[Hiring] Finance Capacity-Building Consultant @AGORA

Role Description

How can you make a difference?

• Inception and capacity assessment
• Review relevant UNICEF financial guidance, existing partnership tools, representative complex foundation budgets and results frameworks.
• Review internal UNICEF financial processes for Partnership financial tracking using existing UNICEF tools.
• Consult FFMBO colleagues and relevant internal stakeholders to identify priority competency gaps, recurring challenges and practical use cases.
• Develop a document comprehensively capturing holistic financial systems, tools, tracking and reporting mechanisms and find the linkages across these areas. Include a Finance stakeholder map aligned to the finance systems mapping.
• Establish a baseline assessment and agree a detailed workplan, learning objectives and success measures.
• Create a Competency Framework Crosswalk to map each required competency to:
  • The specific tool/template/module
  • Learning pathway content (academy-ready)
  • Common use cases
  • Finance guidance suite
• Develop a user-friendly suite of standardized “how to” guidance and decision tools for complex foundation budgets, budget narratives, scenario planning, expenditure monitoring, forecasting and results tracking. Including a section on budget negotiation tactics with partners.
• Include clear instructions, quality checks, worked examples and guidance on adapting the tools to different partnership arrangements.
• Develop a checklist for Quality Assurance and Review Protocol to ensure:
  • Completeness of partnership budgets and narratives
  • Alignment between budget lines and results framework
  • Plausibility checks for forecasts
  • Common errors and how to fix them
  • Suggested workflow for internal review/approvals.
• Develop a Learning & Tools Repository Index and incorporate the following:
  • A proposed folder structure and naming conventions and versioning approach
  • Location guidance (e.g., UNICEF SharePoint)
• Pilot and refine the guidance and tools with FFMBO colleagues and relevant technical counterparts.

Qualifications

• An advanced university degree in finance, accounting, business administration, economics, international development or another relevant field is required. A first-level university degree in a relevant field combined with two additional years of qualifying professional experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced degree.
• At least eight years of progressively responsible professional experience in financial management, budgeting, grant management, partnership finance or a closely related field.
• Demonstrated experience developing and managing complex, multi-year budgets for foundations, institutional donors or other grant-making partners.
• Strong experience linking financial planning and monitoring to results frameworks, indicators and donor reporting requirements.
• Demonstrated ability to design practical finance templates, guidance and quality-assurance tools for non-finance users.
• Proven experience conducting capacity assessments and designing and facilitating adult learning, including assessments of knowledge and practical application.
• Experience developing modular, facilitator-ready learning products for online, in-person or blended delivery.
• Experience working in a complex international organization and familiarity with UNICEF financial, programme and partnership processes are strong assets.

Requirements

• Excellent analytical, communication, facilitation, collaboration and project-management skills.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language—Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish—is an asset.

Benefits

• UNICEF offers a wide range of benefits to our staff, including paid parental leave, breastfeeding breaks and reasonable accommodation for persons with disabilities.