Associate, Grant Operations

About the Peterson Foundation

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is working to secure a healthy, growing economy by addressing America’s long-term fiscal challenges. The Foundation partners with leading policy experts, elected officials and the public to build support for solutions to put America on a sustainable fiscal path. As a non-partisan organization, the Foundation engages in grant-making, partnerships, and research to educate and involve Americans from a variety of perspectives.

Department Summary

The Grant Operations team oversees the lifecycle of all grantmaking processes for program officers and grantees, ensures compliance and due diligence of grants with IRS policies and Foundation requirements, provides reporting to Finance and senior leadership, and manages the grants database. It ensures the seamless administration and execution of grants for the Foundation.

Position Summary

Tackling complex fiscal issues and fostering meaningful action requires developing targeted, high impact grant investments. To be successful, the Foundation must leverage its resources to support education, research and analysis, and outreach to policymakers and the American public at large.

Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer, this position is a key contributor to the grantmaking function of the Foundation.

Responsibilities

The main responsibilities of the job include:

• Ensure consistent application of grant processes within Grant Operations, from pre-award stages through closure of the grant.
• Track and manage all incoming inquiries, forward aligned inquiries to the appropriate program lead, and decline unaligned inquiries.
• Prepare grant agreements, payment and reporting schedules, and other grant-related documentation and correspondence.
• Track grant deliverables and grant modification requests of active grants, such as extensions, budget revisions, Amendments, and carryovers.
• Track approvals and updates of sponsorships and memberships.
• Update and maintain records in grants database and produce reports on grant activity.
• Monitor and report on the status of active/approved grants for programmatic teams.
• Review financial reports, grant budgets, and budget modifications for accuracy and compliance with organizational policies.
• Collaborate with Legal on redlines, due diligence, and compliance with IRS policies for private foundations.
• Collaborate with Finance to maintain grant payment records, grantee payment information.
• Generate data and reports for the 990PF and annual audit.
• Serve as a resource for day-to-day Grant Operations queries involving policies, processes, technology, grantmaking data, and basic elements of regulatory compliance.
• Track Grant Operations team-wide projects and provide input and support to Grant Operations management on such projects.

Requirements

The ideal candidate will have:

• Bachelor’s degree and 3+ years of work experience, with at least 1 year at a grantmaking entity.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Solid judgment with outstanding attention to detail and follow-up.
• Ability to use qualitative and quantitative information to guide decision making in day-to-day responsibilities.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and the ability to work through solutions when there is no obvious path.
• Experience using and maintaining relational databases.
• Strong time management/prioritization skills; ability to work independently without manager oversight and can set and meet their own deadlines.
• Creative-thinker; highly motivated and resourceful team-player.
• Demonstrated ability to work proactively and collaboratively with external parties and colleagues at all levels, including the C-Suite.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Proficient with office technology including Zoom and Microsoft Office 365, particularly Excel, Word, SharePoint, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
• In order to build productive relationships across the organization and to ensure effective collaboration, this role requires an in-person presence in accordance with the organization’s hybrid schedule of working in the office three days per week (Monday/Tuesday/Thursday).

Preferred Skills and Abilities

• Advanced skills in Microsoft Excel for use in analyzing and presenting data, such as pivot tables, if-then formulas, lookups, and other analytical functions.
• Experience with Blackbaud Grantmaking or other grants management databases.
• Experience with Airtable or other project management tools.

Salary and Benefits

We anticipate that the starting base salary range for this position will be $75,000 to $87,500, plus eligibility for an annual discretionary bonus. A final decision on the successful candidate’s starting salary will be based on a number of factors, such as skills, experience, qualifications, education, and the location in which the job will be performed. In addition, we offer a generous benefits package designed to support our employees, including comprehensive health insurance, a substantial 401k match, paid time off, a hybrid work schedule and other flexible work policies.

To Apply

We are a dynamic, growing organization that embraces critical thinking, problem solving and innovative ideas. If you have relevant experience and qualifications, please send a cover letter and resume to careers@pgpf.org and reference “Associate, Grant Operations” in the subject line.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation is proud to be an equal opportunity employer and encourages candidates of all backgrounds to apply to our organization. We offer a welcoming community that respects each individual and fosters a diverse set of experiences, perspectives, skills and ideas. We are committed to building a workplace in which every team member can thrive personally and professionally and contribute to our mission.