JOB SUMMARY:
The Cost Proposal Director leads CARE’s cost and pricing strategy across a diverse institutional funding portfolio, including U.S. Government, World Bank, bilateral donors, multilateral institutions, and other priority public funders supporting humanitarian and development programming worldwide. Reporting to the AVP of Institutional Fundraising & Strategy, this role is responsible for shaping cost strategy for complex and high-value funding opportunities, ensuring compliance, competitiveness, and alignment between technical design, donor requirements, and CARE’s operational realities.
The Director serves as CARE’s senior internal expert on institutional cost proposal development and provides leadership across the full business development life cycle—from early positioning and capture through proposal submission, negotiation, and award transition. In the context of a leaner team structure, the Director directly oversees cost proposal delivery through consultants and surge support, while also building systems, tools, and guidance that strengthen organizational capacity and consistency across IFS, technical teams, and country offices.
The role requires strong judgment, adaptability, and deep expertise in donor regulations, pricing strategy, cost recovery, and proposal competitiveness across multiple donor types. The Director also contributes to IFS senior team coordination, resource planning, and process improvement efforts that strengthen CARE’s institutional fundraising performance overall.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
Cost Proposal Strategy, Oversight, and Quality Assurance
- Lead CARE’s cost proposal strategy across a broad institutional donor portfolio, including U.S. Government, multilateral, and bilateral funding opportunities.
- Set pricing and costing approaches for complex, high-value, and strategically important bids, ensuring alignment with technical design, donor requirements, market positioning, and CARE’s cost recovery goals.
- Serve as the lead cost strategist on priority bids and provide direct guidance on budgeting structure, pricing assumptions, risk analysis, cost realism, and compliance considerations.
- Oversee quality assurance for cost proposals to ensure they are responsive, accurate, compliant, competitive, and aligned with CARE and donor standards.
- Support bid/no-bid decision-making, proposal reviews, and final approval processes by advising on pricing strategy, financial risk, and overall bid competitiveness.
Consultant Oversight and Cost Proposal Delivery Management
- Manage a flexible cost proposal delivery model that relies on consultants and surge support.
- Identify, engage, onboard, supervise, and evaluate cost consultants to support multiple live opportunities and shifting pipeline demands.
- Allocate consultant resources across the pipeline based on strategic importance, donor requirements, submission timelines, and internal capacity.
- Provide direction, coaching, work planning, and quality control to consultants to ensure consistent standards, timely delivery, and strong integration with proposal teams.
- Build and maintain an effective consultant bench and associated tools, scopes of work, and ways of working that allow IFS to respond quickly and effectively to proposal needs.
Cross-Functional Advising, Compliance, and Organizational Capacity Strengthening
- Act as a senior advisor to IFS, technical teams, country offices, finance, grants, legal, and operations colleagues on donor budgeting rules, cost application, pricing strategy, and risk mitigation.
- Interpret and apply donor regulations and solicitation guidance across a range of institutional donors, ensuring proposals are both compliant and strategically positioned.
- Develop and institutionalize tools, templates, standard operating procedures, and practical guidance for cost proposal development across different donor types.
- Strengthen staff capacity by providing coaching, training, and practical support to headquarters and country office teams on budgeting, cost recovery, and donor compliance.
- Help improve organizational consistency in proposal budgeting and strengthen the connection between technical design, operational feasibility, and financial strategy.
Process Improvement, Business Management, and IFS Leadership Contribution
- Manage IFS' budget, as well as the strategic allocation of proposal development resources, subject to IFS AVP’s approval. Monitor relevant AOP activities and report progress. Provide support to the AVP by facilitating appropriate solutions to issues identified within the IFS team, ensuring that IFS operates efficiently and follows organizational protocols and policies.
- Analyze proposal trends, pricing patterns, donor feedback, negotiation outcomes, and award data to improve CARE’s cost competitiveness and decision-making.
- Contribute to IFS-wide planning, process improvement, knowledge management, and strategic resource allocation as part of the broader leadership structure of the team.
- Support the improvement of systems and workflows that enable stronger coordination across pipeline management, proposal development, consultant engagement, and institutional donor positioning.