Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager – Climate Finance (Based Remotely, Mercy Corps office locations - Africa, Europe, Middle East & Asia)

Location: Remote  (Europe, Africa, Middle East or Asia where Mercy Corps has operations) 

Position Status: Full time

Salary Level: HQ6, Role will be benchmarked on local scale

Reports to: Vice President, Institutional Donor Engagement

Travel: approximately 10%

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps is powered by the belief that a better world is possible. To do this, we know our teams do their best work when they are diverse and every team member feels that they belong. We welcome diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and skills so that we can be stronger and have long term impact.

Institutional Donor Engagement

The Institutional Donor Engagement department leads Mercy Corps’ work in identifying, building relationships with and developing and submitting fundraising proposals to potential institutional donors from governments and multilateral donors around the world. It comprises the Business Development team, which leads on large and complex proposals, and the Strategic Institutional Partnerships team, which leads on research and relationship management. 

Position Summary

This position leads Mercy Corps’ efforts to secure grants and investments in Mercy Corps’ climate-focused work, primarily from the Green Climate Fund. Mercy Corps expects to become GCF accredited in late 2026, and now seeks to expand its funding pipeline and build internal capacity to successfully acquire GCF and other climate-focused investments. 

This is very much an external-facing position and Mercy Corps is looking for a candidate who can both bring deep knowledge of individuals, policies and practices within GCF, and who can represent Mercy Corps externally, as well as support others in doing so. The successful candidate will have excellent interpersonal skills, excel at networking and building long-term relationships and will be proactive and creative in their work. They will work in partnerships with a range of teams across the agency, in particular our Climate Solutions team to ensure technical quality of proposal pipelines, develop and operationalize an influence strategy, and generally working together to ensure adequate institutional capacity to lead GCF programs is strengthened.   

Essential Job Responsibilities 

STRATEGY 

• Develop a strategic vision for engagement with climate finance institutions, with an initial emphasis on the GCF.  
• Establish internal structures, functions and protocols for communication and engagement to ensure strengthen our representation and competitiveness, while ensuring clarity and transparency internally. 
• Conduct ongoing research on trends in climate financing, and the priorities for financing institutions. 

DONOR RELATIONS AND REPRESENTATION 

• Develop and manage relationships with relevant GCF and other climate finance representatives and serve as the primary donor liaison.
• Represent Mercy Corps and/or facilitate participation of other Mercy Corps team members in key climate finance events and meetings.
• Support country teams and regional teams in establishing and building relationships with GCF regional and program teams, and with Nationally Designated Authorities and Direct Access Entities in our priority countries.
• Engage with peer organizations and other potential partners and identify key areas of potential cooperation.
• In coordination with relevant Headquarters functions, support country teams in problem solving related engagement with donors both in country and in Europe. 

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT 

• Develop a priority list of countries and programs which are candidates to secure GCF and other climate finance, and in partnership with relevant programs and technical teams, develop joint action plans for pipeline development.
• Develop guidelines and tools which support business development processes, finance and compliance colleagues to develop successful proposals to GCF and other climate finance.
• Provide GCF related advice to, and whe