About the Role
The Sub-Grants and Finance Officer is responsible for conducting pre-award assessments, post-award management, and close-outs for East Africa Land Border Programme sub-awards. Working with the Finance and Compliance Director, the anticipated grants management work will include:
- Consortium and international partners
- Local partners through the Partnership Grant fund
The officer will also support efforts to build the capacity of downstream partners to meet finance and compliance requirements of various donors, so that these partners develop professional personnel and systems. The Sub-Grants and Finance Officer is responsible for reviewing financial files/records, both soft and physical, to ensure that partner files are up to date and proactively flag any issues or possible delays.
Key Responsibilities
Day-to-Day Management and Implementation of the Program Grants Work Plan
Pre-Award
- Participate in the Partner Grant Fund solicitation and selection of sub-recipients and subcontracts, working closely with the programme technical team to identify potential areas of support, eligibility, and evaluation criteria.
- Work with selected grantees to ensure budgets are in line with program activities and that costs are reasonable, allowable, and allocable.
- Conduct due diligence assessments on all grants including feasibility, evaluate environmental requirements, and perform pre-award assessments of financial responsibility to ensure sub-recipients have the capacity to comply with the terms of the subcontract agreement, are free of conflicts of interest, and are eligible organizations.
- Develop financial monitoring plans for partners.
Post-Award
- Conduct financial monitoring office visits to ensure that the use of funds and the activities performed comply with the terms and conditions of the subcontracts.
- Review sub-recipient/grant reports for accuracy and completeness and regularly monitor their budgets vis-a-vis financial reports.
- Review sub-recipient/grant funds requests for accuracy and completeness, processing payments/reimbursements as appropriate.
- Maintain complete and accurate files for all sub-recipients/grants as per the Field Finance Manual.
- Review and post the financial reports in the system, ensuring they are reconciled to sub-recipient financial reports regularly.
- Review the status of subcontracts reports, ensuring milestones in the system are up to date.
Close-Out
- Review final financial reports for accuracy and completeness.
- Conduct final funds reconciliation and liquidation of sub-contracts.
- Participate in final close-out reviews.
- Review consortium partners and downstream files to ensure that subcontract records are complete.
- Follow up on asset disposition, ensuring that all assets purchased by the partners with program funds are disposed of in accordance with donor rules.
- Prepare final close-out checklists and notifications to consortium and downstream partners.
Finance Support
- Work with the Finance Officer to support the monthly reconciliation of all balance sheet accounts, perform related reclassifications, and submit monthly reports to the Finance and Compliance Director.
- Support daily monitoring of program bank accounts for the status of running balances, received funds, and rejected payments, and record those timely in the accounting system.
- Support monthly amortization of all prepaid expenses and submit them to the Finance and Compliance Director for review and posting.
- Support the preparation of monthly Cash Flow statements.
- Process withholding VAT and withholding tax as per KRA regulations.
- Act as the bank contact person, maintaining the bank file, ensuring that all bank information is properly filed and updated.
- Support the processing of payments, including entering payments and journals into the system.
- Support timely processing of all bank payments and fund transfers as per the payment schedule.
- Counter-check payment documents to ensure that supporting documentation corresponds to the payment request, calculations are correct, and payment requests are duly signed as per the Authority Assignment Matrix (AAM) level.
Other Duties
- Ensure program activities comply with Mercy Corps' internal policies and procedures, donor rules and regulations, and national laws in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Somalia.
- Support the Finance Officer with other grants or finance sector activities.
- Coordinate expenditure verification and project audits, following up on management decisions regarding audit findings to ensure they are documented and communicated to sub-recipients.
Safeguarding Responsibilities
- Actively learn safeguarding and integrate it into daily work, including safeguarding risks and mitigations related to the program.
- Practice the values of Mercy Corps, respecting the dignity and well-being of participants and fellow team members.
- Encourage openness and communication within the team; encourage team members to submit reports of concerns using reporting mechanisms (e.g., Integrity Hotline).
