Job Description

ROLE PURPOSE: The Senior Manager – New Business Development (NBD) provides strategic leadership on resource mobilization and is accountable for shaping and driving the Lebanon Country Office’s funding strategy during a period of significant portfolio contraction and increasing competition.

This role focuses exclusively on pipeline development, donor engagement, capture planning, and proposal leadership

The postholder ensures that the Country Office (CO) maintains a healthy, diversified, competitive pipeline, strengthens its positioning with priority donors, and builds internal readiness for growth when the funding landscape improves. The role is strategic, outward-facing leadership function focused on growth, partnerships, and market intelligence.

SCOPE OF ROLE:

Reports to: Country Director

Staff reporting to this post: 1 (potentially 3)

Direct: Proposal Coordinator (aiming to get one more resource)

Indirect: n/a

Budget Responsibilities: n/a

Key areas of accountability

A Strategic leadership & funding strategy

• Lead the CO Funding Strategy, ensuring alignment with the Country Strategic Plan and SCI’s revenue model guidance
• Produce and maintain the annual donor landscape analysis, quarterly pipeline reviews, and regular market intelligence briefs for SMT.
• Identify priority donors, sectors, and modalities (grants, contracts, consortia) in line with CO ambitions.
• Ensure the CO maintains ≥60% donor-facing time across NBD staff, as required in the OM guardrails for NBD roles.
• Advise the Country Director and SMT on emerging donor trends, risks to the pipeline, and opportunities for diversification.

B. Donor engagement & positioning

• Lead external donor engagement at country level along with PDQ, ensuring consistent representation with bilateral, multilateral, UN, foundations, and private-sector donors.
• Develop and maintain up-to-date donor engagement plans and provide briefings for senior leadership.
• Organize and lead pre-award donor visits, ensuring PDQ/Technical, Operations, and Finance teams are appropriately involved.

• Build strong relationships with SCI Members and SCI’s global Programme Funding & Institutional Partnerships teams to ensure alignment and intelligence sharing.

  C. Capture Planning & Opportunity Development

• Lead capture planning for all priority opportunities—analysis, competitor mapping, partner scoping, and evidence needs.
• Coordinate early technical input from PDQ, field insights from Operations, budgeting from Finance, and risk assessments from Safeguarding/Risk & Compliance, per OM activity mapping requirements.

• Ensure decision-making processes for GNG “go/no-go” follow SCI global standards and CO’s risk appetite.

  D. Proposal Development Leadership

• Act as Proposal process Lead along with PDQ for high-value and strategic bids, ensuring coherence, competitiveness, and compliance.
• Oversee proposal development timelines, team roles, and quality assurance processes.
• Lead drafting of non-technical sections (management capacity, past performance, compliance, risk, MEL approach when required).

• Ensure proposal documents follow donor requirements and are developed and signed on by the relevant functions (Ops and Finance for Budget, Procurement Plans by PDQ, Narrative by PDQ…), not NBD (as per OM functional separation).

  E. Partnerships for NBD

• Coordinate partner selection for bids (INGOs, LNGOs, private sector), ensuring alignment with localization strategy and partnership principles.
• Lead on partner engagement for consortium building during pre-award stages.
• Ensure partnership requirements and due diligence are completed by the Partnerships function (not by NBD as per OM guidance)
• F. Internal leadership & ways of working
• Serve as an active member of SMT/Extended SMT for strategy, risk, and funding alignment.
• Strengthen internal NBD systems, tools, templates, and dashboards, ensuring monthly SMT updates on pipeline health and proposal success rate.
• Build NBD capacities across PDQ, Operations, MEAL, Finance, and Field Offices—particularly in proposal inputs, donor positioning, and market understanding.
• Lead After-Action Reviews for major proposals and ensure learning loops feed into future NBD efforts.

QUALIFICATIONS

Professional qualification relating to business, finance, accounting or international development.

EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

• Minimum of 7 years of relevant professional experience in New Business Development, resource mobilization, or institutional fundraising, preferably in complex or humanitarian environments.
• Demonstrated success in leading high-value, competitive proposals
• Strong experience in donor engagement, pipeline development, and market analysis.
• Excellent coordination, communication, and representation skills.
• Experience managing cross-functional proposal teams.
• Strong analytical and strategic thinking skills.
• Ability to work under pressure, meet deadlines, and adapt to shifting priorities.
• Strong writing skills (English required; Arabic desirable).
• Computer literate (i.e. Word, advanced Excel, Outlook, financial systems).
• Cultural awareness and ability to build relationships quickly with a wide variety of people
• Patient, flexible, able to improvise and communicate clearly and effectively under pressure

• Excellent planning, management and coordination skills, with the ability to organise a workload comprised of varying and changing tasks and responsibilities

  Desirable

• Experience working with UN, ECHO, USAID, FCDO, SDC, AECID, KOICA, and major foundations.
• Familiarity with SCI systems and processes (AMS, PRIME, Quality Framework).
• Experience in the MENA region, especially Lebanon.
• Knowledge of localization approaches and consortium building.
• Arabic language skills highly desirable
• Prior experience in Lebanon or the region highly desirable

Additional job responsibilities

The duties and responsibilities as set out above are not exhaustive and the role holder may be required to carry out additional duties within reasonableness of their level of skills and experience.

Fraud prevention

The role holder is expected to uphold high standards of integrity and transparency, and will have access to financial, operational, or programmatic resources that require strict compliance with SCI’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Policy. This includes responsibility for preventing, identifying, and reporting any suspected fraud, corruption, or misuse of resources in the course of their work.

Equal Opportunities

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with the SCI Equal Opportunities and Diversity policies and procedures.

Health and Safety

The role holder is required to carry out the duties in accordance with SCI Health and Safety policies and procedures.