Resolve to Save Lives (RTSL) is a global health organization that partners locally and globally to create and scale solutions to the world’s deadliest health threats. Millions of people die from preventable health threats. We collaborate to close the gap between proven, life-saving solutions and the people who need them. Since 2017, we’ve worked with governments and other partners in more than 60 countries to save millions of lives. We work toward a future where people live longer, healthier lives, communities flourish, and economies thrive. This is an ambitious vision, and it inspires us and our partners to make progress every day.
Position Purpose:
The Director, Grant Management leads RTSL's grant management function, providing organization-wide oversight of the full lifecycle of donor awards received by RTSL and grants awarded by RTSL to implementing partners, from pre-award planning and due diligence through implementation, monitoring, reporting, amendments, and closeout.
Working at the intersection of Programs, Development, Finance, Legal, and Operations, the Director ensures that RTSL delivers against donor commitments, manages grant-related financial and compliance risks, and provides teams and leadership with clear, timely visibility into grant performance. The Director also leads RTSL's sub-granting approach, ensuring that funding to partners is well structured, effectively managed, and grounded in strong stewardship and respectful partnership.
The Director provides functional leadership to staff carrying out grant management responsibilities across the organization, strengthening the systems, standards, tools, and cross-functional ways of working needed to manage an increasingly complex global grants portfolio effectively.
Embedded within the Office of the Chief Program Officer and organizationally situated within Shared Services, the Director works closely with program leadership while maintaining an organization-wide perspective and consistent standards for grant stewardship.
Core Duties and Responsibilities:
Grants Portfolio Leadership and Lifecycle Management
- Lead RTSL's organization-wide approach to grant management across the full award lifecycle, establishing clear standards, roles, processes, and accountabilities from pre-award through closeout.
- Oversee the portfolio of donor-funded awards, ensuring that programmatic, financial, operational, reporting, and compliance requirements are understood, appropriately assigned, and effectively managed.
- Partner with Development and Program teams during the pre-award phase to review proposed scopes, budgets, staffing plans, timelines, deliverables, reporting requirements, and other award conditions for feasibility and organizational readiness.
- Lead effective award start-up, including grant launch processes that establish clear responsibilities, milestones, budgets, reporting requirements, risks, and decision points.
- Establish and lead regular grant review processes that provide visibility into progress against commitments and identify financial, compliance, operational, or implementation issues requiring attention.
- Ensure effective management of award modifications, extensions, budget realignments, reporting requirements, and closeout.
- Maintain portfolio-level visibility of key donor commitments, deadlines, risks, and dependencies and provide senior leadership with concise, decision-oriented reporting.
- Identify emerging grant-related risks and ensure clear ownership, escalation, and timely resolution before they affect program delivery, compliance, or donor confidence.
Sub-granting and Partner Stewardship
- Lead RTSL's approach to grants awarded to implementing partners, ensuring effective and proportionate management throughout the subgrant lifecycle.
- Establish and continuously improve policies, procedures, tools, and standards for partner selection, due diligence, award development, monitoring, amendments, and closeout.
- Partner with program teams to structure subgrants that clearly define objectives, deliverables, budgets, responsibilities, reporting requirements, and measures of success.
- Ensure appropriate risk-based due diligence and monitoring, taking account of partner capacity, award size and complexity, operating context, and donor requirements.
- Work closely with Finance, Legal, Program teams, and Country Offices to identify and address financial, compliance, operational, and performance risks associated with subgrants.
- Promote timely, transparent, and proportionate grantmaking processes that balance strong fiduciary stewardship with efficiency and a positive partner experience.
- Support appropriate capacity strengthening for grantees where gaps in grants management, financial management, compliance, or reporting could affect successful delivery.
- Help position RTSL as a responsible and trusted funder characterized by clear expectations, responsive communication, and respectful partnership.
Grant Performance, Risk, and Compliance
- Establish practical systems and routines for monitoring grant performance against approved scope, budget, milestones, deliverables, reporting obligations, and other donor commitments.
- Work with program teams and relevant technical colleagues to ensure that appropriate indicators and evidence are available to demonstrate progress against grant commitments, without displacing program teams' ownership of program performance and technical results.
- Partner closely with Finance to monitor grant budgets, expenditure, forecasting, fund utilization, and other financial indicators and address significant variances or risks.
- Ensure donor terms, conditions, restrictions, and compliance requirements are clearly communicated to responsible teams and incorporated into grant management processes.
- Maintain an organization-wide view of material grant risks and support timely mitigation, escalation, and resolution.
- Support organizational and donor audits, reviews, and other grant-related assurance processes as needed.
- Identify patterns and lessons across the grants portfolio and use them to strengthen future award design, implementation, and risk management.
Systems, Processes, and Cross-Functional Coordination
- Establish and continuously improve grants management policies, standard operating procedures, templates, tools, systems, and workflows that are proportionate to risk and practical for teams to use.
- Clarify roles, decision rights, handoffs, and escalation pathways across Programs, Development, Finance, Legal, Operations, and country teams throughout the grant lifecycle.
- Build strong working relationships across functions and foster shared accountability for effective grant stewardship and delivery.
- Identify opportunities to simplify processes, reduce unnecessary administrative burden, and improve the experience of internal teams, donors, and grantees.
- Ensure grant documentation and records are complete, accurate, accessible, and maintained in accordance with organizational and donor requirements.
- Use appropriate technology, automation, and AI-enabled tools to strengthen grant tracking, workflow management, reporting, knowledge management, and portfolio visibility.
Team and Functional Leadership
- Lead and support the development of staff carrying out grant management responsibilities across the organization, setting clear expectations, priorities, service standards, and accountability for high-quality grants management and building their technical capability, judgment, and effectiveness as partners to program and country teams.
- Foster a collaborative, solutions-oriented, and service-minded culture that combines strong stewardship and compliance with practical support to teams.
- Serve as RTSL's senior internal resource on grants management, advising leadership and teams on complex award, subaward, compliance, and portfolio management issues.
- Build grant management capability across RTSL by providing practical guidance, tools, and training to staff with responsibilities across the grant lifecycle.
Qualifications:
Experience
- At least 12 years of progressively responsible experience in grants, award, or portfolio management, preferably in global health, international development, humanitarian assistance, or another complex donor-funded environment.
- Significant experience managing the full lifecycle of large and complex donor awards, from pre-award assessment and negotiation through implementation, reporting, modification, and closeout.
- Significant experience managing subgrants or subawards to implementing partners, including due diligence, contracting, monitoring, compliance, risk management, and closeout.
- Strong experience working with major institutional and philanthropic donors and interpreting and operationalizing donor requirements.
- Demonstrated experience developing and improving organization-wide grants management policies, processes, systems, and controls.
- Experience managing and developing grants management professionals.
- Demonstrated success working across program, finance, legal, development, operations, and country teams in a matrixed organization.
- Experience managing complex international portfolios spanning multiple countries, partners, donors, and funding streams.
- Experience advising senior leadership on material grant risks, complex award issues, and portfolio-level decisions.
Skills & abilities
- Deep knowledge of grants management principles and practices across the full award and subaward lifecycle.
- Strong understanding of donor compliance, restricted funding, grant budgets, financial monitoring, reporting requirements, and fiduciary risk.
- Strong understanding of risk-based subrecipient management, including due diligence, monitoring, capacity assessment, and appropriate mitigation measures.
- Excellent judgment and ability to distinguish material risks from issues that can be managed through routine processes.
- Strong strategic and systems thinking, with the ability to translate complex requirements into practical processes and clear accountability.
- Exceptional ability to lead through influence and create alignment across teams and senior stakeholders without relying on direct authority.
- Strong people leadership and coaching skills, with the ability to develop a high-performing, service-oriented team.
- Excellent project and portfolio management skills, including the ability to maintain visibility across numerous concurrent awards, deadlines, risks, and dependencies.
- Strong analytical skills and ability to synthesize programmatic, financial, operational, and compliance information into concise recommendations for decision-makers.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation, negotiation, and relationship-management skills.
- Ability to navigate complex or ambiguous grant issues pragmatically while maintaining appropriate controls and organizational accountability.
- Strong partner orientation, with the ability to uphold rigorous stewardship standards while maintaining respectful, constructive relationships with grantees.
- High degree of integrity, discretion, and sound judgment.
- Comfortable using grants management, financial, project management, and reporting platforms and leveraging technology appropriately to improve efficiency and visibility.
- Ability to work effectively across cultures, functions, and geographies in a remote and globally distributed organization.
Education
- Bachelor's degree in international development, public health, business or public administration, finance, nonprofit management, or a related field required; advanced degree or relevant professional qualification is a bonus, though not essential.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with a range of government, multilateral, bilateral, and philanthropic funding mechanisms relevant to global health.
- Experience working directly with country offices and implementing partners in low- and middle-income countries.
- Experience supporting organizational or donor audits and complex compliance reviews.
- Professional proficiency in French or another language relevant to RTSL's country portfolio is an asset.
Compensation and Benefits:
Resolve to Save Lives prides itself on cultivating a supportive, connected remote team doing work that matters. We do everything possible to ensure our employees are connected and set up for success.
The starting salary range for this position in the US is $150,000 to $170,000 annually. The exact offer will be determined by various factors, such as the candidate's skills and experience relative to the requirements of the role.
In addition to a competitive salary, Resolve to Save Lives provides a generous package of benefits, including:
- Health insurance for you and your dependents
- Contributions toward retirement
- Paid annual leave and sick leave, in addition to public holidays
- Two paid, week-long organization-wide breaks at mid-year and end-of-year
- Professional development and home office setup benefits
- Up-to-date computer equipment
RTSL believes its programs are strengthened when they are developed and supported by individuals with diverse life experiences whose understanding of social and cultural issues can help make our work and workforce more inclusive. We encourage applications from and provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, ancestry, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, marital status, organ donor status, or status as a veteran. Resolve to Save Lives complies with all applicable US EEO laws.
Bachelor's degree required and 12+ years of progressive grants or portfolio management experience, including complex international awards, subgrants, donor compliance, risk management, systems development, and team leadership.
Key Responsibilities
- leading grant management
- overseeing donor awards
- managing subgrants
Job Details
- Category: Project and Program Management
- Seniority: Senior Level
- Commitment: Full Time
- Workplace: Remote — United States or Virginia
- Salary: USD 150,000 – 170,000 / year
- Languages: English
Benefits
- Generous paid time off
- Tuition reimbursement
- Retirement plan
About Resolve To Save Lives
A global health organization that partners to scale solutions to major health threats worldwide. — Industry: Non-Profit Organizations and NGOs