Background:
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world’s worst humanitarian crises and helps people to survive and rebuild their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, IRC offers life-saving care and life-changing assistance to refugees forced to flee from war or disaster. At work today in more than 40 countries and in 22 U.S. cities, IRC restores safety, dignity and hope to millions who are uprooted by conflict or disaster. IRC leads the way from harm to home.
A lead responder in Iraq since 2003, the IRC delivers aid and services that help communities survive, recover, and gain control of their future. The IRC is providing robust programming across five governorates through women’s protection and empowerment, child protection and protection and rule of law programming; cash distributions and livelihoods programming in support of economic recovery and development; governance and social cohesion programming; and integrated early childhood development programming. Our work spans emergency response to long-term programming supporting our clients to rebuild their lives.
Working in partnership with local non-profit organizations is a key element of the IRC’s global Strategy100. In line with its Grand Bargain Commitment, IRC aims to transfer 25% of funding globally to local implementing organizations by 2024. In Iraq, the IRC works with a diverse group of Iraqi organizations to deliver services, drive change, and advocate on behalf of vulnerable populations. IRC provides funding, technical and operational capacity building support to Iraqi organizations in order to meet shared goals throughout Iraq.
Job Overview/Summary:
The Partnership Finance Senior Officer is a position supporting the Iraq Grants & Partnerships Department and working closely with Finance Department. With the overall objective of achieving high quality programming, the Partner Finance Senior Officer will lead the process of validating partners expenses in coordination with program teams and budget holders to determine if expenses qualify as reasonable, allowable and allocable. The main goal of this position is to ensure effective review of partner finance reports and documentation as well as to provide support to partner organizations’ finance staff. The Partnership Finance Senior Officer will support in preparing of IRC internal reports and analysis, will lead to process partners advances and reimbursements, payment requests and monitoring of partner financial and accounting systems.
Major Responsibilities:
Financial Management
- Review and verify partners’ financial reports and supporting documentation, ensuring that expenses are reasonable, allowable and allocable to the approved budget and align with donor’s regulations. Communicate findings to partners, and ensuring timely follow-up to provide solutions and documenting the findings. Reviews must be based on partner risk and sampling or review of full documentation, as required.
- Liaise with partner organizations to ensure completeness, correctness and accuracy of financial reports according to PEER system, general principles of accounting, partner’s internal policies and procedures, IRC policies and donor regulations.
- Review and validate spending plans from partners against reported expenditures, following-up with partner organizations as needed. Monitor partners’ spending, in collaboration with program focal point, and proactively work with partners to address any issues.
- Ensure that partner organization financial reports are approved by the appropriate authorities within IRC. Prepare Journal Vouchers and coordinate with Finance Department to book expenses in SUN system financial software. Respond to questions that arise from the Finance Department and IRC HQ regarding submitted financial reports.
- Process Payment Requests for partner organizations (advances and reimbursements), ensure timely follow-up on the status of payments release, tracking them and informing sub-awardees in a timely manner on the status of the payments. Follow up with IRC HQ and sub-awardees confirm transfer and receipt of payments respectively.
- Maintain the bookkeeping and files related to sub-awards, in both hard and soft copy. Ensure that a sound, accurate and organized archiving system is in place for financial reports and associated supporting documents. Work with Finance team to prepare for internal and external audit, to ensure proper compliance with all regulations, and to ensure that all partnerships files in hard and soft copy are 100% audit ready at all times.
Program Delivery
- Work collaboratively and supportively with partners to develop and finalize budgets and spending plans for proposals and new sub-awards
- In collaboration with Finance Department, participate in the Partner's Project Capacity Review (PPCR) of potential partners to evaluate financial capacity of partner organizations. Report to the Deputy Director of Finance and the Grants & Partnership Coordinator on the findings and provide recommendations for improvement. Support in developing risk management action plan and suggest corrective actions to address/mitigate risks identified during the PPCR process.
Capacity Strengthening
- In collaboration with the Partnership Manager and the Finance Department, provide finance and accounting training and mentoring support to partners, in accordance with partner project support plans, with a focus on supporting the partner to strengthen financial management systems and capacities that are responsive to the needs of the partner (rather than replicating IRC’s systems and policies).
Monitoring
- Conduct finance monitoring visits to partners and prepare monitoring report and action plan to submit to Grants & Partnership Coordinator and share with partners in timely manner for each visit.
Other
- Any other duties as assigned by the Grants & Partnership Coordinator
Key Working Relationships:
- Position Reports to: Grants & Partnership Coordinator
- Position directly supervises: None
- Indirect Reporting: Deputy Director for Finance
Job Requirements:
- BA degree or equivalent in Accounting, Finance or related field.
- Approximately 3-6 years of relevant work experience in Partnership, Audit, Sub-grant monitoring, Financial management.
- Ability to conduct review and audit remotely.
- Computer literate with significant experience in MS Office and Excel. Experience with accounting software (IRC uses SUN System) will be an added advantage.
- Previous experience with International NGOs and/or USAID, ECHO, and UN projects is highly desirable.
- Effective communication skills, both written and verbal
- Fluency in Arabic and English
- Ability to prioritize among multiple tasks and make decisions.
- Willing to travel within KRI and Federal Iraq (approximately 10% of time)
Working Environment: The position is based in Erbil with standard office work environment. About 10% of time will be travel to partner organizations’ offices.
Standards of Professional Conduct: The IRC and IRC workers must adhere to the values and principles outlined in IRC Way - Standards for Professional Conduct. These are Integrity, Service, and Accountability. In accordance with these values, the IRC operates and enforces policies on Beneficiary Protection from Exploitation and Abuse, Child Safeguarding, Anti Workplace Harassment, Fiscal Integrity, and Anti-Retaliation.
Gender Equality IRC is committed to narrowing the gender gap in leadership positions. We offer benefits that provide an enabling environment for women to participate in our workforce including maternity leave, gender-sensitive security protocols, and other supportive benefits and allowances. Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
COVID-19 Vaccination Requirement: Per the Iraqi Ministry of Health COVID-19 guidelines, IRC requires candidates who are selected for positions to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter IRC premises. However, the exemption is only accepted per the Iraqi Health regulation and upon the provision of a negative PCR test.
Commitment to Diversity and Inclusivity: IRC is committed to building a diverse organization and a climate of inclusivity. We strongly encourage applications from candidates who can demonstrate that they can contribute to this goal.
Equal Opportunity Employer: We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Notice to all Job Seekers
IRC implements an equal employment opportunity policy, and our recruitment process is based on merit.
Applicants and/or successful interview candidates (both internal and external) are not required to pay any fees at any stage of the recruitment process.
If anyone asks you for any financial or non-financial favors to help you secure a job at IRC, kindly report to iraq.hr@rescue.org.
ملاحظة لكل الباحثين عن وظيفة
تعتمد لجنة الانقاذ الدولية سياسة فرص عمل متساوية وان عملية التوظيف لدينا تعتمد على الجدارة .
لايتوجب على المتقدمين لاي وظيفة او المؤهلين للمقابلات (سواء كانوا موظفيين حالين او متقدمين من خارج المنظمة) دفع اي مبلغ مالي خلال اي مرحلة من مراحل التوظيف.
اذا قام اي شخص بطلب اي خدمة مالية او غير مالية لقاء مساعدتكم في تأمين فرصة عمل داخل المنظمة ،يرجى الابلاغ عن ذلك الى iraq.hr@rescue.org
