Funding Specialist

CONTEXT 

Within Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Finance Department aims to ensure that the resources contribute successfully to the running of operational objectives. MSF financial autonomy is highly dependent on donors’ trust and private income. Moreover, a significant portion of income is restricted by the donors’ specific interests. 

This role encompasses defining policies, guidelines, and procedures related to funding, income allocations and grant management activities, within MSF movement, particularly with more than 20 MSF fundraising sections around the world, as well as providing operational and financial information, to facilitate their fundraising activities, while ensuring there is no operational project overfunding. 

As the Funding Specialist, you play a key role in managing and distributing funding for MSF OCB operational projects. In collaboration with the Fundraising Operational Information Specialist, you ensure financial guidance, funding validation, grant management, and planning.

Your expertise extends across MSF operations, fundraising practices, and donor education, allowing you to bridge funding and operational/financial needs. You master financial tools, operational budgets, forecasts, and qualitative financial reporting. Working closely with finance, operations, and fundraising teams, you contribute to donor accountability by providing essential documentation and financial transparency.

With a unique connection to operations, you secure legitimacy and access to critical fundraising information. Your role involves handling complex files, including administrative, audit, financial, operational, and legal aspects—ensuring projects remain funded appropriately without overfunding.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

Grant management

• Support the team to deliver proactive service to MSF funding and fundraising stakeholders by addressing their needs to facilitate fundraising activities and donors’ requests (knowing the tremendous private market and diversity of needs), while considering operational and financial departments constraints
• Coordinate and ensure planification of all private and institutional-specific donor budget proposal and financial reporting processes ensuring a timely and quality production and dissemination; provide financial rationale on deviations; provide financial operational updates, address ad-hoc requests for clarifications; consolidate multi-country/multi-year grants/reports; ensure timely and quality amendment of grant agreements (if need be
• Ensure funding’s database is kept up to date daily with all earmarked income commitments and records of essential information. Contracts, reports, agreements, audits are systematically filed, accessible and accurate
• Ensure appropriate mechanisms are implemented to comply with donor requirements, including deadlines (all related info shared with Operations department (OPS) in due time, Donor ID card’s validation with FU and OPS). Accounting systems (HQ Adfinity and Unifield) are up to date and parametrized
• Formalize approved earmarking requests through inter-section contracts
• Coordinate the donors’ audit reporting
• Identify and optimize funding opportunities of the different programmes / projects / themes (in collaboration with the Funding coordinator, the operations department and the Fundraisers), allocate incomes, and ensure no overfunding

Communication

• Maintain an effective network and assume communication flows related to donors grant management with various colleagues in operations, programmes, and numerous (>20) MSF sections (Fin & Fundraising)
• Ensure an essential presence on the various operational platforms that document and challenge MSF operational projects and the progress of MSF operational activities in the programmes and gather the necessary information for the fundraising main activities and donors
• Participate in quarterly Cell monitoring meeting to exchange on projects and funding updates
• Prepare and present Funding Unit undertakings to different groups of stakeholders, based on needs and opportunities
• Inform OPS quarterly about all funding opportunities per project/cell
• Update Private Funding Contact list (MSF Sections FR & Finance Dpt.