Grants Manager

Organization Overview

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. live with chronic financial insecurity, inadequate savings, and no meaningful wealth, with deeply harmful consequences for themselves, their children, families, communities, employers, and the economy.

Black, Latinx, and women-led households disproportionately experience financial insecurity due in large part to longstanding, systemic racism and gender discrimination. Addressing these issues is critical to Commonwealth's work of making wealth possible for all.

For over two decades, Commonwealth's fundamental purpose has remained to create a stronger and more prosperous society where everyone has financial opportunity. Our work has enabled over 2 million people to save nearly $8 billion on a path to greater financial security and wealth. We are now embarking on a new 4-year strategic plan that seeks greater impact and builds on our systems focus to expand workplace benefits, strengthen partnerships with financial institutions and fintech partners, and explore new frontiers like climate and generative AI.

Commonwealth strengthens the financial opportunity and security of financially vulnerable people by discovering ideas, piloting solutions, and driving innovations to scale. We understand broad change requires market players to act. That's why we take a unique approach to collaborate with consumers, the financial services industry, employers, policymakers, and mission-driven organizations. The solutions we build are grounded in real life, based on our deep understanding of people who are financially vulnerable and how businesses can best serve them.

For more than two decades, we have moved employers to prioritize worker financial security, the financial services industry to bring products to market that better serve financially vulnerable people, and policymakers to pass legislation and take action to enable savings and financial security. To learn more about the organization, please visit buildcommonwealth.org.

Diversity of background and perspective are strengths that we value. We are committed to creating a diverse, dedicated, skilled, and collaborative environment, and we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. Commonwealth recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected statuses.

Position Overview: 

The Grants Manager will report to the Senior Vice President and work closely with the CEO, Associate Director, Development & Marketing Strategy, and project directors to provide administrative support for grant tracking, reporting, writing, and proposal submission. This individual will work with senior staff, program staff, and consultants to ensure the data and documentation that is required for all of the organization’s grants is current, complete, and easily accessible. This person will need to maintain systems to gather, organize, and store all of the work generated by the whole organization so that it can be accessed efficiently to prepare and report on grants. This person will also be responsible for tracking grant reporting deadlines, deliverables and other requirements. 

Responsibilities: 

• Awarded grant tracking and reporting

• • Develop and maintain a specialized database and system for recording and tracking grant proposals, awards, and related statistical information; create and distribute reports, summaries, and analyses, as required.

• • Track grants throughout their lifecycle, ensuring timely communication with internal and external partners about deadlines

• • Gather input from project team members on grant progress for reporting purposes

• • Support technical and financial reporting requirements in partnership with senior leaders & external accounting partner

• Prospect research, grant proposal coordination and submission

• • Research, assess, and recommend grant opportunities from corporations and foundations

• • Work with senior leaders and other team members to coordinate and submit grant proposals, applications, reports, and other collateral materials

• • Assist with crafting and writing grant proposals and reports as needed

• • Develop and maintain a library of grant-writing collateral, including funder requirements, corporate documents, key profiles, curriculum vitae, abstracts, reference literature, and other pertinent resources 

• • Identify, research and track grant opportunities from a range of government, private sector and foundation funders. 

• Other general duties

• • Support monthly project budget expense management to fulfill restricted funding requirements and coordination for quarterly board finance reports 

• • Coordinate projects through task management, organization and disciplined follow up. 

• • Creatively problem-solve and collaborate with a small, results-oriented team to effectively keep projects on track toward both short-term milestones and long-term strategic objectives.

• • Contribute to a positive organizational culture through collaboration, appetite for learning, eagerness to support colleagues and engaged participation on project teams.

Skills & Experience  

• 2-4 years of experience in administrative work and project management; grant proposal preparation experience strongly preferred
• Experience writing and/or editing grant proposals and reports
• Exceptional organizational skills, with the ability to track and support multiple complex projects with both flexibility and close attention to detail
• Proactive self-starter able to independently move projects forward, prioritize tasks, and meet deadlines while also working collaboratively with team members
• Ability to handle sensitive/confidential information
• Superb verbal and written communication skills and ability to work well with staff with diverse skills and roles in the organization.
• Excellent document and spreadsheet skills including Microsoft Office Suite and Google Suite 
• Experience in financial security, financial inclusion, financial services sectors a strong plus
• Passionate about the mission of Commonwealth

Commonwealth offers a competitive salary and benefits, commensurate with experience and skills.

Our staff are the key to our success. The starting annual salary range for this full-time position is $64,000–$74,000, and Commonwealth also offers a generous compensation and benefits package that includes:

• Medical insurance (premium free for individual employees)
• Dental & vision insurance
• Short- and long-term disability insurance
• Life insurance
• Health Savings Account with employer contributions
• Retirement matching contributions (up to 2%)
• Generous paid vacation leave, sick leave, and 17 paid organizational holidays
• Summer Friday schedule every other week between June and Labor Day

Commonwealth offers a competitive salary and benefits, commensurate with experience and skills. Commonwealth provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to federal law requirements, Commonwealth complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.