Humanitarian Proposal Writer (Consultant)

The Business Development (BD) Team within Global Communities’ Department of Humanitarian Assistance is responsible for all new business development for humanitarian and emergency response programs in the organization. The BD team seeks a Proposal Writer Consultant to lead the writing and development of technical proposal and associated technical proposal annexes for specific business development efforts within the department. Global Communities expects to contract the Proposal Writer Consultant for a six-month period starting January 2021. The Consultant is expected to work up to a total of 90 days within that period.

The successful candidate has a broad background and experience in emergency response and business development efforts with demonstrated success performing lead roles in program design and technical writing, has a deep understanding of the proposal process, and understands humanitarian programming.

Responsibilities

Specific responsibilities include:

• Lead or assist with technical proposal design and writing:
  • Identify appropriate country and sector-specific interventions
  • Review draft technical narrative inputs provided by country office teams and/or international and local partners, where applicable
  • Conduct research on country background information, humanitarian conditions, sectoral best practices, competitor strengths and weaknesses, and other information needed for proposal designs.
  • Draft assigned technical proposal sections where required. Writing proposal sections typically include background statements, technical components, activity implementation plans, humanitarian approaches, cross-cutting issues, management and staffing, or organizational capacity statements.
• Produce final proposal narratives and technical annexes
  • Review, edit, and finalize proposal documents and annexes for submission, in collaboration with proposal team members
  • Revise proposal narratives and annexes based on donor feedback, changes in program design, and revised budget ceilings.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Excellent writing skills.
• Ability to work independently to gather and submit information to a remote team and to rapidly make ongoing adjustments to proposal narratives during a program design process.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with headquarters- and field-based team members.
• Prior experience writing proposals for USAID/OFDA, USAID/FFP, or USAID/BHA strongly preferred
• Fluency English (written and spoken) required; abilities in Spanish strongly preferred.

Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree in a related discipline and a minimum of four years of related work experience or a master’s degree and minimum of eight years of related work experience.
• Minimum of two years’ field experience in humanitarian programming preferred.
• Demonstrated experience successfully developing winning concepts and proposals for emergency response or humanitarian programming.