BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT OFFICER: INSTITUTIONAL FUNDRAISING

Department: Business Development Team
Key Relationships: Fundraising and Development Officer, Program officers from regional offices and programs and operational teams (finance and projects teams)
Reporting to: Head of Fundraising and Development
Location: London, UK and Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Salary: Circa £44,000 per annum
Contract: Permanent

ABOUT US
Established in 1987, ARTICLE 19 is an international think-do organisation that defends freedom of expression and the right to information all over the world, fighting against censorship, defending dissenting voices and advocating against law and practices that silence.

In our digital era, our mission is to propel the freedom of expression movement locally and globally to ensure all people realise the power of their voices. With regional offices around the world, ARTICLE 19 combines experience in global policy making with vital support to national processes of good governance and progressive reforms, which place the organization closer to the on-the-ground battles to protect freedom of expression and information. We believe that the most effective way to promote and implement institutional, cultural and legal change is to work both at international and national level. We leverage local experience and knowledge to inform standard setting in key international/regional decision-making fora and processes and to hold states accountable, while ensuring that progress at global level contributes to fomenting enabling environments for the exercise of expression rights at the national level.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Working within the Business Development Team, the Business Development Officer will contribute to consolidating the financial sustainability of ARTICLE 19. The position will focus on institutional fundraising, coordinating between ARTICLE 19’s various programmatic, regional, and operational teams to develop high quality, well-written and visually engaging proposals. We are looking for someone with proven skills in writing and editing proposal content within a complex business environment. The Business Development Officer will ideally have experience in leading project design sessions, participating in key review meetings, final document review and document production.

Excellent written English language and good time management skills are essential for this role. Experience coordinating and updating knowledgebase systems, ability to multitask and handle multiple deadlines and assignments are also valuable to excel in this role.

The successful candidate will be joining at an exciting time, as the Business Development Team is in the midst of revising its strategy and role in the organisation, which will give them the possibility to provide support to the implementation of new fundraising streams, including direct and individual fundraising over time if needed.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

The post-holder will be primarily responsible for writing and supporting the development of proposals for highly technical donors, including the European Commission, US Department of State and other governmental funders. In a very busy and proactive team, other key responsibilities will entail identifying fundraising targets through prospect research, managing data relating to ARTICLE 19’s business development function, improving collaboration, coordination and information sharing and contributing to enhance proposal development skills across the organisation.

The Business Development Officer will play a supporting role on proposals developed by regional offices and programs, which entails regularly communicating with regional teams, facilitating coordination meetings, providing advice for drafting the narrative and budget, developing specific sections as required, and ensuring the overall quality of the proposal and compliance with the donor’s evaluation criteria.

JOB SPECIFICATIONS

A) Proactive and timely identification and submission of bids

• Track upcoming funding opportunities from key donors on an ongoing basis
• Identify new potential funders and conduct donor outreach;
• Lead preparations for tenders, including early intelligence gathering, opportunity assessment, pre-positioning and partner identification, facilitating well informed decisions;
• Coordinate with relevant staff all application activities from planning, to writing, document gathering and final submission;
• Good project management skills, creating timelines/responsibility assignments and driving continuous communication, while identifying and removing barriers of progress and escalating issues as needed;
• Write high quality tender responses (both technical and financial) for competitive bidding processes;
• Serve as proposal coordinator/bid manager for tenders developed by regional offices and programs;
• Work with programmatic and finance staff to develop accurate budget information, including monitoring compliance with our full cost recovery policy;
• Manage final submissions: review and understand all bid documents to ensure the donor requirements are reflected in the bid, and ensure the bid is informed by the evaluation criteria;
• Duly and timely answer any request for clarification from donors after submission, or support regional and program teams to do so;
• Ensure prompt acknowledgement of grants awarded and develop project summary sheet;
• Compile and share donors’ feedback to continue learning and improving.

B) Keep fundraising systems and procedures updated and fully functioning

• Compile fundraising opportunity tracking information in the organisational tracking tool, the “Fundraising Digest” and regularly share it across the organisation;
• Update ARTICLE 19’s projects in the pipeline database on a regular basis, with proposals in progress, submitted, won and lost;
• Ensure donor and partners contacts are accurately recorded on our database and used in line with relevant data protection regulations;
• Coordinate with finance, Projects Team and human resources to ensure admin docs required by donors are up to date and properly stored and standardised processes are used across the organisation;
• Collaborate and coordinate with programme and operational teams to support consistent standards and best practice in donor submission preparation and full cost recovery;
• Support the update of key donors’ online platforms/systems (PADOR, OPSYS, SAMs, Fluxx, etc) as officially requested.

Please note that this job description is not exhaustive, and that the post-holder may undertake other duties commensurate with the role as may reasonably be assigned by or suggested to the Head of Business Development.

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Essential

• Qualification (graduate or postgraduate degree) in international development, international business, human rights, communications, or related technical field of expertise.
• Significant work experience in proposal writing in an international non-profit or consultancy firm.
• Understanding of funding mechanisms and procedures of at least one of key complex donors such as the European Commission, US Department of State, the Netherlands, Canada or Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc.
• Pro-active work approach and initiative-taking, high attention to detail, process-oriented working style and ability to handle overlapping deadlines.
• Comfortable working virtually in an international, multicultural setting.
• Experience in information management systems and/or databases.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
• Must have the right to work in the advertised locations.

Desirable

• Written and verbal communication skills in at least one of the other ARTICLE 19’s languages, i.e. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Bangla or Dutch.
• Knowledge and/or experience in countries/regions where ARTICLE 19 works.
• Knowledge of human rights and/or key freedom of expression issues, international human rights law and awareness of mechanisms for the protection of human rights.