Grants & Contracts Officer

ABOUT VILLAGEREACH 

VillageReach transforms health care delivery to reach everyone, so that each person has the health care needed to thrive.  We develop solutions that improve equity and access to primary health care.  This includes making sure products are available when and where they are needed and primary health care services are delivered to the most under-reached.  Radical collaboration with governments, the private sector and other partners strengthen our ability to scale and sustain these solutions. Our work increases access to quality health care for more than 58 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. VillageReach in incorporated in Washington State and has offices in Seattle (USA), Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Mozambique.  

 

DESCRIPTION 

Summary 

The Grants and Contracts officer is a key team member responsible for keeping VillageReach in compliance and consistently administering awards across one’s portfolio. The Officer works integrally between the finance, programmatic, and business development teams to support budget strategy for new opportunities and support the successful management of grants and contracts within a defined grant portfolio. The Officer will regularly monitor spending and compliance through contracting, budgeting, and reforecasting of existing and new awards. Specifically, the Officer will be fluent in VillageReach’s policies and procedures as well as those of our funders to ensure appropriate stewardship of complex funding streams.  

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time.  

• Independently monitor financial compliance and prepare financial data for Award Managers through regular financial review on a complex set of awards. Award administration includes flagging compliance issues, supporting labor levelling, award financial reporting. Managing internal relationships with those responsible for programmatic goals. 

• Advise on contracting language and be a source of knowledge for best practices in contracting. Lead the drafting and execution of agreements, modifications, and contracts within the guidelines of VillageReach’s procurement policy. 

• Partner with finance department to ensure accurate invoicing and grant reporting, improve financial data visualization, and support forecasting and wire transfer requests.  

• Ensure alert award managers and project managers about the submission of deliverables 

• Update the salesforce, with all the required information. 

• Primary Support person of contact for all Team Leads, Award Managers and Opportunity Owners and provide direct support for all budgets, finance, and award management.  

• Support Award Managers, Team Resource Leads, and Opportunity Owners to ensure that the budgeting system accurately reflects the latest assumptions.  

• Support Award Managers on monthly reviews, reclass requests, and reforecasting awards through collaboration across teams.  

• Support Team Resource Leads on monthly reviews of overhead budget, labor levelling exercises, and reforecasting.  

• Support Opportunity Owners in budgeting out team time and expenses for every new proposal, ensure overall budget across teams has adequate and accurate inputs, has followed the correct internal review processes, and is accurately drawn through to the donor budget template.  

• Act as liaison with Global Operations Team to ensure that required SOPs are followed and approvals are sought on contracting, award management, and business development.  

• Partner with the G&C Secondary Support and Finance teams to ensure compliance with legal, funder, and VillageReach requirements.  

• Dependent on portfolio assignment, support Award Manager on administrative and project management duties as assigned – estimated 10-40%.  

 

COMPETENCIES: 

VillageReach has ten (10) Organizational Competencies that describe how we work together and get things done that are grouped into three strategic areas of Achieving Great Results, Setting Direction and, Bringing Others With you. For a full description, please download our Organizational Competency document. 

Achieving Great Results: 

1. Risk Taking and Innovation 

• Key Behaviors: Comfort with ambiguity, curiosity, adaptability, unconstrained and undeterred creativity, resourcefulness. 

2. Business Judgement 

• Key Behaviors: Getting to root causes, understanding environment, navigating complexity and ambiguity, entrepreneurial energy.  

3. Building Strong Teams 

• Key Behaviors: Trust in Subject Matter Experts (SME’s); radical candor to resolve conflict, hold each other accountable as colleagues, focused on results, commitment to mission. 

Setting Direction: 

4. Compelling Communication 

• Key Behaviors: Clear and evidence-based communication, audience adaptability, curious listener.   

5. Resilient Self Leadership 

• Key Behaviors: Self-aware, plan how one shows up, emotionally intelligent, use one’s own agency and takes accountability. 

6. Stewardship and Personal Alignment 

• Key Behaviors: Take ownership, display ethical conduct, effective at resource management, alignment of personal objectives with organizational goals and mission, focus on continuous improvement and sustainability. 

Bringing Others with You: 

7. Influencing Leadership 

• Key Behaviors: Cultivate trust, influences to make change, navigate the matrix structure. 

8. Radical Partnership 

• Key Behaviors: Share information and credit, address conflict, increase impact through collaboration, political and contextual awareness. 

9. Cultivates a Growth Mindset 

• Key Behaviors: Seek out diverse input, demonstrate flexibility in thinking and curiosity, embrace challenges, demonstrate persistence, seek learning opportunities. 

10. Cultural Intelligence and Inclusion 

• Key Behaviors: Continuous learning and ally-ship across cultural lines, challenge prejudice and bias, modeled in one’s own behavior. 

Requirements

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

Supervisory Responsibilities:  

This position has no supervisory responsibilities.  

Education & Experience:  

• Finance or accounting s degree or equivalent education and experience 

• Fluency in English and Portuguese; both written and verbal 

• At least five years of professional experience with at least two of those managing grant finances and compliance; public sector grants a plus  

• Demonstrated financial management skills within the non-profit sector 

• Experience with financial reporting 

• Demonstrated familiarity with contract language and grant cost policy adherence  

 

Other Qualifications: 

• Comply with VillageReach’s COVID-19 vaccination policy. 

• Established cultural competency in partnering with racial, cultural and linguistically diverse groups. 

• Demonstrated understanding of challenges with working in rural, underserved and low-income context; experience living in and/or working in a low-income country a plus. 

• Experience working in a geographically dispersed workplace using remote communication technologies and techniques a plus.  

• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel) and comfortable in a fast-paced technical environment. Advanced skills in Excel. 

• Operationally-minded with strong attention to detail. 

• Familiarity with budgeting software, data visualization software, and CRM platforms. 

 

Environment and Physical Demands: 

The Distribution and Transportation Manager would be based in Nairobi in the KIPS project office. These may have no private offices, employees work in a shared, open environment with task and conference rooms accessible to employees for privacy and meetings. The noise level in the work environment is usually quiet. The staff member will be expected to be in the project office during normal office hours, except when traveling.  Due to the time zone differences across our USA, Kenya, and Country Offices and location of other global staff, we have established core collaboration hours between 6am Pacific Time and 18:00 South Africa Time (GMT+1) Monday through Thursday. All staff, regardless of location, are expected to be available between these hours. During Daylight Savings Time, this allows for 12 hours per week (3 hours/day) of collaboration time and during Standard Time, 8 hours (2 hours/day). We do not hold cross-office meetings on Friday. 

The majority of the work is spent sitting. There are no additional physical or environmental demands for this job

COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION: 

VillageReach is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer committed to workforce diversity. We believe that diverse, equitably weighted perspectives foster an organizational capacity to create novel solutions that improve health in the most under-reached and hard-to-reach areas. To align our values, innovations and impact, VillageReach is committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse global workforce. 

APPLICATION INFORMATION:  

This is an immediate hire and therefore resumes will be reviewed on a rolling basis until 18th November 2024. To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter to our online portal: http://www.villagereach.org/join-us/.  In your cover letter, please address (1) Why you are interested in this position, (2) What is one reason you think you’d be a good fit for this position and, (3) What is one strength you would bring to this position? 

Hiring Process: 

The hiring process will include the following steps: 

1. Review submitted applications 
2. Conduct 20-30 minute screening interviews for shortlisted candidates 
3. Conduct skills and value-based interviews for 3-5 candidates. 
4. Request that top candidates submit a practical assessment (designed to take no more than two hours to complete). Sometimes the assignment will occur before the interview. 
5. Conduct final interview if necessary  
6. Request references  
7. Make offer 
8. Conduct background check 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted, but candidates who proceed to step 2 will be notified if they are not chosen for step 3. 

Safeguarding: 

VillageReach is committed to promoting the welfare of children, young people, adults, and beneficiaries with whom it engages. We expect everyone working with us to share this commitment through our code of conduct. All offers of employment will be subject to satisfactory references and appropriate screening checks, which may include criminal records. VillageReach participates in the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme and, in line with this Scheme, we will request information from job applicants’ previous employers about any findings of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse, and/or sexual harassment during employment, or incidents under investigation when the applicant left employment. By applying, the job applicant confirms his/her understanding of these recruitment procedures. 

Benefits

VillageReach has an established compensation structure that is based on the relevant market and internally transparent.

The range for this position is $34,900 to $41,800. We hire people into the established range based on one’s experience

and education and considering internal equity. We do not inquire about salary history. Please refer to our compensation

overview on our website for more information and for more information on employee benefits