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Proposal, Compliance, & Operations Specialist

Child Trends is seeking a mission-focused, detail-oriented, numbers-savvy, Proposal, Compliance, and Operations Specialist to provide business & project systems support including analysis, organizational compliance, and proposal development on a wide variety of government, foundation, and other research projects and proposals. This position will be a part of the Proposal & Compliance Team at Child Trends which supports research staff. The position can be either full-time remote or based out of the Minneapolis or Bethesda offices on either a full-time or hybrid basis. 
 
The ideal candidate for this position is ready to dive in to a wide variety of administrative and operations functions, wear multiple hats, and take on leadership roles quickly. This position would be a good fit for someone with an interest in nonprofit or research administration and operations with at least 3 years of experience in any (or multiple) of the areas below:
  • Managing or developing budgets.
  • Project management.
  • Developing proposals.
  • Reviewing contract/grant agreements.
  • Data management and creating systems to collect, maintain, analyze, and report on business data.
This is an administrative position and research project tasks are not a part of the duties of this position. This position offers multiple opportunities for professional development and is a solid step towards a career in regulatory compliance, business development, or research administration in research, nonprofit, foundation, or university settings.
 
Duties and Responsibilities:
Reporting to the Proposal, Compliance, and Operations Manager, the Proposal, Compliance, and Operations Specialist will be responsible for supporting the following functions:
 
Proposal Responsibilities:
  • Lead proposal business volume development:
  • Create and maintain business volume templates.
  • Review business volumes across proposals to ensure compliance.
  • Support subcontractors in understanding and preparing business volume materials. 
  • Support system and capacity building and knowledge management related to proposal budgeting.
  • Provide technical assistance to staff preparing budgets.
  • Maintain resources and historical information related to proposal budgets. 
  • Conduct analyses to guide high-level budget targets. 
  • Supervise the tracking and data management of proposal related data to ensure accuracy and completeness. 
  • Provide regular reporting on key metrics.
  • Conduct ad hoc analyses as requested.
  • In times of high proposal volume, support individual bids from kick-off to submission. 
  • Review and analyze solicitation and draft notes, timelines, and develop work plans and internal timelines for research staff.
  • Coordinate timelines between all relevant stakeholders and maintain shared RFP deadline calendars.
  • Schedule and lead kick-off and regular check-in meetings to discuss work plans, research staff roles, and proposal timelines with teams.
  • Develop partner instruction packages and support coordination with partners, and other organizations as needed ensuring counterparts understand timelines for submitting responses.
  • Develop and review administrative support documents as part of proposal submission packages.
  • Troubleshoot for proposal writing teams on issues relating to submission materials. 
  • Review proposal materials to ensure compliance with solicitation requirements and accuracy as part of the Quality Assurance process.
  • Communicate with external clients to submit and field questions and bid packages.
  • Coordinate debrief discussions and save notes when agency awards have been announced and accepted.

Compliance Responsibilities:
Working as a team with the Business Development Coordinator: 
  • Supervise compliance reporting process, ensuring progress, financial, and other reporting is completed on time and there are no audit risks.
  • Supervise the tracking of progress and financial reporting due on active projects including reporting due on schedule contracts.
  • Supervise the subrecipient monitoring process and ensure all internal deliverables are completed on time and fully compliant.
  • In times of high reporting volume, directly step in to coordinate with research and accounting staff to maintain compliance reporting schedule and ensure project reports are submitted and filed on time.
  • Design and implement process improvements related to compliance reporting and tracking. 
  • Provide audit support. 

Operations Responsibilities:
The Proposal, Compliance, & Operations Specialist will support a broad array of research operations initiatives which include, but are not limited to:
  • Supporting staffing coordination including collecting, maintaining, and reporting on information related to staffing.
  • Support budget tracking by setting up, maintaining, and providing technical assistance on budget trackers. 
  • Support the development of other systems needed to respond to priority needs identified by leadership.   

Qualifications/Experience:
Required:
  • Bachelor’s degree (e.g., Business, Economics, Political Science, etc.) and a minimum of 3 years’ experience in any (or multiple) of the areas below, required.
  • Managing or developing budgets.
  • Project management.
  • Developing proposals.
  • Reviewing contract/grant agreements.
  • Data management and creating systems to collect, maintain, analyze, and report on business data.
  • Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Excel: must be able to use comfortably use pivot tables, conditional formatting, nested formulas, vlookups, and basic data manipulation.
  • Solid knowledge of Microsoft Word, Adobe, and PowerPoint.
  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
  • Strong internal or external customer service skills. 
  • Ability to pay close attention to detail.
  • Ability to nimbly shift between changing priorities. 

Strongly Desired:
  • Experience using Microsoft Outlook with experience managing large volumes of emails.
  • Experience working with budgets, either developing new budgets or managing existing budgets. 
  • Experience reporting on key business metrics and conducting analyses for senior leadership. 
  • Experience with project, compliance, or proposal development tasks, especially at a federal contracting organization.
  • Experience supervising staff or tasks of other staff, a plus. 

How to Apply: 
Please follow the “apply” link to submit an application. Please upload your cover letter and resume into one document before uploading. If you have any difficulties with this process, please email the requested materials to recruitment (at) childtrends.org and make sure to reference the position in the subject line. No phone calls please! 
 
About Us
Child Trends, founded in 1979, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the lives of children by conducting research and providing science-based information to improve the decisions, programs, and policies that affect children. With annual revenue of $23 million and 192 employees, our clients include federal, state and local government agencies, foundations, and service providers. Our headquarters is located in Bethesda, Maryland, with offices in Minneapolis and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2018, we were recognized as a Great Place to Work for Women, Best Workplace in Consulting & Professional Services and Best Small & Medium Workplace. 
 
Child Trends is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Employer. Protected veterans and individuals with disability encouraged to apply.