.
Grant Management and Portfolio Oversight
- Provide RAM oversight for assigned active grants, in coordination with Grant Operations Managers, Operations, Finance, MEAL, Technical Teams, Support Offices, and donors.
- Serve as RAM focal point for assigned grants from award negotiation through start-up, implementation monitoring, reporting, amendments, and closeout.
- Support award negotiation processes, including review of donor requirements, budget changes, compliance issues, and internal approvals.
- Support strong grant start-up by ensuring key donor requirements, deliverables, timelines, budget controls, and reporting expectations are clearly communicated and documented.
- Track grant health, reporting timelines, contractual deliverables, donor requirements, and key risks for assigned portfolio.
- Coordinate with Grant Operations Managers to follow up on implementation, budget burn rate, reporting quality, donor issues, and compliance risks.
- Review donor reports for quality, consistency, donor alignment, and clear presentation of results.
- Support contract management, including amendments, extensions, realignments, no-cost extensions, and donor approvals.
- Maintain donor communication logs and ensure key decisions are properly archived.
- Support preparation for donor meetings, monitoring visits, audits, evaluations, and portfolio reviews.
- Ensure grant documentation is complete, accessible, and aligned with RAM tracking systems.
- Escalate major grant risks in a timely manner through agreed RAM and Operations channels.
- Documentation, Systems, and Knowledge Management
- Maintain complete and updated documentation for assigned opportunities and grants in the relevant trackers and shared folders.
- Ensure final proposals, budgets, GNG records, donor submissions, agreements, amendments, reports, and closeout documents are properly filed.
- Maintain updated acquisition and grant management trackers for assigned portfolio.
- Support Global Horizon Tracking and other WV grant management systems as required.
- Document donor preferences, proposal learning, grant implementation learning, audit findings, and closeout lessons.
- Support after-action reviews, proposal debriefs, and learning sessions for major opportunities and strategic grants.
- Prepare short donor briefs, portfolio updates, pipeline summaries, and handover notes when required.
- Ensure institutional knowledge is not held only in personal email, desktop files, or informal conversations.
Coordination and Internal Collaboration
- Work closely with Technical Teams to ensure technical priorities are translated into fundable concepts and donor engagement products.
- Work with Operations to ensure proposal designs and active grants are operationally realistic and field-informed.
- Work with MEAL to ensure evidence, indicators, learning, accountability, and reporting systems are built into designs and grant management.
- Work with Finance to ensure budget quality, cost recovery, financial reporting, and compliance.
- Work with Supply Chain, Security, P&C, Communications, and other support teams to ensure relevant inputs are included in proposals and grant oversight.
- Support regular RAM portfolio reviews and cross-functional grant performance discussions.
- Promote clear role clarity between RAM, Operations, Technical Teams, MEAL, Finance, and Support Offices.
Partnership and Localization
- Support partner identification, mapping, due diligence, and engagement for assigned opportunities.
- Ensure local partner roles are considered early in proposal design where relevant.
- Support partner capacity discussions related to proposal development, compliance, reporting, and grant management.
- Document partner engagement history, strengths, risks, and potential future opportunities.
- Promote practical localization approaches that are realistic, compliant, and aligned with donor expectations.
Training and Capacity Support
- Support capacity building for internal teams and partners on proposal development, donor compliance, grant management, and documentation.
- Share practical tools, templates, lessons, and examples that improve acquisition and grant management quality.
- Support orientation of new staff or colleagues taking over assigned donor, SO, or portfolio areas.
Required Education, training, license, registration, and/or Certification
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in International Development, Humanitarian Studies, Project Management, Social Sciences, or related field.
Preferred
- Master’s degree in related field.
- Training/certification in humanitarian standards, grant acquisition, and management.
- Experience in capacity building for local partners.
Required Professional Experience
- Minimum of 5 years progressive experience in grant acquisition and management, preferably in an INGO context, including both development and humanitarian programming.
- Proven track record in winning and managing large grants from bilateral, multilateral, and/or private donors.
- Strong knowledge of donor regulations (e.g., USG, EU, UN agencies, FCDO, UNOCHA, etc.).
- Experience designing and managing programmes that integrate HDP Triple Nexus principles.
- Excellent proposal writing and budget development skills.
- Strong interpersonal, negotiation, and donor relationship skills.
- Proficient in MS Office, online donor portals, and project management tools.
- Strong English communication skills (written and verbal)
Required Language(s)
Preferred Experience, Knowledge and/or Key Competencies
- Be Safe and Resilient
- Build Relationships
- Learn and Develop
- Partner and Collaborate
- Deliver Results
- Be Accountable
- Improve and Innovate
- Embrace Change
World Vision is a child-focused organization that is committed to safeguarding all children as well as adult beneficiaries, and has zero tolerance for incidents of violence or abuse against children or adults, including sexual exploitation or abuse, committed either by employees or others affiliated with our work. Therefore, World Vision does not hire staff whose background is not suitable for working with children or vulnerable adults, even if their role does not interact directly with them.
Disclaimer: World Vision Ethiopia is a reputable organization that values transparency and fairness in its recruitment process and does not solicit any money for any job application. We encourage all job seekers to be cautious of any job ads that require payment or personal information upfront. If you have any questions or concerns about our job ads or recruitment process, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.
Applicant Types Accepted:
Local Applicants Only
