Innovative Finance Project and Communications Officer United States of America

The IRC’s Airbel Impact Lab designs, tests, and scales life-changing, cost-effective solutions for people affected by conflict and disaster. By applying deep technical expertise and field experience with a range of skills from the behavioral sciences, human-centered design, research, and multi-disciplinary problem-solving in humanitarian contexts, we work to develop breakthrough solutions that combine creativity and precision, flexibility and expertise, and a desire to think afresh with the experience and reputation of a large-scale implementing organization.

The innovative finance practice is designing and piloting new ways of working between humanitarians and the development and private sectors. The work of the practice is centered on building out pipeline projects of the ‘advisory model,’ an innovative approach to impact investing that brings together investors from the development and private sector, with experts from the humanitarian sector at the investment transaction level. This is a cutting-edge approach to blended finance, with the goal outcome of driving more investment and funding to the communities on the frontline of conflict and climate change. This role will be integral to the practice’s success.

Key Responsibilities

The Innovative Finance Project and Communications Officer supports overall grants management, business development, and development of internal and external materials. The role involves working closely with the innovative finance team, as well as experts in humanitarian systems change, senior leadership, and external and investment partners. This role will collect project learnings and deliver high-quality reporting to communicate key data from investment pilots with partners, and enable the replication and scaling of successful humanitarian-investor partnerships.

Support to Innovative Finance Lead

• Draft business development materials and liaise with IRC business development colleagues to raise necessary grant funding for blended finance transactions.
• Support with organizing internal and external meetings and events; maintain robust notetaking and database of conversations.
• Identify action items from meetings for follow-up and track progress and completion.

Project and Knowledge Management, Internal Communications

• Build systems to collect information and track deliverables across donor-related projects.
• Manage and update donor-specific workplans; meet regularly with internal/external project stakeholders from IRC to collect data on lessons learned and develop analyses for donor reporting and pipeline development.
• Create decks, briefs, and other materials to ensure internal and external partners are regularly briefed on progress, strengthen buy-in and accountability, and to support external engagement.
• Work closely with IRC business development teams to socialize achievements of innovative finance and solicit new donor and philanthropist support for the practice.

Donor partner subcontract management, coordination, and compliance

• Develop workplans and monitoring plans for all donor-related investment pilots.
• Lead communication with investor partners to ensure deliverable implementation against workplans, subcontracts, reporting, and regular meetings.
• Support with due diligence, compliance checks, subcontract amendments, and other subcontract management processes according to guidance from IRC’s Awards Management Unit.

Reporting

• Lead coordination for drafting final reports, including but not limited to drafting all report inputs, communicating deadlines, and providing timely feedback for IRC and partner teams.
• Prepare annual reports and documents according to contract requirements for government donors; coordinate response to other donor and private philanthropist inquiries.

Job Requirements

Education and Work Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent professional experience.
• 3-5 years of professional experience with demonstrated project management skills, including developing project management documents and tools such as workplans.

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Demonstrated experience in partner and stakeholder management.
• Work experience in, and ability to write clearly about, financial concepts.
• Excellent critical thinking skills to problem-solve independently.
• Excellent organizational skills: the ability to multi-task, learn quickly, and work independently and productively in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills: the ability to effectively collaborate with and motivate a variety of people in a multi-cultural environment.
• Dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion and a passion for IRC’s mission.
• Excellent written English, including the ability to synthesize information and draft high-quality reports. The ability to translate financial concepts into crisp, clear prose will be crucial to all work.
• Please attach your finance writing sample to your application or please include links to your work on your resume. If unable to do so, please note it will be requested if you are being considered.

Preferred Requirements:

• Working knowledge of government donor commercial contracts (PRM, DG ECHO) and compliance requirements is preferred.
• Excellent digital literacy: MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint and web-based project management tools (e.g., Asana). Proficiency in Excel strongly preferred.
• Professional fluency in French is preferred, Arabic a plus.

Working environment: Team is fully remote & global. Potential to have some project-related travel, including to the innovative finance investment portfolio countries.

Compensation:

Posted pay ranges apply to US-based candidates. Ranges are based on various factors including the labor market, job type, internal equity, and budget. Exact offers are calibrated by work location, individual candidate experience and skills relative to the defined job requirements.

US Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive and highly competitive set of benefits. In the US, these include: 10 sick days, 10 US holidays, 20-25 paid time off days (depending on role and tenure), medical insurance starting at $145 per month, dental starting at $7 per month, and vision starting at $5 per month, FSA for healthcare, childcare, and commuter costs, a 403b retirement savings plans with up to 4.5% immediately vested matching contribution, plus a 3-7% base IRC contribution (3 year vesting), disability & life insurance, and an Employee Assistance Program which is available to our staff and their families to support counseling and care in times of crisis and mental health struggles.