Teach For America - Greater New Orleans seeks a Manager of Finance, Data and Compliance for our regional organization as a part of our Strategy, Talent, and Operations function, which includes financial management and administration. Our Manager of Finance, Compliance and Impact will report directly to our Managing Director of Strategy, Talent, and Operations. In this role, your work will be essential to the function’s vision of working with a broad swath of internal and external stakeholders to administer our grants with compliance, and investing our broader regional team to spend resources strategically in order to advance our impact on students and public schools. Specifically, you will be developing and managing several key work streams:
- A financial management infrastructure that tracks an evolving picture of both revenue and expenses and facilitates financial and operational decision making
- The grant administration infrastructure that enables our region to fulfill the programmatic and compliance commitments of our grants, including AmeriCorps and US Department of Education funding
- Expense-tracking, compliance auditing, and invoicing operations that enable us to draw-down on pre-committed restricted funding from public and private sources
- A performance and data management infrastructure that facilitates how we input, track, analyze, and report on our progress to goal towards key financial and grant management outcomes
If you are an exceptional organizer of information, an analytical and strategic thinker, and a learner and relationship-builder who is motivated by organizational innovation, then this role is for you. The ideal candidate is able to add order and organization to the development of new operational systems and infrastructure; thrives in a dynamic, fast-paced, goal-oriented environment; is able to build relationships with and invest others; is a team-member who operates and leads with a commitment to constant learning for self and others; and is someone who embodies flexibility and generosity alongside a drive towards achievement.
Financial Management (45%)
- Innovate and manage effective systems for functional team non-payroll budget planning, tracking budget-to-actual expenses, reforecasting expenses, paying bills, and overseeing staff expenditures and reimbursement submissions.
- Develop a regional approach to (1) understanding an evolving picture of revenue, expenses and financial health, (2) identifying potential errors in our monthly regional budget forecasts, identifying root causes, and addressing them across regional and national partners, and (3) facilitating staff, functional team leads, and our Executive Director’s ability to make strategic decisions to ensure that our financial resources are serving our regional vision: specifically, maximizing our progress towards our breakthrough results (4) designing and training functional team leaders to use the yearly and monthly budgeting tools, (5) serving as a compliance expert and checking our systems to ensure compliant spending practices and accurate coding of regional expenses.
- Understand the national and regional systems that are currently in place for tracking, analyzing, and/or reporting on our data and/or progress towards goals, and identify gaps in which data and/or goals are not currently tracked, analyzed or reported and adapt or create new tools to serve our financial data management purposes.
Grant Administration and Infrastructure (45%)
- Develop and manage a grant administration infrastructure that enables our region to ensure that we fulfill the programmatic and compliance commitments of our grants, including enrollment tracking, expense coding, staff-member effort certification, budget tracking, and invoicing.
- Onboard and support Development portfolio managers and Program staff to maintain this infrastructure and utilize it for reporting, donor stewardship and program management.
- Ensure the successful draw-down of our region’s public and private restricted awards portfolio by:
- Developing restricted award proposal budgets
- Working in partnership with the MD, of Strategy, Talent, and Operations and program staff to determine how payroll and non-payroll expenses are to be tagged, and ensuring all staff are properly trained
- Ensuring that expenditures are properly tracked, documented and coded
- Monitoring the programmatic activities sponsored by grants, creating transparency across the enterprise if activities are off-track or substantially altered, and recommending solutions
- Leveraging budget-to-actuals analyses to maintain an ongoing understanding of grant draw-down status, partnering with the national Grants & Contracts team to course correct with post hoc expense tagging and/or budget modifications if necessary, diagnosing the root causes of underspending, and recommending solutions
- Liaising with Grants & Contracts, our regional Development Team, and Program Teams to develop budget proposal for new restricted funding opportunities.
- Signing off on financial invoices and reports from the Grants & Contracts team, and submitting invoices and financial reports to funders
- Specifically, maintain our state’s ability to administer our AmeriCorps program in full compliance, by managing the following work streams for GNO and by managing your regional counterparts in other offices towards the same ends:
- Manage the documentation collection process that ensures corps members are compliant with AmeriCorps requirements and are on track to receive AmeriCorps rewards.
- Ensure that Program teams have clarity about what program components and field conditions need to be in place to ensure we remain in full compliance of AmeriCorps requirements.
- Recommend strategies and benchmarks that will facilitate meeting compliance deadlines across teams.
- Work collaboratively with the South Louisiana region and the Manager of Program and Foundation partners to reconcile the directives and deadlines communicated by our state commission with the guidance and support our national AmeriCorps Partnerships Team.
- Systems-manage the back-of-the-house administration of the AmeriCorps enrollment and exit processes.
- Manage the maintenance process for AmeriCorps files in strict accordance with AmeriCorps requirements, policies and procedures.
- Manage the accurate maintenance of member status in our internal and external systems.
Region-wide and Organization-wide Responsibilities (10%)
Teach For America thrives on cross-functional partnerships throughout our organization. Our staff members are skilled in working across layers, empathizing with our colleagues around the reality of competing commitments, navigating these situations with grace, and being culture leaders within our regional team. We do this by upholding an orientation towards flexibility and generosity while also remaining deeply committed to a sense of possibility and achievement.
While some days we work independently to achieve milestones, realizing our breakthrough goals requires regular collaboration at all levels. Everyone shows their support for region-wide and organization-wide initiatives by actively engaging in the following opportunities:
- Corps member on-boarding (selection, confirmation, hiring, etc.)
- Cross-functional special projects
- National conferences
- Regional staff leadership development and team building
- Prior experience in financial administration or non-profit program operations preferred
- At least four years of work experience is strongly preferred
- Prior experience working in or serving the movement for educational equity and excellence, or experience as an alumnus of Teach For America or as a classroom teacher is preferred
Demands and Skills
- Ability to organize information with efficiency and usability for multiple users and purposes, including maintaining institutional memory and facilitating decision-making
- Strong analytical reasoning skills, quantitative skills, and the ability to make connections between previously unrelated notions and integrate findings into meaningful and actionable strategies or solutions
- A commitment to continuously bettering oneself, team and organization by proactively and consistently seeking input and feedback from colleagues and incorporating these insights
- Ability to cultivate relationships across the region and organization in order to seek continual input and feedback, and to invest others in organizational compliance, improvement, and innovation
- Ability to thrive in a dynamic, fast-paced, goal-oriented environment while also embodying flexibility, generosity, and a commitment to culture leadership and our core values
- Ability to use Microsoft Excel to organize and analyze priorities, goals, tasks and data. Some prior experience with Salesforce is ideal but not required; comfort in learning and using new IT systems like Salesforce is required
- Dedication to and consistent embodiment of Teach For America’s core values
- Willingness and ability to participate, occasionally, in events that fall on nights and/or weekends. Openness to the possibility of overnight travel up to a few times per year