Consultant Bid Writer

Consultant Bid Writers support Seefar’s mission to help vulnerable people access more opportunities to advance. Consultant Bid Writers work within a bid-writing team to produce responses to donor tenders that are so polished, that they exceed all expectations. These roles require people with deep experience fundraising in the international development sector, with a track record of writing exceptional compliance and technical responses. These roles are part-time, consultant roles with flexible commitments. You can live wherever you like.

Job Description

Seefar encourages applicants from a variety of backgrounds and locations, including those in developing countries, displaced persons, and/or those with physical disabilities.

We are a social enterprise with a vision for a world where vulnerable people have more opportunities to advance themselves. We specialise in justice, migration and social inclusion. Our expertise is in strategic communications, counselling, consulting, monitoring and evaluation, and research. We work in East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa, the Sahel and Europe. For more information about us, please visit http://seefar.org/about-us

This role demands someone who is smart, intrinsically motivated, worldly and interested in hard challenges.

To get a sense of the services we specialise in at Seefar, please visit http://seefar.org/services

Seefar’s major donors include the UK FCDO and Home Office; the German Federal Foreign Office; DG HOME and DEVCO within the EU; the Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and Austrian Governments. We implement alone, as prime contractor and as subcontractor.

Responsibilities

The following are the primary responsibilities of the role, with estimated allocations of time and attention.

Deliver: Project and Mission Implementation

Approximately 70% of your time and attention:

• Review and develop improved responses to standard donor questions.
• Learning, and collecting information about, Seefar operations and experience.
• Work on time constrained bids, including writing responses, coordinating a bid writing team, reviewing and improving content and responses.
• Take a quality leadership role within the bid-writing team

Develop: Capabilities and Program Portfolio

Approximately 30% of your time and attention:

• Improve the capability of Seefar fundraising including through supporting systemisation, improving processes and identifying value propositions Seefar should pursue.

Direct: Global Management

• Represent and demonstrate the Enterprise’s values.

Working with Seefar

Current and former personnel have noted the points below as positive features of Seefar’s work environment and culture:

• The Enterprise combines entrepreneurialism with a focus on social impact.
• You work with highly diverse people and across a diversity of contexts.
• There is a high level of trust that supports you to work autonomously.
• The people in the Enterprise encourage innovation and experimentation.
• Achieving results is prioritised over rigid structures and workflows.
• You are never bored and always challenged.

Current and former personnel have noted the points below as negative features of Seefar’s work environment and culture:

• Collaborating with geographically dispersed teams requires flexibility and patience.
• Working remotely can make you feel isolated and so requires you to invest time in communication.
• Travel schedules can sometimes be heavy.
• A high-growth phase means problem-solving as the Enterprise’s systems evolve quickly.

An Excellent Candidate

To excel in this role, you will have the following experience and capacities:

• More than 5 years of experience fundraising in the international development sector.
• You have personally led multiple successful $5m+ bid processes, including on Seefar’s core thematic areas of migration, modern slavery, security & justice, social inclusion and/or the environment.
• You have the flexibility in your personal and professional life to take on consulting roles at short notice.
• You have a track record of supervising others effectively.
• You have ideas about what works well in this industry and you have seen opportunities to to do much better.