Resource Acquisition and Management (RAM) Specialist Full Time NEW

Job Purpose:

World Vision Ethiopia is committed to stepping into the extremely competitive and limited funding environment of the strategic period with the Resource Acquisition and Management (RAM) Unit’s renewed commitment to multi-sectoral, integrated, gender-sensitive programming with excellence, innovation, in-depth use of advanced technology, high levels of professionalism and coordination, and ownership of comprehensive documentation and sound follow up of active programming.

The RAM Specialist is responsible for resource acquisition and grant portfolio management in development, emergency and fragile contexts, in line with World Vision Ethiopia’s strategic priorities. The role ensures that donor relationships are nurtured, high-quality funding proposals are developed, and active grants are managed efficiently to deliver measurable impact for children and communities.

A key focus is on designing and managing programmes that align with the Humanitarian–Development–Peacebuilding (HDP) Triple Nexus, ensuring crisis responses contribute to long-term resilience, peace, and development outcomes. The position blends donor engagement, program design support, compliance oversight, operational coordination, and continuous knowledge management to inform learning, innovation, and prepositioning.

Key Responsibilities

Resource Acquisition:

• Lead prepositioning and acquisition for an assigned portfolio of donors, thematic sectors, and/or Support Offices (SOs) across both emergency and development programming.
• Engage in donor mapping, relationship building, and intelligence gathering to position World Vision Ethiopia competitively, including maintaining updated partner mapping and funding intelligence databases for potential consortiums and local partners in both humanitarian and development contexts.
• Facilitate the development of high-quality, integrated concepts, proposals, and grant applications (target: 15–20 per year) that reflect HDP Triple Nexus principles by addressing immediate needs, building resilience, and fostering social cohesion.
• Capture and disseminate lessons learned and best practices from past proposals and grant implementation to improve future designs.
• Coordinate proposal design processes, ensuring cross-sectoral integration, gender and disability inclusion, climate resilience, and conflict sensitivity.
• Upload final proposal and budget documents into donor portals (e.g., OCHA GMS, UN agency systems, other online application platforms) and ensure submission processes are documented for institutional knowledge.
• Lead award negotiation processes with donors, in coordination with SOs, Finance, and Legal units.
• Ensure all submissions comply with donor guidelines, WV policies, and quality assurance standards, documenting key compliance requirements for future reference.
• Lead or contribute to Go/No-Go decision-making processes, ensuring appropriate due diligence and partner vetting, and documenting rationale for future use.
• Collaborate with technical specialists, operations, finance, procurement, and MEAL staff to ensure program designs are operationally feasible and donor-compliant, capturing process notes and lessons learned in acquisition files.

Grant Management:

• Provide high-level oversight and coordination for an assigned portfolio of active grants (average: 10–12 at any given time), in close collaboration with the relevant Grant Operations Manager (GOM).
• Serve as the end-to-end point of contact for assigned donors from acquisition through to closeout, maintaining donor communication logs and updating the knowledge base with key donor preferences and requirements.
• Manage award start-up processes in partnership with the GOM, ensuring clear deliverable schedules, budget controls, and compliance protocols are in place, and documenting start-up processes for replication in future humanitarian or development contexts.
• Coordinate contract management, including amendments, extensions, and compliance monitoring, with input from the GOM, ensuring contract variations are archived and lessons learned are captured.
• Oversee timely and accurate donor reporting, reviewing technical and financial reports in collaboration with the GOM to ensure quality and alignment with contractual requirements, while maintaining a repository of strong reporting examples and donor feedback.
• Maintain strong donor relations, proactively addressing concerns and fostering trust, while keeping the GOM informed and engaged, and updating the organizational donor engagement tracker.
• Support audits, evaluations, and donor reviews, coordinating closely with the GOM to prepare documentation and ensure learnings from audits are incorporated into future processes.
• Ensure timely uploading of donor reports, agreements, and other required documents into donor-specific systems and WV’s internal grant management systems, curating them for internal knowledge-sharing platforms.
• Integrate HDP Triple Nexus thinking into portfolio management, ensuring that humanitarian interventions are designed with pathways to recovery, resilience, and peacebuilding.

Documentation & Knowledge Management:

• Lead documentation of lessons learned, success stories, and best practices for assigned portfolio, ensuring they feed into both acquisition and grant management processes for both emergency and development contexts.
• Oversee grant closeout processes, ensuring proper knowledge transfer, compliance with WV and donor requirements, and archiving all key documents for future reference.
• Lead Global Horizon Tracking (GHT) efforts for assigned portfolio.
• Maintain updated grant acquisition and management tracking matrices, MIS tools, partner mapping databases, and donor intelligence files to support decision-making, prepositioning, and HDP-aligned programme design.

Training and Capacity Building:

• Design and facilitate training programs for staff, ensuring knowledge transfer and skill enhancement.
• Provide targeted capacity building support to local partners, sub-grantees, and internal teams on donor compliance, proposal writing, and grant management as requested.
• Integrate knowledge management and HDP Triple Nexus principles into training, ensuring teams understand how to design interventions that transition from humanitarian response to long-term development and peacebuilding.

​Stakeholder Engagement:

• Collaborate with internal and external partners to promote best practices and foster a culture of relevant culture, e.g., safeguarding, quality assurance.
• Engage with the Local Partnerships Specialist to implement the Localization Roadmap in order to strengthen local partner capacity and deliver targeted training and mentorship where needed.
• Integrate cross-cutting themes (nexus approach, gender-lens, conflict sensitivity, safeguarding, do no harm, faith & development) to ensure programs are inclusive, context-sensitive, and aligned with WVE values and donor expectations.
• Contribute to WVE’s acquisition efforts by engaging in external stakeholder relations and proposal preparation to increase funding opportunities in coordination with the RAM and Marketing teams.
• Capture and share innovations and most significant change stories with Technical, MEAL, Comms, Marketing and RAM teams to support evidence-based learning, scale-up, and wider stakeholder engagement.

Required Education, training, license, registration, and/or Certification

• 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., USAID, 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)

• Amharic
• English

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