Awards & Partnerships Assistant

Role overview

This position sits within the Awards Department at Save the Children Kenya Country Office in Nairobi. It is a Grade 5 role focused on helping the awards and partnerships team plan, secure, manage, monitor, and close both development and humanitarian awards. The post supports compliance, information management, reporting, budget monitoring, and partner oversight under the guidance of the Head of Awards and the Awards Coordinator.

The role works closely with PDQ, Finance, Internal Controls and Compliance, and Programme Operations on proposal support, award management system activities, financial and narrative reporting, donor compliance, partner mapping, engagement, and monitoring. In a major humanitarian emergency, the post holder may need to work beyond normal duties and adjust working hours as required.

Child safeguarding

This is a Level 3 safeguarding role. The post holder will have frequent or intensive contact with children and/or young people because the work is linked to country programmes and may involve implementing the police vetting or checking process.

Scope of the role

The role reports to the Head of Awards and Partnerships and works with the Awards and Partnerships Coordinator, Programme Operations, Finance, I.C.C., and P.D.Q. Save the Children has operated in Kenya since the 1950s, delivering development and humanitarian programmes directly and through local partners. Current work covers child protection, child rights governance, education, health, HIV/AIDS, livelihoods, nutrition, and WASH.

The organisation unified its Kenya operations in 2012 and later integrated Merlin’s health and nutrition portfolio in 2014. It now has an operational presence in Nandi, Kajiado, Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kakuma Refugee Camp, Garissa, Mandera, Turkana, and Wajir, while also working with partners in other regions. Around 230 staff are employed in Kenya, including global team members hosted in the country, and the 2025 annual operating budget is about USD 20 million. The post has no direct reports.

Key responsibilities

• Work with project managers, supply chain, business development, and technical teams to help complete proposals and the awards risk tool on time, and ensure timely upload into the awards management system.
• Make sure all award documents at opportunity and proposal stage are processed, stored, and uploaded into the awards management system without delay, and that related workflows are completed promptly.
• Learn and apply Save the Children’s awards and partnership processes and help maintain strong data quality within the awards management system.
• Keep the system accurate, current, and able to provide a clear audit trail for all awards and partner records.
• Use awards management system reports to track awards and support planning for partner reporting milestones.
• Apply a basic understanding of donor compliance and help develop compliance checklists where needed.
• Prepare portfolio analysis updates for functional meetings, covering pipeline awards, active awards, amendments, high-risk awards, and closed awards.
• Support the production of donor-ready reports as directed by the Awards Coordinator.
• Use financial analysis skills to support award monitoring and identify issues that require further review.
• Ensure donor budget lines in the awards management system are set correctly for reporting needs, especially for directly received awards.
• Maintain the income and funding tracker and any other management information tools requiring award input.
• Support prompt award kick-off meetings.
• Lead the preparation of award progress review meeting templates and send meeting invitations to relevant colleagues in good time.
• Coordinate with PDQ, Programme Operations, and Finance to ensure close-out meetings happen on schedule.
• Record meeting minutes, file them in the awards management system, and track follow-up actions clearly.
• Take the lead on closing awards due for close-out and follow up with relevant functions and member offices on any close-out backlog.
• Create partner records in the awards management system and submit them for legal review.
• Keep partner records updated and archive inactive records when they are no longer needed.
• Initiate partner contracts and amendments and run the related workflows in the system.
• Support planning for partner monitoring visits and coordinate with other functions as required.
• Initiate partner payments in a timely manner.
• Coordinate monthly partner progress review calls.
• Support the timely close-out of partner agreements in the system when contracts end.
• Manage user access in the awards management system and keep user lists current.
• Ensure award responsibilities are handed over properly in the system when staff move on or leave roles.
• Provide orientation to staff who need to use the awards management system, both within and outside the awards team.
• Monitor data quality in the system, work with award managers to improve it, and provide monthly data quality reporting and analysis to the team.
• Take part in the awards management system champions’ network, share good practices, identify recurring issues, and report them to the team.
• Help build staff capacity on how to use the awards management system.
• Work collaboratively with team members to support team activities and shared outputs.
• Build working relationships with colleagues across functions and offices.
• Take part in learning and capacity-building activities to strengthen awards and partnerships management skills.
• Communicate clearly and efficiently with the awards and partnerships team to support smooth delivery.
• Engage with budget holders, programme staff, PDQ, Finance, and partners to gather input for key processes and updated budget figures.

Behaviours and ways of working

The role is expected to reflect Save the Children values through accountability, ambition, collaboration, creativity, and integrity. This includes acting responsibly, supporting others to deliver, setting challenging goals, building relationships across teams and partners, encouraging innovation, and working with honesty and transparency.

Qualifications and experience

A professional qualification in business, international development, finance, accounting, or a related area is required, along with a university degree in international development, business administration, finance, accounting, or a similar field.

The ideal candidate should have experience handling grants, contracts, and sub-agreements, including familiarity with major donor guidelines. Experience with donor-funded projects in international NGOs, especially those focused on human rights or children’s rights and using partnership approaches, is important.

Strong analytical ability, computer proficiency, and excellent documentation skills are needed. The role also calls for teamwork, relationship-building across offices and functions, cultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, strong interpersonal and communication skills, influencing and negotiation skills, experience working with implementing partners and partner awards or grants, and strong time management and planning ability.

Additional requirements

The duties listed are not exhaustive, and the post holder may be asked to carry out other reasonable tasks that match their skills and experience. The role must be performed in line with Save the Children’s equal opportunities and diversity policies, as well as Health and Safety procedures.

Organisation information

Save the Children works in more than 100 countries and has about 25,000 staff worldwide. The organisation supports children affected by crisis and those who need better healthcare, education, and protection, while also advocating for children’s rights and ensuring their voices are heard. It is working toward three 2030 breakthroughs: ending preventable child deaths before age five, ensuring all children receive a quality basic education, and eliminating violence against children.

Important notice

Save the Children is an equal opportunity employer and encourages female candidates to apply. The organisation does not charge job seekers any fee and does not use recruiting agents to source candidates. If anyone claims to offer recruitment or placement for payment, applicants should not respond and should report it to SCIFraud@savethechildren.org. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.