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About WaterAid

WaterAid is an international not-for-profit organisation determined to make clean water, decent toilets, and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere, within a generation. Since we started in 1981, we’ve remained resolutely focused on tackling these three essentials that transform people’s lives. Without all three, people can’t live dignified, healthy lives. With all three, they can unlock their potential, break free from poverty, and change their lives for good. Children grow up healthy and strong, women and men get to earn a living, and whole communities start to thrive.  

About the Role

The Regional Business Development Manager (RBDM) is a central part of the Southern Africa Regional team and will support the expansion of WaterAid’s funding portfolio, develop proposals, build regional intelligence and position WaterAid’s work in its key thematic areas (such as health and climate).

The RBDM will partner with country teams in the region, fundraising specialists, and technical experts across WaterAid, as well as externally with donors and partners, to develop a multi-year pipeline of opportunities and implement a business development strategy. This will focus on ensuring WaterAid is well positioned within key donor and consortium partner networks in the region as a “go-to” partner for long-term sustainable  WASH programming. 

The RBDM monitors, shapes, and highlights country funding needs for WaterAid federation members, facilitating funding flows to countries. The RBDM supports Heads of Funding across country programmes to build a strong portfolio of donor and consortium partnerships. Collaborating with the Regional Director and Country Directors, the RBDM will ensure each country programme is fully funded to deliver its strategic goals. 

The RBDM is a strategic thinker who can challenge and mentor country funding teams to appraise opportunities critically, produce consistent, compelling proposals and funding strategies, and deliver on targets.  

Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategy: 

• Support country programmes in developing fundraising, donor and consortium partner strategies, with a deep understanding of how to position WA’s programmes in the current donor marketplace. 
• Provide federation members with up-to-date information and propositions to engage with and champion countries’ strategic funding needs. 
• Contribute to overall new business strategy in collaboration with country teams, Senior  Programme Development Manager and the Regional Director, assessing regional performance against Key Performance Indicators and annual revenue targets. 

Pipeline development and management: 

• Responsible for growing and monitoring the pipeline of relevant funding opportunities for WA country programmes, coordinating with fundraising members to communicate donor intelligence, and ensuring a balanced portfolio of funding types. 
• Work closely with colleagues across the International Programmes Department (IPD) to facilitate the design, shaping, and development of ambitious donor funding propositions. 
• Support Country Programmes (CPs) in integrating donor perspectives and expectations during monitoring, reporting, and compliance.  
• Provide strategic support for larger funding opportunities, ensuring that WA country teams are supported to negotiate favourable positions within consortia and are able to effectively assess and mitigate delivery risk. 
• Lead on building, maintaining and tracking relationships with donors and key institutions, including key suppliers. 
• Champion a rigorous bid/no bid process, ensuring the Business Development and CPs provide a thorough and realistic analysis of both risk and opportunity.  
• Support the improvement of cost recovery in restricted funding contracts by enabling country teams to communicate and negotiate with donors and holding CPs accountable for cost recovery KPIS. 

Funding skills and capability development: 

• Monitor the fundraising skills, capabilities and investment levels within country teams and support the development of both funding-focused roles and the capability of country SMTs to engage with donors and develop funding propositions. 
• Develop a strong internal communication and knowledge-sharing strategy to ensure regional colleagues are aware of and able to access information and resources about donors and partners. 
• Play a leading role in co-creating and embedding business processes, systems, and policies for restricted funding, including regional engagement in the new restricted funding community of practice. 
• Build confidence in pursuing different funding modalities, including commercial contracts, by accompanying country teams in the development of complex and novel bidding approaches (with the support of global teams and consultants). 
• Lead the promotion of cross-country and regional learning and best practices on business development, bid development and contract management.  

Leadership and Line management:  

• Responsible for working with a high-performing team of country Heads of Funding and  Donor Relationship Leads across the globe. The RBDM will contribute to strategic and operational planning processes; define and deliver an agreed set of team performance targets; and provide guidance, coaching and support in helping peers achieve optimum performance.  
• Responsible for the matrix management of the Heads of Funding at the country level. The RBDM will contribute to establishing the team’s core new business processes and will lead on and ensure effective linkages with other key stakeholders.
• Identify specialist training needs in the region and source relevant expertise from the Programme Funding and Partnerships team (PFP) and other external sources to address these capacity needs.

Skills and Experience

• Proven experience planning, securing and managing restricted funds from institutional donors such as USAID, EC, UK Government, International Financial  Institutions such as the World Bank and AfDB, local and international corporations, trusts and foundations such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, etc.  
• Substantial experience and knowledge of the institutional funding space and a deep understanding of bilateral and multilateral donors’ routes to market 
• Demonstrable track record of developing and delivering on strategies for restricted income growth. 
• Knowledge of the design or management of multi-stakeholder consortiums. And solid experience building partnerships to facilitate opportunities in consortium contracting and negotiating the position of WA in those consortia. 
• Knowledge of the design or management of multi-stakeholder consortiums.
• Strategic networker with the ability to identify and transform opportunities into tangible results. 
• Excellent communication, listening and collaboration skills and the ability to take complex information and simplify it for audiences
• Ability to work in a flexible and agile way to identify opportunities and address challenges. 
• Ability to work independently, be a proactive self-starter and instigate new approaches,  ways of working and initiatives. 
• Ability to regularly travel to attend external events and meetings and to visit country offices. 
• Excellent people leadership skills, including the ability to work in a matrix environment and coach and mentor staff in remote locations. 
• Demonstrated ability to work across institutional boundaries, units, and teams in an effective, empowering, and productive way.  
• Commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace. 
• Working style that reflects WaterAid’s values of Respect, Accountability, Courage,  Collaboration, Integrity and Innovation. 
• Understanding of WASH, or climate or health networks and stakeholders 

Equal opportunities 

WaterAid is an equal-opportunity, disability-confident employer dedicated to achieving the highest standards of diversity, equity and inclusion. WaterAid welcomes applications from people of all backgrounds, beliefs, customs, traditions and ways of life. This includes but is not limited to, race,  gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion, national or social origin, health status, and economic or social situation. 

Safeguarding 

WaterAid is also committed to protecting everyone we come into contact with. We have a zero-tolerance approach to abuse of power, privilege, or trust across our global work and any form of inappropriate behaviour, discrimination, abuse, bullying, harassment, or exploitation. Safeguarding the people and communities we work with, our staff, volunteers, and anyone working on our behalf is our top priority, and we take our responsibilities extremely seriously.