COST PROPOSAL DIRECTOR
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.
Responsibilities
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.
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.
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.
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.
Required Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in finance, accounting, business administration, international development, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
Minimum 10-12 years of progressively responsible experience in cost proposal development, pricing, financial management, and/or institutional fundraising in the international development or humanitarian sector.
Significant experience developing cost proposals for multiple institutional donors, including U.S. Government and other bilateral and multilateral funders.
Demonstrated success leading cost strategy for complex, high-value proposals from pre-positioning through submission and, where relevant, negotiation.
Strong knowledge of donor regulations, cost principles, budgeting structures, and compliance requirements across institutional funding mechanisms.
Experience managing consultants and external surge support to deliver high-quality proposal products in deadline-driven environments.
Excellent financial analysis, budgeting, pricing, and scenario modeling skills.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence senior stakeholders and explain complex financial issues clearly to non-finance audiences.
Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Excel and strong comfort working across proposal systems, templates, and knowledge resources.
Preferred Qualifications
Master’s degree in business administration, finance, public policy, international development, or a related field.
Experience in an international NGO and familiarity with country office-headquarters proposal collaboration models.
Experience with donors such as the World Bank, Green Climate Fund, and other non-USG institutional funders.
Familiarity with CARE systems, programming approaches, and cross-functional proposal development processes.
Experience improving organizational policy, practice, or tools related to cost recovery, budgeting, and proposal competitiveness.