United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Start Fund Officer

Fixed-term contract for 24 months (starting November 2015)

Showcasing your impressive organisational skills, as our Start Fund Officer you’ll be a core part of the central team for the Start Network – a consortium of 24 leading NGOs who are working together to provide humanitarian assistance across the world. Connecting people with the agencies who are best placed to help them, this is a new way of thinking for the charity sector.

Collectively the 24 Start Network agencies operate the Start Fund, designed to reach small to medium sized ‘under the radar’ crises. The Start Fund means that international and local facilities will be better able to step up and help when they are most needed, providing assistance within just 72 hours.

Currently hosted by Save the Children, the Start Network is planning to become a fully independent entity during 2016. It has a vision that the humanitarian sector can change to become more diverse, decentralised and collaborative, and as such is currently working on three key areas: Start Fund (for financing emergency responses), Start Engage (for strengthening civil society capacity) and Start Labs (for experimentation, rapid prototyping and learning). Comprising nearly 7,000 partner agencies and with a staff of a quarter of a million working in 200 countries and territories, the Network’s reach is huge.

In this exciting and dynamic role, you will work as part of the central team which is responsible for and coordinating, facilitating and brokering for the Network members. It will be up to you to ensure the Start Fund grant processes and information management systems are being run as efficiently as possible, so that aid reaches crisis-affected populations as quickly as possible. Acting as the first port of call for field teams across the globe, you will process crisis alerts, answer queries and maintain data and information. Your workload will vary according to the crisis alerts, so you’ll need to be a flexible team-player. You will also:

• Work closely with the M&E team (currently hosted by Action Against Hunger UK) in order to efficiently process fund alerts and produce project proposals


• Contribute to information sharing channels throughout the network on potential and existing crises


• Assist with the design and development of Start Fund operational processes, and support the Senior Start Fund Officer. Your attention to detail will allow an efficient and transparent decision-making process to take place


• Utilise your excellent influencing and negotiation skills when communicating with internal and external stakeholders


• Assist in the setting-up of committee meetings, including securing attendance of senior humanitarian staff and, most critically to the transparency of the Start Fund decision-making, taking minutes during meetings.

Boasting a good understanding of the humanitarian programming environment (gained through hands-on experience), grant management and the day-to-day challenges faced by field teams who are responding to crises, you will thrive on a challenge and be driven by the work we’re doing. With good problem-solving prowess, you will have fantastic written and verbal communication skills and be a solid team player – though you will also be confident managing your own workload. You will also have:

• Experience or an interest in proper data and process management, with an emphasis on dealing with high volumes of information


• Institutional donor and/or grant management experience, plus experience of writing and/or reviewing project proposals


• Good numerical and analytical skills


• Another language such as French, Spanish or Arabic is desirable, but not essential.

Closing Date: 1st November 2015