Programme Officer – Start Fund

£29,900 – £36,520 pa
Permanent / Full-time
Farringdon, London/Home-based

Closing Date: 21 April 2024
Ref 6684

The Start Fund Programme Officer will work as part of a team to implement the global Start Fund, which is the Start Network’s flagship programme disbursing around £20m in awards to network member organisations each year. The global Start Fund provides rapid financing in response to underfunded small to medium scale crises, spikes in chronic humanitarian crises, and in anticipation of impending crises, filling a critical gap in humanitarian financing.

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 Start Network is made up of more than 50 aid agencies across five continents, ranging from large international organisations to national NGOs. Our aim is to deliver more effective emergency aid, harnessing the power and knowledge of the network to make faster and better decisions to help people affected by crises. We advocate for radical change in the global aid system so that the world can deal better with the humanitarian challenges of today, and of the future. Our work focuses on three areas to change the system:

• Localisation – shifting power to those closest to the front line to enable more effective and appropriate responses.
• New forms of financing – providing fast, early, and dependable funding, to help communities to become more resilient to crises.
• Collective innovation – testing new ways of working and sharing learning and expertise to build a more effective humanitarian system.

The Start Network is at a critical point in its journey. We have grown and diversified our membership over the past 10 years. We are now set to evolve into a decentralised “network of networks” by 2025. We are currently working with five national and regional networks (hubs) in Pakistan, DRC, Guatemala, India and the Pacific. They are developing locally led ways of anticipating and responding to humanitarian crises. We aim to support the emergence and development of further Hubs in the coming years. Our ultimate ambition is to devolve leadership, membership, programming and decision making to the hubs, while the UK team transitions to provide services of support.

The team of Start Fund Programme Officers work with colleagues across both Save the Children UK (SCUK) and the Start Network.

About the Role
Key for the post-holder is engagement with Start Network member organisations, and effective coordination with the wider Start team, to ensure that the Start Fund continues to enable early, timely and effective humanitarian action.

You will also play a role in identifying and implementing technological solutions to improve Start Fund operational efficiency, and collaborating with the Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) team to ensure that learning contributes to strengthened programming, and a continually improving funding mechanism (the Start Funds). You will also support other areas of fund management, currently including crisis anticipation and support to national Start Funds (e.g., Start Fund Bangladesh and Start Fund Nepal).

The role includes working with a wide range of stakeholders within SCUK and other agencies within the Start Network and Start Platform.

You will also be responsible for project and team administration, such as processing of disbursements and record keeping of all project documents. You will support reporting, project compliance and escalate complaints and incidents. Furthermore, you will:

• Be responsible for Grant management throughout the Start Fund alert cycle.
• Provide support to the Start Fund Committee representatives and humanitarian personnel world-wide, in the decision-making processes.
• Implement the Start Fund, while identifying ways on which the programme could be improved from an operational perspective.
• Support MEAL colleagues to capture data accurately, analyse learning and emerging patterns to enable effective monitoring, evaluation and learning.
• Contribute to the mainstreaming of anticipation and early action in the Start Funds through information sharing and capacity strengthening initiatives.
• Support members, particularly local and national NGOs in accessing Start Fund through member engagement activities and critical review and support with Start Fund process adaptations.

About You
To be successful you will have experience working within the humanitarian sector and proven experience of project cycle management and financial management. As well as a flexible ‘can do’ attitude, you should have the ability to manage an unpredictable workload and use your initiative. Strong data management and analysis skills are essential, as is:

• Experience in organising events and engaging varied stakeholders in complex issues.
• Proven skills in developing log frames, proposals and budgets, and in reporting.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills with stakeholders at different levels.
• Competency in a second language, preferably Spanish, French or Arabic.
• Demonstrable experience of collaboration, including forging and maintain effective new relationships and partnerships, often across organizational boundaries.

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.

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.