**Job Overview and Responsibilities**
• *What You’ll Do**
• *Write the Proposals, Reports, and Updates That Win and Renew Funding**
- Draft LOIs, proposals, grant reports, and interim updates for foundation funders. Collaborate with internal teams to gather timely information about Step Up’s program, progress and outcomes and organize detailed information into clear communication relevant to each audience
- Develop a detailed understanding of Step Up’s data and evaluation outcomes and own the process of articulating outcomes and impact into rigorous and resonant story of impact
- Create compelling visual presentations of information (graphs, charts, etc) to accompany written narratives, and present content in clean, professional, well-designed formats.
- Develop and report on grant budgets and communicate key financial metrics, working in collaboration with the Finance Director
- Manage the full grants calendar: deadlines, requirements, submission portals, and internal review cycles
- Maintain a library of core language and current, approved data points so that every writer at Step Up is working from accurate material.
• *Research Prospects and Move Them Through the Pipeline**
- Identify and qualify new foundation prospects (across regional and national funders spanning multiple focus areas overlapping with Step Up’s mission) through systematic research, peer-funder analysis, and network mapping across our board, staff, and existing funders.
- Build prospect briefs that prepare executive leaders for funder meetings.
- Track and drive movement through the pipeline stages, from research to cultivation to ask to renewal
• *Manage and Deepen Foundation Relationships**
- Own the coordination and tracking of all foundation communications across a portfolio of 20+ funders.
- Proactively manage ongoing funder stewardship, organizing periodic check-in meetings, sharing relevant updates &,milestones, and ensuring timely meeting follow-up.
- Serve as primary contact for some foundation partners and manage executive communication, providing direct assistance for CEO in ensuring smooth and effective communication
• *Strengthen Our Development Systems**
- Maintain accurate, current records of funder activity, moves, and documentation in our development tracking systems.
- Improve how we track commitments, deliverables, and reporting requirements so obligations are visible well before they are due.
- Use AI tools (Claude and others), with careful judgement, to accelerate research, drafting, data synthesis, and reporting.
• *Qualifications and Requirements**
## **Who You Are: The Ideal Candidate Profile**
- **An Exceptional Writer:** You write with clarity, structure, and precision. You can hold a complex program model in your head and explain it in three sentences or three pages, depending on what the funder asked for. You understand that a grant narrative is an argument, not a description, and you know how to build one.
- **An Experienced Grant Professional:** You have 5+ years in nonprofit development, including at least 2 years personally owning grant writing. You have written and won foundation grants at the five- and six-figure level, and you know your way around institutional funder requirements, portals, and reporting formats.
- **Fluent in Education and Student Outcomes:** You have worked in education nonprofit fundraising, at an education foundation, or in a closely adjacent context. You are comfortable with student outcomes data, able to read an evaluation report, understand what it does and does not say, and turn it into a compelling funder-facing narrative without overstating it.
- **A Relationship Builder:** You are responsive, reliable, and genuinely curious about what funders care about. You build trust with program officers and know how to keep a relationship active in the long stretches between formal asks.
- **Detail-Oriented:** You catch the mismatched number, the outdated statistic, the missing attachment, the requirement buried on page four of the guidelines. You treat accuracy as a form of respect for the funder and the students behind the numbers.
- **An AI-Native Operator:** You use AI tools, where appropriate, to do the work of a larger team, including for research, synthesis, data analysis, workflow management, while keeping a firm hand on accuracy, voice, and judgment.
- **A Self-Directed Builder:** You operate well in a lean environment with real ambiguity. You manage your own deadlines, raise problems early, and improve the process while you are running it.
- **Mission-Driven:** You are motivated by the opportunity to expand educational opportunity for students in under-resourced communities, and you believe in the human relationship at the heart of our work.
• *Bonus Points If You Have:**
- Experience with CRM or development tracking systems and comfort building and maintaining pipeline reporting.
- Experience with government or public-sector grant applications.
- Experience supporting a CEO or executive in funder-facing settings.
• *Pay and Benefits**
## **Salary & Benefits**
- **Compensation: **$115,000-$150,000, depending on experience.
- **Benefits for Full-Time Employees:** Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage (company covers 80% of base plan for individuals, 50% for dependents); 401k retirement plan, Flexible PTO; Professional Development; work-from-home stipend.