Program Assistant - College Futures Foundation

About the Foundation

Established as a private foundation in 2005, the College Futures Foundation is committed to helping qualified low-income students in California, who have financial need, attend and graduate from college. With an endowment of over $480 million, the Foundation will award grants of approximately $18 million in 2015. 

Because we believe improving college achievement is pivotal to California’s future, we serve as a strategic partner to school districts, post-secondary institutions, nonprofits, foundations, business groups, local governments and policy makers to increase opportunities for low-income students, by removing barriers to college degree attainment.

Our goal is to increase the rate of bachelor’s degree completion among California student populations who are low-income and have had historically low college success rates, especially young men. We focus on students from high school through college to Bachelor’s degree attainment who choose to matriculate within 18 months after high school graduation.

To achieve our goal, our grantmaking is organized around the following inter-related elements:

1. Successful Transitions: Institutions ensure student readiness and effective transitions along the degree completion pathway, with special focus on transitions from high school to college, and from community college to four-year colleges and universities.
2. Regional Partnerships: School districts, colleges, business, civic leaders, and other stakeholders create new alliances and organizational structures to align leaders, resources, and decision-making, focusing on bachelor’s degree completion as part of a broader regional agenda.
3. Improved Policy & Practice: Policymakers and practitioners support and drive better student outcomes by addressing gaps between policies and implementation at the local, regional, and state levels.

Our grantmaking, and evaluation and learning teams are organized to work collaboratively with one another. Through all of our work, we are committed to thoughtful, strategic grantmaking, informed by data-driven assessments of our impact and outcomes.

Because of California’s size and diversity, our strategies are tailored to fit real economic, cultural, and institutional differences across distinct regions. Many of the barriers to increased student success are ingrained in institutional culture and practice that are best identified and addressed by local leaders working within and across education segments through locally-led efforts.

Position Summary

The program assistant is a full-time staff member responsible for providing grants management and administrative support to the program department, to assigned officers, and will help facilitate the grantmaking and grants-monitoring processes. The program assistant position reports to the grants administrator. The position is non-exempt and its duties are as follows:

Key Duties and Responsibilities

Grants Management Support

• Assist program officers in researching and assessing potential grantmaking opportunities.
• Track grants from invitation through to closing and archiving in the grants database, and ensure records are complete. Generate reports from the database upon request.
• Ensure timely receipt of concept papers and proposal submissions to the officers, and monitor grantees with overdue reports. Communicate with grantees as needed to ensure timely receipt of reports.
• Review and synthesize the most relevant aspects of grant reports. Assist program officers in ensuring that reports include information requested in report guidelines and grant agreement and that previously articulated goals, objectives, and outcomes are met.
• Assist program officers, grants administrator, and associate program officer in reviewing financial reports to ensure grant funds are expended as intended.
• Monitor Foundation Administered Projects (FAP) budgets and consultant contracts, and ensure invoices are authorized, reviewed, processed, and paid in a timely manner.
• Process the Foundation’s matching and sector support grants in accordance with IRS regulations.
• Assist the grants administrator in optimizing the Foundation Connect grants management platform to ensure that the proposal intake, review and monitoring processes are undertaken as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Administrative Support

• Respond to messages directed to the Foundation’s grantee portal support email address.
• Create PowerPoint presentations for staff with enough lead time for review and modification by the presenter.
• Organize and schedule group internal or external meetings for assigned officers and the vice president of programs, working with staff to prepare and assemble relevant correspondence and materials for those meetings. Make certain all appropriate materials are circulated well in advance to appropriate parties in preparation for those meetings. Take minutes when appropriate for these meetings at the request of the grants administrator or vice president for programs.
• Assist with communications and logistical arrangements for targeted convenings or events for grantees or other partners.
• Provide clerical and administrative support to assigned officers, including assisting with travel arrangements, updating contacts and mailing lists in Salesforce, maintaining subscriptions to journals and other publications, and assisting with scheduling external group meetings.
• Perform general duties, undertake research projects, and participate in institution-building efforts and other special projects, as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required. Coursework in public policy, social welfare, education, or management is a plus.
• A minimum of two years of relevant work experience, preferably in educational, non-profit or foundation sectors, in a fast-paced service delivery or grant-making environment where he/she organized, analyzed and synthesized information.

Skills and Attributes

• Ability to perform tasks with a high degree of accuracy and attention to detail, as well as an ability to take initiative, and anticipate informational needs as situations and projects develop.
• Ability to compose and/or transcribe correspondence and documents. Possess strong writing and editing skills, and a critical eye for style, grammar, consistency, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Ability to handle multiple tasks, conflicting priorities and deadlines efficiently and accurately in a fast-paced working environment.
• Excellent clerical and computer skills, including proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and customer relationship management software, such as Salesforce.
• Ability to exercise tact, diplomacy, judgment and discretion, particularly related to sensitive or confidential information.
• An approachable and respectful manner and an ability to comfortably interact with people from many different backgrounds.
• A sense of humor, flexibility, and the ability to contribute to a collegial, respectful, and supportive office environment.

Compensation

This permanent, full-time position offers competitive compensation and excellent health, commuter and retirement benefits. Annual salary $47-$55,000.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and cover letter by February 15, 2016 to: [email protected]. No calls, please.