Finance & Awards Advisor - 6640

Save the Children UK has an exciting opportunity for a collaborative individual with strong awards management or donor reporting experience to join our Humanitarian Leadership Academy division as Finance & Awards Advisor, on a 12-month Fixed Term Contract.  

About Us 

Save the Children UK believes every child deserves a future. In the UK and around the world, we work every day to give children a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm.  When crisis strikes, and children are most vulnerable, we are always among the first to respond and the last to leave.  We ensure children's unique needs are met and their voices are heard. We deliver lasting results for millions of children, including those hardest to reach. 

The Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) as part of SCUK's humanitarian department provides high-quality humanitarian capacity strengthening for the movement, as well as the wider sector, as part of our shifting the power agenda. The Humanitarian Leadership Academy's mission, as a team within the humanitarian department, is to enable people around the world to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries, by providing quality learning opportunities.   

About the role 

AsFinance & Awards Advisor, you will be responsible forensuring both financial and awards management compliance for Disasters Emergency Committee projects and funding, including supporting delivery of quality programme implementation in accordance with the agreed donor budget and maintenance of all documentation audit trails. 

You will be working in a varied role, ensuring that Save the Children UK standards and processes are followed across the teams, acting as the focal point for the finance and awards management and compliance activities of the team. 

Working within the Project Management Unit (PMU) within the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA), you'll work closely with teams across the PMU, as well as with the HLA Finance Business Partner, and work externally with donors' relevant focal points, partners' award managers and their finance staff. 

Your key accountabilities will include:  

• Leading on financial and award management for the Project Management Unit awards throughout the project cycle, ensuring at all stages that the control framework of the funding is consistent with the situation. 
• Ensuring robust award management systems are in place for the PMU award funding (e.g. procurement, contract amendments, income processing, and reporting) and that all donor compliance and SCUK quality requirements are met fully. 
• Providing advice on donor relations strategy with the donors, leveraging on funding opportunities, and aid in managing donor expectations. 
• Consolidating financial data across multiple stakeholders, plus external partners to deliver timely and accurate reporting for the awards, seeking assistance from the Finance Business Partner where required.    
• Overseeing monitoring of the awards' budget vs. actuals data, including thoroughly explaining variances to the Finance Business Partner for the purposes of financial month-end commentary to the senior leadership team, and flagging all key issues in a timely fashion as they arise. 

About you 

You'll demonstrate a strong understanding of financial principles, accounting standards, and budgeting processes and proven analytical skills with the ability to identify key points from a range of material or information. 

Self-motivated with project coordination skills gained through working on cross-organisational projects, you'll be comfortable stepping into a role working with multiple stakeholders and deadlines, and used to planning and prioritising your work effectively.  

To be successful, you'll bring: 

• Experience of providing support on financial aspects of large donor awards and working with multiple stakeholders and departments (previous experience working with Disasters Emergency Committee projects and funding would be beneficial but not essential). 
• Good understanding of award (grant/contract) management including but not limited to institutional donors. 
• Demonstrated partnerships handling for Direct Spend awards, including working alongside partner agencies on budgeting and reporting against budgets, compiling and reviewing Sub-grant Agreements, monitoring partners' activities and creating and updating donor financial reports. 
• Demonstrated competency with financial plans, budgets and reporting including monitoring of budgets.  
• Excellent understanding of audit readiness and experience of the audit process.  
• Excellent organisation and administration skills with the ability to plan and prioritise work. 
• Commitment to Save the Children's vision, mission and values. 

What we offer you: 

Working for a charity provides one of the best benefits there is – a sense of purpose and reward for helping others. However, we understand the importance of giving back to our employees to ensure a happy and healthy working environment and work/life balance. 

• We focus on flexibility, inclusion, collaboration, health and wellbeing both in and outside of work. 
• We provide a wide range of benefits which will reward your hard work, motivate you, and inspire you to work to improve the lives of children every day. You can read more about our benefits here. 

To learn more about the position, please review the Job Description in the attached Documents. 

Please note: To avoid disappointment, you are advised to submit your application as soon as possible as we reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a high volume of applications are received. This is to ensure that we can manage application levels whilst maintaining a positive candidate experience. Unfortunately once a vacancy has closed, we are unable to consider further applications.

Ways of Working:

The majority of our roles can be performed remotely in the UK, but there are likely to be times when you will be required to come to your contracted office (up to 2-4 days per month or 6-8 days per quarter).  This will be agreed with your Line Manager and team and is intended to be time spent on collaborating with colleagues and relationship building. 

Please note: travel costs to your contracted office will be at your own expense. 

Flexible Working - We are happy to discuss flexible working options at interview.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: 

Save the Children UK believes in a world that is fair, inclusive and equitable where all children have the opportunity to change their world. We apply this to our workforce and we are committed to developing and supporting a diverse, equitable, and inclusive organisation where all employees have a sense of belonging and feel that they can be "Free to Be Me". We are not looking for just one type of person - we want to recruit people who can add fresh perspectives, innovative ideas or challenge that disrupts the risk of group think. 

We are especially interested in people whose childhood experiences - of life on a low income, of migration, of being in a racialised community, of the care system, of being LGBT+ or in an LGBT+ family or living with (or with someone with) a disability - help us to see things we might otherwise miss. Whatever your story is we want to hear it because we know that different voices, ideas, perspectives and knowledge, working together will enable us to better the lives of children around the world. This is the reason why we are all here. 

To see our full statement please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/our-policies/diversity/

Salary Structure: 

Save the Children is committed to paying staff in a fair and equitable way and will benchmark all salary offers in line with the pay of existing staff. To see our full offer please visit this link: https://jobs.savethechildren.org.uk/what-we-offer/

Interview Expenses: 

Candidates should note that unfortunately it is not our policy to reimburse expenses accrued when attending interviews at Save the Children UK unless you are requested to attend an interview in an alternative location to where the role is based.

Pre-employmentChecks:

Any Employment with Save the Children UK will be subject to the following checks prior to your start date:

• a satisfactory police record check to include a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check and/or an International Criminal Record Check (If applicable)
• receipt of satisfactory references
• proof of eligibility to work in the national location for this role

If you have any questions, we have an FAQ section here. For anything else you can email us on: careers@savethechildren.org.uk