Primary Responsibility: Serves as the key grants leader for foundation and government grants and contracts, responsible for coordination, writing, tracking to deadlines, and management of grants materials, including proposals, letters of inquiry, concept papers, and impact reporting. Functions as the key grants management staff member, to work in partnership with the Director of Development and other Conservancy staff to secure financial resources to achieve the Conservancy’s mission and ensure adequate resources. Provides essential project management leadership to identify, secure, and successfully cultivate a growing philanthropic portfolio of institutional partners of more than 30 organizations. Performs other duties as assigned.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities: Manages the daily planning, execution and tracking of foundation and government grants and contracts to successfully secure financial investments to support the Conservancy’s mission.
Writing
- Identifies, writes, tracks, and manages grant proposals, pre-proposals, letters of interest, and related efforts to secure funding for the Conservancy from institutional funders.
- Works collaboratively with staff to generate timely, accurate, and compelling materials for grant proposals aligned with grantor requirements and interest areas.
- Develops compelling impact reports and proposals to describe environmental, social, and policy impacts to existing and future institutional funding partners.
- Submits grant and report documentation following protocols and submission processes established by institutional funders.
Coordination
- Manages documentation and reporting systems to ensure compliance with grantor deadlines, invoicing, and requirements and facilitate donor stewardship including tracking matching funds.
- Provides project management of a grant management system to facilitate collaborative, high-quality, on-time proposal submission and impact reporting processes—both narrative and financial—in collaboration with program, technical, and financial staff.
- Provides regular and proactive communication and coordination among Conservancy staff to ensure proactive plans are created to meet grant and contract deliverables.
Research & Reporting
- Identifies new potential prospective institutional donors using research tools and desktop research.
- Creates monthly reports of relevant grant and contract opportunities, submitted grants, and reports due.
- Maintains the organization’s calendar of grant deadlines and creates achievable schedules to ensure on-time submissions of proposals and reports and relationship building.
- Works in partnership with the Director of Development, President & CEO, and Conservancy staff to establish, cultivate, and grow relationships with prospective foundations and government grantors.
- Prepares materials as needed to support grantor meetings and communications.
KNOWLEDGE: A minimum of five years’ experience with the “full-cycle” grant process and a bachelor’s degree in environmental policy or natural resource management is required. Candidates should have federal and state grant and/or contract management expertise including successful submission of grants into Grants.gov as this is a large part of the Conservancy’s grant portfolio. The successful candidate will demonstrate excellent attention to detail and the ability to manage and track workflows integrating programmatic, technical, and financial colleagues who serve as essential partners in delivering high-quality reports and proposals. Ideal candidates will have a track record in translating technical concepts into compelling cases of support and demonstrate a high rate of funding success. Conservancy is a fast-paced environment where self-initiative, epic collaboration, and teamwork are both valued and expected. Strong computer skills, in particular, working knowledge of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and fundraising management programs is required.