Heartland Fund Senior Grants Associate

About this role

Please read this before submitting your application:

• You will receive initial communication from Clover Search Works, the search firm supporting Heartland Fund in this search. Clover is a nonprofit search firm that partners with nonprofit organizations across the country. Clover team members will conduct the initial review and screening of applications, the Heartland Fund team will conduct formal interviews. We anticipate screening calls to begin in October and formal interviews to take place in November.

• Throughout the search, if you have questions please reach out to Sumi Bhat-Kincaid at sumi [at] .

Senior Grants Associate Job Announcement
Heartland Fund is seeking a Senior Grants Associate. For a thoughtful, mission-driven professional, this position is an exciting opportunity to support new systems and processes in a rapidly growing multi-entity grantmaking organization and ever changing compliance environment.
Heartland Fund’s Senior Grants Associate supports the organization’s day-to-day grants management processes, with a focus on facilitating the full grants lifecycle, maintaining accurate records and documentation, supporting grants management system use, and helping ensure compliance across grantmaking activities. This role helps ensure grantmaking processes run smoothly, staff and grantees receive timely and effective support, and the grants management process reflects our organizational values. The successful candidate will be detail-oriented, collaborative, and able to manage multiple responsibilities while supporting both day-to-day execution and ongoing process improvement.
You will have an opportunity to help us enable equitable investment in rural communities, democracy, and climate solutions. This is a unique and dynamic position with opportunities for growth and impact as the Heartland Fund prepares to launch as an independent entity in 2027.
This is a remote position with a starting salary range of $75,650 - $89,000. The position includes a generous benefits package.
About the Organization
As a funder collaborative, the Heartland Fund scales investment, supports local leaders, and builds long-term partnerships with rural and Native organizations to create thriving places where rural working people can determine our own futures, strengthening the entire nation. Heartland's grantmaking and programmatic investments support rural people working to transform their lives and communities toward shared prosperity, a healthy climate, and stronger democracy. We invest in building local capacity for issue advocacy, community organizing, economic development and local jobs, climate solutions, civic engagement, and sustainable urban-rural coalitions. We prioritize racial justice in all aspects of our work. In addition to grantmaking, Heartland also supports rural leaders and organizations through convening, research, and communications and storytelling.
Heartland Fund has three programs:

• Rural Democracy expands nonpartisan civic participation and counters policies that harm our democratic institutions in places where rural action can define policy and democratic outcomes.

• Resource Rural (RR) mobilizes resources enabling rural communities to unlock public and private investment to create positive economic change in their communities.

• Rural Climate Partnership (RCP) supports hometowns across America to accelerate climate solutions and build healthy local economies.

Both RR and RCP programs help rural communities access public funding – through place-based technical assistance, local organizing, and a large-scale communications and narrative effort – to make a tangible difference in rural people’s lives and to advance climate mitigation and resilience.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities
The Senior Grants Associate works closely with program staff, grantees, and internal partners to support effective, compliant, and efficient grants management. This role is responsible for facilitating the full grants management lifecycle, maintaining accurate documentation and system records, supporting staff and grantees in the grants management system, and helping strengthen grantmaking processes and practices across the organization. The Senior Grants Associate reports to the Grants Management Officer.
Grants Administration & Compliance

• Facilitate the full grants management lifecycle and drive all aspects of pre- and post-award grant activities.

• Determine grantee organization eligibility and conduct due diligence on grant proposals.

• Draft grant agreement letters and help ensure grant files are complete and up to date.

• Track, review and follow up on narrative and financial reports and maintain other grantee related documentation.

• Confirm that grant status is accurately recorded in the grants management system (GMS), with necessary documentation and programmatic tagging.

• Coordinate with the Finance team to execute grantee payments and provide data for reporting.

• Coordinate with the Operations team, to help ensure legal and regulatory compliance.

Grants Management Systems Support & Process Improvement

• Serve as a guide in grants management processes and procedures, facilitating engagement and adoption of streamlined practices across the organization and identifying ways to further adopt trust-based grantmaking and learning practices.

• Help ensure the grants management system supports programmatic decision-making, budgets, learning, and grantmaking processes.

• Serve as GMS technical support resource.

Training, Collaboration & Team Support

• Support training and knowledge sharing for program teams, ranging from forecasting and pipeline development, to data analysis, to compliance.

• In partnership with the Grants Management Officer and team members, develop and implement new approaches to executing grantmaking strategies.

• Provide mentorship across teams and support consistent, effective grants management and data governance practices.

• Work with…