Monitor / Reporting coordinator, Donor relations

Organization: UNWOMEN

Location : New York, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Application Deadline : 15-Mar-12

Type of Contract : FTA International

Post Level : P-3

Languages Required : English

Duration of Initial Contract : 1 year

Background

Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women will work for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations System efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

UN Women’s current and expanding donor relations and cost-sharing programmes and work and planning require that the Strategic Partnerships Division (SPD) have continued expert capacity to meet increased obligations. The Strategic Plan (SP) for UN Women for the period 2011-2013 requires that UN Women enhance its capacity to meet demand and seize opportunities. The significant rise in UN Women’s financial resources has a direct impact on the multiple processes surrounding donor relations, while the SP also requires that UN Women expand the range of its contributions (e.g. from non-traditional donors and other innovative partnerships).  Early projections for UN Women resources critically increase related obligations.

Within SPD, the Donor Reporting (DR) Unit continues to evolve in response to the creation and ongoing growth of UN Women and is now positioning itself to meet expected expanded obligations to donors in 2012 and beyond.  The system of donor reporting needs careful and sustained support from SPD including an internal/electronic system for systematically capturing data that allows UN Women to monitor compliance and achievement of obligations to donors as stipulated under the various agreements and commitments.  As part of this positioning and these preparations the DR Unit is expanding and refining several functions and roles. Additional expertise to ensure smooth coordination will be sought and it is essential to have in place a team that is experienced, professional, and has strong and sustainable relationships in place as UN Women responds to UN reform efforts as well as trends and priorities in development assistance. The role of the Monitor/Reporting Coordinator for Donor Relations is a key one for the unit.

The Monitor/Coordinator works as a core member of the Resource Mobilization (RM) Section and the DR Unit, steering the donor reporting process and providing hands-on management and advice on a daily basis for a team of editors/writers. S/he also strengthens capacity at HQ and in the different offices outside of HQ by ensuring improved efficiency and coherence in support of UN Women’s RM Strategy, and ensures that the strategies, approaches, services, and advice provided by the DR Unit are aligned and help drive the RM Strategy.

Overall Objectives

A key priority of the position is to embed clear donor reporting controls and to ensure understanding of and compliance with these by all relevant staff.

UN Women’s donor reports vary considerably in terms of their scope, quality and complexity, and also in levels of financial delivery and coherence of presentation. The Monitor/Coordinator is a central member of SPD / RM Section / DR Unit, which is responsible for managing the existing flow of donor reports to comply with obligations and for developing a clear approach to improve associated business processes.

Given the interrelationship of SPD’s functional responsibilities, the Monitor/Coordinator is responsible to contribute to the promotion of a working environment that is highly synergistic, involving constant and direct interaction and information-sharing within the unit itself and among SPD teams and other UN Women staff members.

This role links directly with the geographic and thematic programme sections/areas as well as the finance section on a day-to-day basis and the effectiveness of these relationships drive the work of the Monitor/Coordinator and directly impacts project management and accountability.

Duties and Responsibilities

Reporting to the Donor Relations and Reporting Manager, and working in close coordination with the Director, Resource Mobilization, the Monitor/Coordinator will contribute to strengthening donor relations and supporting the implementation of UN Women’s RM Strategy and Strategic Plan. The work of the Monitor/Coordinator is critical in the areas of donor maintenance and donor relations and will support the RM Director and the Resource Mobilization team as a whole, as it contributes to strengthening collaboration with existing and new partners (bi-lateral and multilateral donors, the corporate and voluntary sectors, etc.) and the achievement of UN Women’s resource mobilization targets.

Providing close daily management and strategic advice, the Monitor/Coordinator will steer the editing/writing process and coordinate the production of quality, timely donor reports for approval and submission to donors and monitor and track compliance with donor reporting obligations, to contribute to strengthening the organization’s overall resource mobilization efforts.

• Conduct initial review, preparation, and identification of discrepancies for follow-up with programme or operations colleagues; directly manage and supervise the day-to-day flow and peer review editing process of Donor Reporting Unit editors/writers to ensure provision of effective and proactive actions, support and guidance, and timely feedback by programme staff, for all donor reports;
• Create and maintain mechanisms and tools for improving and systematizing donor reporting to ultimately produce and deliver to donor in compliance with the UN Women Donor Reporting Clearance and Routing process, results-based quality donor reports that have UN Women approval.  Reports will be in line with UN Women mandate, international norms and standards and with proposal documents, logical frameworks and third-party cost-sharing agreements.

Monitor Donor Reporting and Compliance with Obligations:

• Review UN Women’s third-party cost-sharing agreements for donor reporting obligations (dates, reporting schedules, formats, special conditions, etc.) and identify relevant action points; propose and support preparation of any amendments when necessary;
• Maintain on-schedule reporting process by constant interaction and coordination with UN Women staff  in HQ and the sub-regional offices; track and monitor both scheduled and unscheduled reports; liaise with Finance section regarding interim financial reports to support their production in a timely and responsive manner; and ensure that the necessary actions occur;
• Create monitoring systems and provide annual, quarterly, monthly, and weekly updates to DR Unit, SPD, programme staff and others;
• Ensure donor reporting guidelines are updated, relevant and shared in a practical manner; monitor their implementation;
• Ensure compliance with donor reporting requirements to maximize available funding; support respective programme staff more closely to understand reporting variance implications (delays, extensions, missing results etc.) and how to respond to and manage them effectively; closer monitoring interaction with Finance including through regular meetings.

• Improve and maintain the shared SPD electronic resource mobilization information systems;
• Explore and identify information management tools to streamline and improve the efficiency of donor management;
• Gather donor intelligence and prepare and contribute to internal briefing notes as needed;
• Ensure expanded archiving of documentation, to provide evidence of donor relationship and ongoing dialogue, in support of UN Women’s ongoing evolution and identified needs.

• Develop the structure, categorization, and nomenclature system for the relevant section of the Intranet to ensure that reports, summaries and other documents are arranged logically and are easy to access;
• Ensure the transparency of, and ease of access to, all donor reports and summaries, especially by donors and stakeholders to promote their consideration in resource mobilization;
• Provide training and guidance to UN Women staff in connection with shared SPD resources on the Intranet;
• Organize, present and maintain comprehensive library of donor materials documents on the UN Women intranet, available to all UN Women staff;
• Present ideas for creative innovation and consolidation of data, information, and knowledge that will be invaluable to UN Women, in collaboration with colleagues.

• Support effective management of ongoing relations with donors through rapid response to urgent requests, to support RM and programme colleagues at HQ and in the field;
• Develop a strategy to summarize, present and disseminate donor reports and donor feedback to programme staff, including report findings and lessons, to support organizational learning and institutional effectiveness;
• Encourage application and compliance with donor-related internal procedures, systems, policies and controls throughout the organization by all staff;
• Support monitoring of donor relations in collaboration with Finance section.

Training and Capacity Development:

• Share information and guidelines on preparing quality reports and provide guidelines to programme staff on donor reporting policies and requirements;
• Ensure support is given by HQ to all field offices both proactively and reactively, in the fulfilment of their duties according to cost-sharing agreements/donor reporting obligations;
• Maintain regular contact with Field sites for monitoring and supervision purposes;
• Update/train/facilitate subregional offices’ learning of systems, e.g. through coordinated messages, webinars, etc.

• Co-ordinate, directly manage, and support both junior and senior writing/editing staff effectively, including appropriate and systematic delegation within unit, as well as ensuring that the individuals work effectively together and achieve the unit’s objectives;
• Provide guidance and advice to SPD/RM writers/editors as well as programme and operations colleagues to enable reporting process to move forward smoothly;
• Oversee and manage work flow and all aspects of reports finalization process to ensure quality control and systematic approach.

Other:

• Contribute to development of annual donor reporting work plan;
• Support the recruitment and selection process of necessary staff for unit in liaison with supervisors, ensuring that recruitment process and good practice is carried out in all recruitment and selection activity;
• Other tasks as assigned by the supervisors.

Results:

• Ensure and anticipate donor reporting schedules;
• Monitor compliance of donor reporting obligations;
• Ensure preparation of donor reports in line with donor reporting requirements;
• Effective and efficient business processes supporting the work of SPD in close coordination with Management and Administration Division’s Financial Management Office and other relevant UN Women areas and units;
• Comprehensive records of UN Women’s cost-sharing project reports and related agreements;
• Web-based tools, templates, guidelines, policies and other content developed to support implementation of the outreach and business development strategy, and reviewed periodically for consistency, quality and usability;
• Alignment of donor reports with UN Women’s Strategic Plan and SPD RM Strategy;
• Strengthened collaboration with existing and new partners (bi-lateral and multilateral donors; NGOs, etc.) to enhance resource mobilization efforts;
• Liaise with the HQ Financial Management Office in donor reporting, including provision of relevant documents, and narrative to support variances or anomalies;
• Support and contribute to a shared vision of DR Unit’s aims, quality standards and the unit’s role in achieving these;
• Organise and/or undertake needs assessments, in cooperation with other actors where relevant;
• Ensure that appropriate systems and plans are in place for dealing with unanticipated/extraordinary reports;
• Develop and maintain productive working relationships.

Competencies

Core Values / Guiding Principles:

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Masters degree (or equivalent) in international relations/development, economics, communications, business or related social sciences.

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years relevant experience at the national or international level, in business development, resource mobilization, information /communications and/or marketing;
• Experience in writing, reporting, and related fields;
• Excellent understanding of and experience with gender-sensitive and results-based management and reporting;
• Previous work experience in donor relations, and in particularly in the context of UN Women’s work, is desirable;
• United Nations and UN Women experience is preferable.

Language Requirements

• Fluency in English (written and oral).
• Knowledge of another UN official language an asset.

Note:

In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women’s empowerment.

All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment

Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.

UN Women Personal History Form (P11) – Required when applying for allvacancies and must be attached as part of online application in place of CV/resume.

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UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

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