Water Foundation - Grants and Contracts Manager

NRG Consulting Group

2d•$93,000 - $104,000•Remote

About The Position

The Water Foundation seeks a Grants and Contracts Manager (Manager) to ensure the effective operations, compliance, and administrative aspects of the Water Foundation’s and Water Action Fund’s outgoing grants and contracts. This role ensures that grants and contracts are processed efficiently, documented accurately, and are in compliance with legal requirements, internal policies, and best practices for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. The Manager serves as an administrative point of contact with grantees and consultants ensuring grant applications are complete, responding to inquiries, and providing support for the grants management system. The Manager will also be responsible for ensuring grants and contracts are tracked accurately in the foundation’s financial tracking systems. The Manager reports to the Chief Finance and Operations Officer. This position is exempt and duties include:

Requirements

Minimum 5 years’ experience in grants and contracts management.
Strong work ethic. Self-starter with initiative and good judgment.
Exceptional organizational skills and the ability to manage extensive documentation and written information.
Ability to effectively balance numerous deadlines, competing priorities and tasks, and deliver timely work product.
Capacity to adapt rapidly to changing priorities, objectives, and situations.
Flexibility in working style, marked by an ability to work closely with a wide range of personality types.
Excellent communication skills to ensure clear and close coordination with colleagues. Adjusts communication style as needed to interact with grantees, funders and other partners while maintaining a professional and courteous manner.
Ability to resolve conflicts directly and professionally. Maintains patience, grace, and humor under pressure.
Ability to perform tasks with a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail, as well as anticipate informational needs as situations and projects develop.
Exceptional writing skills. Ability to synthesize extensive information into clear, cohesive written products and to compose emails, memos and other written communications understanding target audience and necessary tone and style.
Outstanding editing skills. Critical eye for grammar, punctuation, and syntax.
Sufficient technological abilities to comply with confidentiality policies and procedures necessary for the protection of Water Foundation information

Nice To Haves

Experience tracking lobbying preferred
Experience with GivingData preferred but not required.

Responsibilities

Manage outgoing grants from proposal intake to award, amendments, reporting, and closeout.
Manage contracts from scope of work intake, amendments, invoice tracking, and closeout.
Work closely with the Program Team to forecast grantmaking and contract investments for all foundation programs.
Ensure that grant agreements and contracts are executed legally, appropriately, and efficiently.
In partnership with the finance and accounting team, provide administrative and financial oversight by ensuring invoices conform to grant or contract terms, and are reviewed, processed, and paid in a timely manner.
Work with Program Team on project accounting and reconciliation.
Assist with the creation of quarterly dockets. Research and analyze grant requests; assist with drafting write ups.
Draft grant agreements and contracts. Perform financial due diligence on potential grantee organizations. Develop templates and formats.
In coordination with program staff, professionally represent Water Foundation in calls, meetings and correspondence with applicants, grantees, and contractors. Maintain and optimize the grants management system ensuring accurate data entry, and timely workflow routing.
Track direct and indirect lobbying
Work with counsel to prepare lobbying reports
Flag potential legal issues for review by counsel
Work with grantees and program officers to assist in identifying direct and indirect lobbying
Support in the Water Foundation’s annual audit
Ensure efficient, transparent, and user-friendly grantmaking processes
Use grant management software effectively; configure fields, workflows, dashboards, and other reporting tools to meet needs of all stakeholders.
Maintain clear auditable documentation; ensure data integrity through consistent, high-quality data entry and oversight.
Identify procedural and substantive areas for improving efficiency, consistency, and effectiveness of grantmaking and contracts management.
Continuously improves systems in partnership with operations colleagues based on user feedback and best practices.
Train colleagues to use and understand the grants management system, planning tools, and policies and procedures
Engage with grantees, contractors, or members of the public to provide timely, consistent information. Coordinate with colleagues to ensure communication protocols are developed and implemented that reflect the professionalism and expertise of the Water Foundation.
Compose general correspondence, letters and memos relating to grants and contract administration. Proofread and edit documents with a critical eye for style, grammar, consistency, punctuation and sentence structure, making corrections or recommendations for changes as necessary.
Works well independently and as part of a team
Conceives of individual actions as part of a greater whole
Maintains a high standard of integrity and a professional, courteous manner of communication
Adheres to Water Foundation standards of quality, presentation, protocol, and confidentiality
Possesses self-awareness: accepts responsibility and recognizes accountability when necessary
Builds and consistently upholds operational systems that guarantee adherence to policies and procedures.
Takes initiative and sees a project through to completion; seeks new challenges
Demonstrates flexibility in working style and range of work performed
Demonstrates strong work ethic, attention to detail, and a consistent commitment to thoroughness and quality
Thrives professionally in an innovative, constantly expanding environment.