The Associate Director, Budget Management is a key position with the Department of Education and Child Protection department (“DECP”), providing oversight of the department’s home office spending against available funding. This position is accountable for DECP budgeting ensuring that maximum programmatic reach is achieved using availabile funding. The Associate Director works closely with the department’s Senior Management Team (SMT), Awards Managers and Technical providers within the department, to best leverage limited financial resources. The AD will prepare departmental budgets and monitor progress on a regular basis for a full spectrum of funding sources and instruments. This position will develop and maintain efficient management level reporting for the department allowing the SMT to make strategic financial decisions.
In addition to budget management, this position is responsible for ensuring proper coding has been applied for all DECP home office costs, including staff and travel costs. This must be done through proactive guidance to the department on coding as well as regular review of monthly transactions.
This position supervises DECP’s Finance Coordinator who focuses on payment processing for the department, including travel reimbursements, invoice payments, external wires, as well as processing both internal and external Fee for Service agreements covering the payment of Technical Assistance support. As the department’s subject matter expert on Save the Children’s finance policies this position provides guidance to the department, and to individuals to ensure proper compliance for timely and efficient payment processing.
This position will also actively contribute to continuous improvement of the budget management function, helping to drive change through the identification and implementation of best practices in the Agency’s financial management. This position works closely with the award management function, providing guidance and support as needed.
- Objectives and milestones are determined jointly by employee and supervisor and implemented with management support
- Provide information to their Manager or to other Senior Managers so that they can make accurate decisions
Lead DECP’s annual budgeting process for Home Office Expenses (20%)
- Work with DECP SMT to prepare department’s home office budget. Gather and consolidate available funding sources from a wide range of sources, including existing awards managed by DECP or other teams, private contributions, undesignated, and sponsorship as well as projecting reasonably assured funding during the course of the year. Gather business requirements requiring funding during the year, managing SMT’s expectations about resource availability. .
- Work with SMT to develop budgets that properly reflect work plans for each cost center, accurately representing funding sources (both anticipated and projected) and highlighting any required, yet unfunded work requirements.
- Provide trend analysis as needed on spending for each cost center as well as across the teams within the department to help inform future funding strategies.
- Exercise Independent Judgement and discretion on how to allocate costs across funding sources for maximum reach
- Work with DECP SMT for strategic direction on the use of flexible funding.
Manage DECP’s Home Office Budget (60%)
- Prepare, and review monthly time splits (how staff salary is covered during the year) for each of the sub-teams, to determine if people are spending in line with expectation, analyze variances, and facilitate conversations on how to shift funding among DECP teams. Highlight need for timesheet reclassifications and ensure that they are processed as need.
- Gather budget availability for DECP from other teams and create a process in which the budget and spending is tracked to ensure timely usage of funds.
- Responsible for accurate budget coding on all DECP expenses. This position will monthly transactions, validate budget coding and process reclassifications to correct any errors. The primary focus on non-award managed sources, such as undesignated funding, strategic initiative funding, sponsorship and general designated funding. Provide guidance to Award Managers as needed to ensure proper coding on award spend.
- Ensure Strategic Opportunity Cost Allocation (SOCA) budgets are reviewed monthly ensuring that all expenses are booked properly prior to the return of any unspent balance.
- Provide training to new staff on financial management within DECP on topics such as budgeting, financial coding minimum standards, timekeeping, FFS processes, etc.
- Manage budget transfers as needed within the agency.
- Serve as a resource for financial management for all DECP staff
Oversee DECP payment processing (10%)
- Manage all payment processing for the department, keeping clear processes and procedures are maintained for easy back up and audit, including wire payments, expense reimbursements, consultant payments
Prepare monthly Budget versus Actual (BVA) analysis for Sr. Directors on spending (10%)
- Provide timely monthly budget versus actual reports for SMT detailing spending against all funding sources within their portfolio, focusing on Undesignated, Designated, and Sponsorship spending. Develop tools to facilitate budget conversations and monitoring. Meet with each Sr. Director to ensure that they have a proper understanding of their budget, and the risks associated with funding decisions.
Manage Fee for Service process for DECP (10%)
- Provide guidance within DECP regarding FFS agreement process including how to draft agreements and complete extensions for both internal and external FFS agreements. Ensure proper budgeting and invoicing requirements are achieved
- Work with DECP finance coordinator to ensure FFS agreements are set up properly within our financial systems and monitored to maximize funding provided. Confirm proper invoicing and payment achieved.
- Close out completed agreements on a timely basis
- You have a minimum 5-7 years' experience managing budgets in a nonprofit environment, working with multiple funding types and sources
- Ability to efficiently develop succinct financial management reports
- Intermediate excel skills required high
- Be able to understand and analyze risks related to financial operations
- Understanding of accounting standards and practices
- Comfortable working in high paced environment, managing multiple priorities and deadlines
- Must be able to build effective relationships with peers and managers, able to relate to well to all kinds of people
- Able to analyze risk within current budgeting process, and work with stakeholders to reach agreed mitigation path
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience working in an international environment
- Demonstrated experience on focusing on continuous improvement in daily work through process improvements
- Master’s Degree in related area (Finance, MBA, Public Administration, Accounting)
- Aetna Medical and Dental insurance with a concierge service
- Health Care and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account
- Vision Insurance
- Life insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- Commuter Benefit Program
- Vacation and Sick leave
- Paid holidays
What makes us special!
- Generous Retirement Savings with matching company contributions of up to 8%
- Family Leave – 10 additional days of paid time off for you to use to care for your family members
- Additional Maternity and Paternity Leave – 30 days where parents can take additional paid leave (beyond short-term disability and FMLA) at the birth or adoption of a child during that critical first year!
- Critical Child Illness Leave – We hope you never have to use it, but we will provide an additional 30 days of paid leave per year should your dependent child be faced with a critical illness.
- Pet Insurance, Critical Illness Insurance, Identity Protection, Home, Auto and additional Life insurances
- Summer Fun Fridays – During the summer months, early release at 1:30 pm every other Friday!
- Volunteer Day – One paid day a year to support the causes that matter to you!
- Ergonomic Options – Every employee at our HQ offices has the option of a sitting/standing desk
- Leadership and Employee Development Training, including:
- Our remarkable in-house CORE, Senior Management Development, and Leadership Development Programs
- Language learning opportunities
- Continuous Improvement skill development programs
- Brown Bag information sharing sessions
- Work hard/Play hard! We make sure there’s ample opportunity for fun, engagement, and celebration while you work, such as networking events, March Madness, World Cup, Dodgeball Tournaments, Take Your Child to Work Day, Founder’s Day, and our annual Day of Service