Regional Focal Point, Business Development

Catholic Relief Services

Lead the regional expansion and diversification of revenue from institutional donors, foundations, the private sector, and other funding sources to achieve CRS strategic objectives. As a member of the global Institutional Funding Team, coordinate closely with regional leadership and country staff to ensure strategic mobilization of resources for programming in the region while ensuring alignment with overall agency BD strategy and approaches.

Evaluate and introduce innovative approaches to strategic growth and positioning and advise colleagues on how to adapt to a changing funding environment in a very competitive landscape. Provide support across all phases of the CRS BD Cycle, including donor engagement strategy, positioning, capture planning, proposal preparation, and leveraging results. Leverage BD expertise, leadership skills, strategic thinking, data and trend analysis, and continuous improvement to strengthen CRS' BD-related systems, and capacities. Closely support regional leadership in donor engagement activities.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

Regional BD Focal Point

• Develop and ensure regional strategies in resource mobilization align closely with agency strategy while supporting the expansion and diversification of revenue from institutional donors and non-traditional funding sources.
• Collaborate with countries, regional leadership, and donor engagement focal points to develop resource mobilization plans for a specific region, country, sector, or donor. Advise leadership on how to proactively cultivate donor relationships through the development of donor engagement strategies networking with donors, where appropriate.
• Work collaboratively with regional and country staff involved in BD and project design to pursue strategic funding opportunities in the areas of positioning, capture planning, proposal coordination, proposal writing, budgeting, and compliance with donor requirements.
• Research and analyze intelligence about overall funding trends and new business opportunities; lead efforts to leverage this data to enhance CRS' competitive position.
• Lead past performance and corporate capacity information management within the region. Maintain accurate regional business pipeline and performance data through CRS' online systems to inform senior management decisions.
• Participate in global or regional industry conferences and working groups to represent CRS with peer organizations as appropriate.

BD Strategy Development and Opportunity Support

• Lead agency BD strategy development, opportunity pipeline management, and opportunity-specific support. Work with global technical and operations teams, regional leadership, etc., to ensure coordination for funding opportunities. Act as proposal coordinator, lead writer, or budget lead for priority bids.
• Participate as a key member of the BD Strategy and Action Room (StAR), which guides agency BD strategy and priorities, global pipeline review to ensure strategic decision making, and opportunity-specific Go/No-Go decisions.
• In collaboration with regional and country leadership, serve as Go/No-Go managers to accompany a funding opportunity and its team across the full capture and proposal preparation process.
• In collaboration with regional and country leadership and technical design leads, guide partner identification, negotiation of consortia roles, and review of teaming agreements.
• Lead proposal review panels and return timely, consolidated feedback to proposal teams. Coordinate with lead reviewer and lead feedback discussions with design team. Lead due diligence review and ensure alignment with donor strategies and intel.
• Lead initiatives to advance CRS BD processes, promote learning and sharing of best practices, and build the capacity of CRS staff in BD. Actively contribute to CRS' Global BD Community of Practice.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong budgeting skills and experience leading the development of strategic and competitive cost proposals highly desirable.
• Exceptional writing skills and demonstrated experience writing winning proposals.
• Strong strategic, analytical, systems thinking, and problem-solving skills, with capacity to see the big picture.
• Strong relations management abilities. Ability to relate to people at all levels internally and externally. Ability to strategically approach each relationship.
• Familiarity with relevant institutional donors, including the US Government (USG) agencies non USG entities (FDCO, Global Fund, EU, UN, etc.), and foundations and corporations, and their regulations, policies, procedures and priorities. Comprehensive familiarity of donor technical and cost requirements.
• Excellent negotiation skills.
• Strong communications and presentation skills.
• Proactive, resourceful, solutions-oriented and results-oriented.
• Knowledge of CRS programs, justice agenda and Catholic Social Teaching principles.
• Experience using MS Windows and MS Office packages, information management systems and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Required Languages: Fluency in English required; working ability in French and/or Spanish highly desirable.

Travel: Must be willing and able to travel up to 35%.

Supervisory Responsibilities: None