The Role
Manage donor audit readiness and legacy audits, maintain grants documentation (SharePoint), build donor compliance knowledge hub, train staff, monitor cashflow and invoices, develop partner documentation guidelines, and lead a small grants compliance team.
Summary Generated by Built In
1. Donor Audits
Maintaining the Audit Compliance Framework
- Maintain an Audit Compliance Framework tracking the ongoing project audits, timelines, challenges faced, lessons learnt, etc.
- Report recurring issues to senior management and share the challenges and lessons learnt document with the grants team and country teams.
Undertaking pre-audits
- Identify prospective audits based on past trends and prepare a pre-audit plan.
- Conduct pre-audits and identify the gaps and corrective actions required.
- Implement the corrective actions, ensuring we are audit-ready for the future.
- Liaison with IS Team to implement audit readiness using AI.
Lead & execute the Legacy Audits:
- Liaison with auditors and ensure timely sharing of the required details/transaction listing.
- Collecting and submitting the documents required by the Auditor.
- Monitor and provide response/feedback on Auditor’s comments/queries.
- Co-ordinate meetings with various stakeholders to address the Auditor’s queries.
- repare a report that comprises the lessons learned and recommendations on the study/audit process and results.
SPOC for IA queries and other tasks: Be the point of contact for all grants related queries and miscellaneous tasks like risk assessment, combined assurance mapping, website development, pillar assessments, policy & procedure updates etc.
2. Project Documentation Oversight
Maintain Grants SharePoint
- Ensure compliance with the Grants Documentation & Records Management Guidelines (SharePoint).
- Review, Monitor and guide the SharePoint Champions for the review of project folders.
- Update Senior Management regularly on the status of compliance with the SharePoint guidelines.
Review and monitoring of Country SharePoint
- Regularly monitor the completeness of all country SharePoint folders ensuring all updates to country SharePoint folders.
- Liaison with IT Teams on the possibilities of using AI/automated tools to check completeness of country SharePoint folders.
Create Guidelines for Partner supporting documents
- Establish an internal policy or set of guidelines outlining the documents required from partners/sub-recipients. Define a set of mandatory requirements in coordination with the PMU and share them with partners at the time of signing the LOA. These guidelines will evolve and shall be updated periodically on need basis.
3. Training and Capacity Building
Create a knowledge Hub for donor rules
- Interpret donor regulations and requirements and create a centralized Knowledge Hub for Donor rules, requirements, lessons learnt from audit findings, applicable compliances etc.
- Compile the lessons learnt for ended grants/projects, in discussion with the concerned FO/Grants Manager, and prepare guidance notes to be shared across departments for future reference.
- Train Budgeting, PMU, Procurement & Grants Team on the above Example of donor agreements needing regular review and interpretation Mastercard, IUCN, AFDB, GIZ, EU, ICCI, FAO etc.
Review the new grants activated in system every month and prepare a compliance summary deck for new donors, outlining key donor compliance requirements, critical conditions, and mandatory rules applicable to the project.
Work in partnership with PMU to continuously review, develop and implement partner financial monitoring tools and mechanisms to mitigate the risks of partner non-compliance and ineligible expenditures.
- Conduct Team Trainings – Onboarding (Induction) & recurring.
- Develop organization-wide compliance training programs.
- Liaison with HR and conduct onboarding for new staff on behalf of FSU Team.
- Prepare a training guide specifically aimed at future onboarding of grant accountants. This should cover all areas the FSU grants team works on.
- Train PMU and Project Team on donor financial rules.
4. Cash Flow monitoring and Invoice Management
- Monitor the end-to-end invoicing cycle across grants to ensure timely invoice submission, systematic tracking of outstanding invoices, and proactive follow-up on pending payments.
- Develop a tracking mechanism to maintain oversight of invoice status - monitor outstanding invoices, identify delays or bottlenecks, coordinate with Finance and project teams to resolve issues, and support cash flow planning through timely reporting and escalation of overdue receivables.
5. Team Leadership
- Recruit and train staff on the requirements of the role.
- Supervise staff directly reporting to you by managing their performance, including setting goals and objectives, coaching, and delivering results.
- Perform performance evaluation for the team, both mid-year and annually.
Other Duties
Perform any other tasks assigned by the Manager, Grants Compliance Reporting or the Director Corporate Services or the Chief Finance & Operations Officer related to institutional Grants Compliance.
Skills Required
- Experience managing donor audits and audit compliance frameworks
- Experience conducting pre-audits, gap analysis, and implementing corrective actions
- Experience maintaining and governing SharePoint-based document repositories
- Knowledge of donor regulations and grant compliance (e.g., EU, GIZ, FAO, Mastercard, AFDB)
- Experience designing and delivering training and capacity-building programs
- Experience in invoice management, cash flow monitoring and receivables tracking
- Team leadership experience including recruitment, performance management and coaching
- Ability to liaise with IT/IS teams and implement AI/automated tools for audit readiness or document checks
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The Company
What We Do
CIFOR-ICRAF is a collaborative research organization and a global leader in using trees, forests, and agroforestry to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and inequality, by enhancing landscape resilience.
