The organization

At Emerson Collective, (EC), we believe that self-reliance is one of humanity’s highest ideals. A person who is self-reliant is able to chart his or her own destiny in order to live to his or her fullest potential – leading to both individual advancement and a stronger society for us all. To support this belief, EC is determined to do entrepreneurial work in traditionally non-entrepreneurial contexts by partnering with and supporting innovative entrepreneurs who are driving game-changing social reform efforts, particularly in the areas of education, immigration, social justice, and the environment.

 The role

At EC, we care deeply about supporting innovative new models driving social change. This work involves investing in exciting and innovative ventures across our range of focus areas. Our grantmaking philosophy emphasizes enabling impact and shared learning through partnership. We endeavor to provide as much support as is useful, while avoiding burdensome reporting requirements. EC partners with organizations anonymously, which requires a high level of care in managing relationships and data. Our grantmaking team works closely with our partners, one another, and many individuals and teams throughout the Emerson Collective organization.

We are seeking a grants administrator to manage financial processes and data across our multi-issue grantmaking portfolio. This person will support EC’s team by:

-       Supporting Anne Marie Burgoyne, who leads our grantmaking, in managing our external partnerships with our donor advised fund managers, our accounting team, our Salesforce consultant, and our internal investment committee.

-       Supporting all members of the grantmaking team by maintaining templates used for all aspects of the grantmaking process.

-       Coordinating the grantmaking team’s semimonthly docket meeting with our internal investment team.

-       Facilitating and managing grant dispersal through several donor-advised funds, as well as dispersal of gifts that are beyond our grantmaking work.  This includes responding to grantees’ inquiries about grant and payment status.

-       Assuring that members of the grantmaking team input complete and properly coded grant data and files to Salesforce, including those documents created during the diligence process and the life of the grant, as well as those created internally and those provided by grantees.

-       Creating and editing internal materials that engage the broader Emerson Collective community in the work of our grantees.

-       Managing and inputting data across the portfolio to Salesforce to populate internal dashboards, data visualizations and reports on cross-portfolio metrics and progress.

-       Managing the workflow of our grants program, including grant documentation, reporting and check-ins processes. 

-       Managing reimbursements for capacity building offering expenses.

-       Over time, working to enhance and improve our grants management processes to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of our team and the ease and comfort of our grantees.

-       Creating lists to be used to invite grantees to special grant rounds, events, convenings and opportunities to take advantage of various capacity building offerings.

-       Participating with our team in all aspects in order to build greater knowledge of the work that our partners do, as well as to support our grantees as best we can.

 Qualifications

-       You are passionate about creating positive impact in the world, and are curious about a variety of issues and approaches to doing so.

-       You have 5 or more years of work experience, preferably including experience in the fields of accounting or finance and/or grants administration.

-       You are passionate about providing high quality administrative support to a professional team.

-       You have a Bachelor’s degree or the equivalent work experience.

-       You have exceptional organizational and detail management skills.

-       You have strong written and oral communication skills, as well as strong interpersonal skills.

-       You are comfortable in a role that requires a high level of discretion, tact, confidentiality and good judgment.

-       You are able to multi-task, prioritize work and are comfortable in a workplace with many things going on at one time. 

-       You are positive, responsive, proactive, dependable and flexible; you are a problem-solver.

-       You can work independently, but are also comfortable working as part of a team with the give-and-take that that requires.

-       You are proficient in Salesforce, or equivalent data management system, and Excel.  You are comfortable working with numbers and in databases.

 Location

This position will be based in Palo Alto.

Compensation

EC offers competitive benefits and salary for this role.

To apply

Send your resume and a short (<250 words) note about your interest in the role to [email protected]. Please use “EC Grants Administrator Application” as your subject line. Although all applications will be considered, we are unable to respond to all inquiries.