Business Development Director

Business Development Director

Functional Area: Business Development
Reports to: Country Director
Location: Country Office – Kathmandu
Travel required: 25%
Grade: F
Type: Fixed-Term Employment for two years from the date of employment based in Country Office

CONTEXT

Plan International is a development and humanitarian organisation that advances children’s rights and equality for girls. We strive for a just world, working together with children, young people, our supporters and partners in over 75 countries. Our programs are underpinned by a core of defined values, including transparency and accountability, team collaboration, inclusion and integration, as well as the overall ambition to empower girls and young women as legacy.

Plan International has been working in Nepal since 1978 and developed a strong reputation as a respected development and humanitarian actor helping marginalised children, their families and communities to access their rights to health, education, economic security and protection. Through the support of local partners, Plan International works in 12 districts in Nepal.

Plan International Nepal has a vision for 2030 as “an inclusive, just and safe society where all girls and young women enjoy their rights and live in freedom”. This is coupled with the ambition of taking action so that 100 million girls learn, lead, decide and thrive as “Girls and young women in all of their diversity reach their full potential as equal and active citizens” by 2023. The country strategy is put into action through the implementation of three interrelated program areas defined as follows:

LEARN: the “Education and Skills and Opportunities for Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship (SOYEE)” program aims to assist vulnerable and excluded girls and young women in adapting and thriving in a changing climate;

LEAD AND DECIDE: the “Youth as Active Drivers of Change and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR)” program aims to empower girls and young women in leading change, having control over their bodies and making informed decisions; and

THRIVE: the “Early Childhood Development (ECD), Child Protection and Child Poverty” program enhances vulnerable and excluded children, especially girls, to be valued and cared for without discrimination, fear and any forms of violence.

Plan international Nepal seeks candidates who practice feminist leadership, promote diversity, actively seek innovative solutions for problems, courageously and respectfully share their opinions and ideas, break down barriers and engender cross-department collaboration, practice active listening, maintain confidentiality, build trust and are passionate about children’s rights and equality for girls.

ROLE PURPOSE

The Business Development Director is responsible to create long-term value for Plan International Nepal from both existing and new funding sources and relationships through both institutions and corporate partnerships. The position will lead in development of long-term financial growth strategy to ensure Plan Nepal’s financial sustainability and ensure Plan International Nepal has a balanced portfolio of suitable, medium and large grants and pipeline of future funding.

Description

DIMENSIONS OF THE ROLE

Budget held:

• Decision making authority to act is set out in the current delegation of authority.

Number of direct reports: 3

Key stakeholder groups:

Internal

• Build excellent working relationships with Plan Nepal Country Office and Field Office teams based on trust and accountability.
• Builds and manages strong relationships with National Organisation (NO) colleagues.

External

• Active engagement with a diverse set of local, regional and international donors (both institutional and corporate) and strategic partners.
• Owns the relationship with NOs and donor organisations.
• Builds a strong relationship with Plan Nepal’s strategic partners (relationship is owned by the CO Influencing team).
• Develops excellent working relationship with institutional donors, corporate representatives and NO counterparts in Nepal.

Main challenges of the role

• Building skills in the team (or supplemented by an external roster) to ensure that proposals meet quality standards and individual donor’s requirements.
• Making the time to maintaining good relationships with a diverse group of stakeholders.
• Able to understand and assimilate the complexity of Plan’s grants business development and systems and procedures, organisational structures and decision making processes – together with keeping abreast of the increasingly challenging funding environment.
• Leading inter-departmental teams to achieve their outputs in grants compliance and grants acquisition.
• Influencing across departments to ensure that quality and time requirements are met

ACCOUNTABILITIES

As a member of the CMT, contributes to:

• Shared leadership of the Plan International Nepal Country Office.
• Supports the development of an organisational culture that reflects Plan International’s values, promotes accountability and high performance, encourages a team culture of learning, creativity and innovation and frees up our people to deliver outstanding results for girls and excellent customer service for NOs and donors.
• Helps to establish, maintain and improve active and regular working relationships with Plan Nepal’s key stakeholders – government authorities, partner agencies including humanitarian and development donors, and local and international NGOs.
• Ensures Nepal Country Office complies with all Plan International’s operating standards and procedures.
• Reports regularly to the CD on the management of all risks associated with business development, including on budget and people management.
• Actively role model feminist leadership values

Plan Nepal has a balanced portfolio of suitable, medium and large grants and pipeline of future funding

• Develops a long-term financial growth strategy to ensure Plan Nepal’s financial sustainability.
• Ensures a portfolio of quality medium and large grants and a pipeline of future funding opportunities, so that annual country income targets are met and the Country Strategy can be delivered.
• Identify, retain, and develop existing and new engagements and prospects with foundations, institutions and corporate donors.
• Ensure Plan International Nepal is a priority for corporate partnerships with APAC, Global hub and National Organisations (NO)
• Keeps donor mapping and engagement cases up to date through mapping program priorities against donor and corporate opportunities and proactively works with National Organisation (NO) counterparts to identify and win quality grants.
• Builds excellent working relationships with institutional donors, corporate representatives and NO counterparts and owns the relationship with donor and corporate representatives locally.
• Maintains a roster of suitable resources/consultants for proposal development should that capacity not exist internally.
• Works with programme colleagues and the communications team to oversee and co-ordinate the development, writing and packaging of successful grant proposals from concept through to award, ensuring that the requirements of different donors are met.
• Maximizes cost recovery by ensuring that grant submissions achieve 100% of applicable full cost recovery.
• Ensures alignment of CO systems and processes with regional and global reporting systems, including ensuring timely end of quarter reporting of all new grants signed and current pipeline.
• Manages grants compliance of all existing institutional and corporate grants.
• Identifies any systemic and structural issues that may impede grants growth in Nepal and implements mechanisms to overcome them.

Team Management and Development 

• Works to continually strengthen the Business Development team in Nepal to ensure a strong professional image among Plan donors, help to acquire grant funding that will grow and support Plan’s programmes in Nepal.
• Ensures the Business Development team’s organisational structure enables Plan Nepal’s practices and is appropriate to business development needs, ensuring that role profiles (job descriptions) are regularly updated.
• Defines each direct report’s performance objectives and holds regular coaching conversations throughout the year, ensuring that direct reports feels fully supported in achieving their objectives.
• Holds regular performance development discussions, identified learning needs and ensures the team’s annual staff training plan is designed, approved and implemented, in close collaboration with Human Resources.
• Documents performance that is less than satisfactory, ensuring appropriate performance development plans are in place.
• Provides recognition and reward for outstanding performance, so individuals feel valued and engaged.
• Plans the departmental budget and manages expenditures, ensuring the budget is not exceeded.
• Stewardship for Plan International’s core policies including global policy on safeguarding children and young people and Gender, is observed.

Ensures that Plan International’s global policies for Child Protection (CPP) and Gender Equality and Inclusion (GEI) are fully embedded in accordance with the principles and requirements of the policy including relevant Implementation Standards and Guidelines as applicable to their area of responsibility. This includes, but is not limited to, ensuring staff and associates are aware of and understand their responsibilities under these policies and Plan International’s Code of Conduct (CoC), their relevance to their area of work, and that concerns are reported and managed in accordance with the appropriate procedures.

TECHNICAL EXPERTISE, SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

Qualifications, Knowledge and Experience

• Master Degree in relevant education
• At least seven years of demonstrated experience in business development with minimum 3 years’ experience of being in leadership and managerial role in and International organisation.
• Excellent track record of building relationships with institutional and corporate donors.
• Demonstrable knowledge of grants acquisition and compliance processes and practices, as a result of study, training or practical experience.
• Knowledge of the individual donors’ interests, priorities and requirements.
• Knowledge of Nepal and Nepali culture, as well as the funding environment would be an added advantage.

Skills 

• Strong leader – lead with a number of soft skills such as effective communication, motivation, positivity, trustworthiness, creativity, feedback and commitment.
• Research & strategic thinking – strong research, market and strategic analysis skills in order to understand the donor landscape, understanding Plan Nepal’s competitive advantage, able to benchmark the competition and to develop a strategy that will keep the organisation ahead.
• Goal focused – focussed on meeting financial targets with the ability to pursue a long-term strategic vision whilst remaining flexible enough to respond tactically to changing demands or unexpected opportunities.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, including excellent English oral and written communication skills: must be able to communicate, present, assert and speak to all the different stakeholders involved, actively listen and gain the confidence of donors and national organisations.
• Collaboration – involves working with multiple parties from inside and outside the organisation, to achieve Plan Nepal’s goals.
• Relationship building – able to build relationships, influence, provide constructive feedback, manage conflicts and navigate through organisational politics, in order to get things done.
• Negotiation & influencing – knows when to compromise and when to take a stand, ability to win hearts, minds, and trust, being tactful and diplomatic at all times
• Creativity / marketing – able to see new ways of developing existing opportunities, or finding different routes to acquire new grants.
• Project management – able to set goals, plan and manage projects, manage the risks involved, calculate budgets, cost, time and teams working on ongoing projects.
• Computer skills – high competency working with Microsoft Office, CRM software and familiarity with working on ERP systems.

Leadership Skills and Behaviours demonstrated from experience

Role model Feminist Leadership Principles

• Aims for gender equality and gender transformative leadership
• Focus on achieving equality for girls as the world’s most marginalised and excluded group
• Recognise, celebrate and actively take into account girls’ and young women’s multiple and intersecting identities, including poverty, ethnicity and sexual orientation

Striving for high performance:

• Achieves clarity and accountability among whole team of their individual and collective objectives;
• Organises work clearly and effectively within the team;
• Deals with poor performers by either improving their contribution or managing their exit, if appropriate.

Strategic thinking and innovation:

• Creates strong strategic direction for own part of organisation in wider Plan context;
• Major contributor to direction in the management team of which they are a member;
• Flexible in responding to new demands presented in emergency situations.

Decision making and risk management:

• Can address complex problems in a balanced way;
• Good judgment in decision-making, making best use of available information;
• Willing to make difficult or unpopular decisions and stand by them.

Influence and communication:

• Uses the potential of varied cultures to reach solutions;
• Excellent listener who understands and shows sensitivity to the views of others;
• Forms good relationships quickly with wide range of people, including those in positions of power and who have different views/ interests;
• Represents Plan effectively with senior people in external stakeholder organisations;
• Understands external and internal politics and able to navigate these;
• Communicates with clarity and passion both 1-1 and with large groups;
• Effective negotiator in complex situations;
• Assertive without being aggressive.

Building effective teams and partnerships:

• Creates a highly motivated team with a unified purpose;
• Modifies own view to get best outcome for organisation;
• Contributes effectively to work of other functions/ units and to management team as a whole
• Able to build partnerships and improve relationships;
• Resolves conflict effectively in own team or across boundaries.

Developing people:

• Continuously uses both 1-1 and team situations to develop others;
• Organises work to give others development opportunities;
• Adapts style to suit the needs of a wide variety of people;
• Deals effectively with mistakes and re-motivates those involved.

Self-awareness and resilience:

• Aware of own strengths, weaknesses and pro-active in using feedback and self-development
• Aware of impact on others and uses impact to create positive climate at work
• Aware of own emotional reactions and able to manage them
• Manages own workload effectively and manages stress without harm to self or others
• Positive about change and able to cope well with ambiguity and support others in doing so

PLAN INTERNATIONAL’S VALUES IN PRACTICE

We are open and accountable

• Promotes a culture of openness and transparency, including with sponsors and donors.
• Holds self and others accountable to achieve the highest standards of integrity.
• Consistent and fair in the treatment of people.
• Open about mistakes and keen to learn from them.
• Accountable for ensuring we are a safe organisation for all children, girls & young people

We strive for lasting impact

• Articulates a clear purpose for staff and sets high expectations.
• Creates a climate of continuous improvement, open to challenge and new ideas.
• Focuses resources to drive change and maximise long-term impact, responsive to changed priorities or crises.
• Evidence-based and evaluates effectiveness.

We work well together

• Seeks constructive outcomes, listens to others, willing to compromise when appropriate.
• Builds constructive relationships across Plan International to support our shared goals.
• Develops trusting and ‘win-win’ relationships with funders, partners and communities.
• Engages and works well with others outside the organization to build a better world for girls and all children.

We are inclusive and empowering

• We empower our staff to give their best and develop their potential
• We respect all people, appreciate differences and challenge equality in our programs and our workplace
• We support children, girls and young people to increase their confidence and to change their own lives.

PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Based in Country Office, Kathmandu with field visits as necessary.
Extensive visit to donor representatives and limited international travel to meet with donors/NOs.

LEVEL OF CONTACT WITH CHILDREN

Low contact: Low frequency of interaction.

Application Deadline: Sunday, 15th January 2023

Source: Kantipur Dainik, 1 January 2023

Tagged as: Kathmandu, NGO INGO, Plan International Nepal