General Description of the Programme:

GOAL has been working in Syria since 2013, responding to the acute needs of conflict-affected communities. GOAL is working in Idleb Governate, both through direct implementation and through partners, delivering food, non-food programming to highly vulnerable populations, and provision of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) through support to Water units, as well as emergency support to recently displaced households.

GOAL has been working in North Aleppo Governate since 2019, through direct implementation and through partners, delivering food, non-food programming to highly vulnerable populations, as well as emergency support for recently displaced household.

Job purpose:

Reporting to the Partnership Coordinator, the Partnership Officer is a key role supporting GOAL Syria’s partner portfolio. With the overall aim of achieving high quality and compliant partnerships, the Partnership Officer will ensure effective sub-grants management and due diligence with partners, assisting in monitoring and evaluating GOAL partners performance, contributing to strong respectful and long-term working relations with partners.  As part of the Partnership Department the incumbent will oversee the contractual relationship between GOAL and its partners, ensuring timely reporting to GOAL and that reports are incorporated into GOAL’s reporting to donors. S/he will also play the role as primary contact point on contractual and grants issues with partners.

Duties, objectives and competencies

Job Responsibility#1: New Business Development Support

20% of Time: 

• Maintain GOAL local NGO Mapping Database and ensure it is updated regularly.
• =Ensure partner selection process is transparent, documented and aligned with GOAL Partnership process and procedures.
• Coordinate with Grants Management and Program teams to collect partner inputs for new proposals, concept notes and donor grant modification requests.
• Ensure effective coordination and collaboration with partners to finalize new proposals, concept notes and donor grant modification request project descriptions, budgets, work plans and monitoring and evaluation plans.
• Assist the Partnership Coordinator in drafting sub-award agreements and follow GOAL’s internal review process of all sub-award documentation and coordinate to get all necessary approvals.
• Keep track of all partners’ grant agreements and maintain the partners’ section of the Grant’s Tracker.

Job Responsibility#2: Partner Capacity Building

20% of Time: 

• Coordinate with GOAL Grants Management, Program and System teams in order to collect inputs and relevant information on partners’ gaps in capacities and training needs, develop work plans and mechanism for follow up and progress reporting.
• Assist partners with understanding GOAL required policies and procedures as per the sub-grant agreement and best practices (procurement, financial reporting, child safeguarding, etc.)
• Liaise with GOAL departments including Grants, programmes, MEAL, GESI, Safeguarding, MIS and Systems to identify ongoing partner priority capacity gaps and facilitate capacity-building support for partners.
• Support the Partnership Coordinator in ensuring that the partners' GESI, Safeguarding, and Accountability policies meet the quality benchmarks by liaising with GOAL related departments.
• Maintain tracker on current partner policy revision dates and coordinate policy reviewal processes with relevant GOAL staff departments and partner. Coordinate feedback to partners on the reviewal process and revisions.

Job Responsibility #3:  Partnership Management and Performance Monitoring & Evaluation

30% of Time:

• Support GOAL Partnership Coordinator inimplementing a two-way partnership evaluation process and evaluation framework in collaboration with other GOAL cross-cutting technical areas (Gender Equality and Social Inclusion, Protection, Accountability and Data Protection).
• Organize regular meetings to review GOAL and partner performance within the framework; lead on formulation of joint action plans to address issues and follow up on action plan implementation with relevant partners and GOAL staff.
• Assist the Partnership Coordinator in reporting to the Programme Quality Management on partnership performance; ensure that any critical concerns are flagged in a timely manner.
• Collaborating with the Partnership Coordinator and MIS team on managing and updating the partner dashboards.

Job Responsibility #4:  Partner Reporting, Coordination and Communications

30% of Time:

• Support and contribute when required to the agenda and materials for partner grant opening meetings, in coordination with support functions and program staff, to ensure projects start with clear expectations of both parties.
• Support the communication with GOAL partners, and with all GOAL relevant departments for partnership related issues pertaining to performance monitoring including but not limited to indicators performance, objectives and status of action plans.
• Mantain the communication plans for GOAL Syria partners updated to facilitate understanding of available focal points and communication channels, and how to access them.
• Participate and lead when required, Partner Management Team meetings with GOAL and Partner focal points. Ensure meeting minutes are recorded and disseminated with action points. Lead on action point follow-up with GOAL and partner focal points.
• Actively participate in Goal Syria Partner Task Force and Partner monthly meetings, support in taking and circulating minutes
• Ensure that partners’ contractual reports are reviewed and internal feedback from program and MEAL teams is compiled and sent to partners in a timely manner.

Other:

• Be an active participant in the Partnership Department, supporting the overall objectives and outputs of the Partnership Unit.
• Other duties as requested by the Partnership Coordinator.
• Provide cover for the Partnership Coordinator in his/her absence.

Requirements (essential)

• Bachelor’s degree in subject relevant to position (social science, business economics, information management, project management etc), or commensurate experience.
• 2-3 years working in the NGO sector in humanitarian programming with local partners.
• Fluency in English and Arabic, both written and oral.

Requirements (desired)

• Experience of donor compliance and managing institutional donor funding (e.g. BHA, and ECHO would be an advantage.)
• Demonstrated experience in safeguarding principles and practices (preferrable).
• Strong understanding of Accountability, and MEL principles and processes.
• Experience with report writing for donors and other external audiences.
• Proficient in MS Office applications (PowerBI Preferrable).

Interested? Then apply for this position via clicking on the "apply now" button and fill out the application form. All applicants must send a cover letter and an updated CV (no longer than four pages). Both must be in English.

Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

GOAL has the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement. We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with GOAL at the same grade level and with similar job descriptions, experience, and educational requirements.

Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

The application deadline is 10 April 2024 , however, you are encouraged to apply immediately as we will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis, therefore we may withdraw the position before the advertisement’s closing date if a suitable candidate/s is identified .

Please note that GOAL does not charge a fee of any kind or any other financial obligation at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, processing, training, induction) or other fees, or request information on applicants’ bank accounts. GOAL does not work with intermediary institutions and individuals or employment agencies during the recruitment process. If any fee or payment requested from you at the application or any stage of the recruitment process, please do not respond .

GOAL does not accept any responsibility for the accuracy, errors or omissions of any of the information contained in translated advertisements by an independent party on other sites or through other channels.

General terms and conditions 

Safeguarding

Children and vulnerable adults a must be safeguarded to the maximum possible extent from deliberate or inadvertent actions and failings that place them at risk of abuse, sexual exploitation, injury and any other harm. One of the ways that GOAL shows this on-going commitment to safeguarding is to include rigorous background and reference checks in the selection process for all candidates.

Accountability within GOAL

Alongside our safeguarding policy, GOAL is an equal opportunities employer and has a set of integrity policies. Any candidate offered a job with GOAL will be expected to adhere to the following key areas of accountability:

• Comply with GOAL’s policies and procedures with respect to safeguarding, Code of Conduct, health and safety, data protection and confidentiality, do no harm principles and unacceptable behavior protocols.
• Report any concerns about the welfare of a child or vulnerable adult or any wrongdoings within our programming area.
• Report any concerns about inappropriate behavior of a GOAL staff or partner.

This Job Description only serves as a guide for the position available. GOAL reserves the right to change this document. Any published closing dates are estimated.  Due to the nature of GOAL’s work we aim to fill vacancies as quickly as possible.  This means that we will close adverts as soon as we have found the right candidate and this may be before the published closing date.  We would therefore advise interested applicants to submit an application as early as possible.