Grants Assistant – Leaders In Teaching Liberia Program

The Grants Assistant will work closely with the Grants Manager, Local Partners Capacity Strengthening Specialist, technical team, and the finance team on the Leader in Teaching (LIT) Liberia program, ensuring efficient, effective and transparent management and compliance. The Grants Assistant will assist the Grants Manager in reviewing partners financial reports and providing feedback to partners, enhancing partners capacity through coaching and mentoring of partners finance staff, conducting monitoring visits, reviewing partners financial folders and other documents as well as providing feedback to partners on findings, development and rollout of the Grants Under Contract work plan, partner’s selection including due diligence, grantees capacity enhancement, grants administration and ensuring proper documentation filing. The Grants Assistant will report to the Grants Manager. This position is based in Monrovia with frequent travels to project locations in Counties.

Essential functions include, but are not limited to:

• Support the grants manager in ensuring the sub-award program complies with all EDC and the Mastercard Foundation rules, regulations and policies and in accordance with the Leaders in Teaching (LIT) Grants Manual;
• Support the Grants Team in conducting a detailed review of partners financial reports and supporting documentation and provide feedback to partner to address; and maintain a proper and complete grants filing system including coordinating joint programmatic and financial reports reviews, ensuring that costs incurred are in line with the progress and clear explanations are provided for budget variances as per the standards set by EDC financial reporting requirements.
• Ensure timely submission of partners financial reports to EDC finance team for final review and payment;
• Assist the Grants Manager in following up on timely review/sign off of partners financial report by relevant EDC staff members for timely cash disbursement;
• Enforce and monitor complete and up-to-date records for partners ensuring easy access to required supporting documentation for authorized staff in a secure and centralized location;
• Coordinate and participate in regular partners site visits to verify adherence to contract terms and gauge internal control systems to obtain confidence in the reports submitted to EDC
• Assist the grants manager in the develop of the grants and sub-award program work plan;

• Assist the Grants Manager in directing the competitive partners selection process, which includes RFA development and grant proposals evaluation;
• Conduct risk assessments and on-site due diligence during the partners selection process
• Assist with timely closeout or extension of partners agreements in compliance with EDC Grants Manual and procedures;
• Contribute to preparing responses to audit requests and specific reporting requirements for partners;
• Review and organize essential partners documentation (e.g., pre-award assessments, selection, reports, site visits reports, monitoring plans, financial report review checklists, important email communications, closeout letters/information, and maintain partners trackers on SharePoint;
• Support grants manager in the review of partners scope of work and budgets for any modification or extension of the grant agreement, while maintaining focus on the ceiling budget;
• Along with the grants manager, participate in the revision of the annual work plan with other EDC staff and coordinate with the partners to revise the work plan and budget as necessary;
• Support the grants manager, and local partner capacity strength specialist to enhance the capacity of partners on grants compliance and financial management in line with EDC and LIT requirements and expectations
• Implement subaward management tools, templates, methods; and processes developed by EDC HQ Grants/Finance/Contracts Department;
• Assist in conducting partners performance appraisals and eventual co-creation of scope of work, budgets based on appraisal results.
• Report to Grant Manager, and work closely with the Local Partners Capacity Strengthening Specialist, technical team, and Finance team.