Grants Project Manager (Pre-Award) at New Mexico Immigrant Law Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico

Job description

• The Grants Project Manager (Pre-Award) provides the project management and operational infrastructure needed to support NMILC’s public and philanthropic grant pursuits. This role coordinates the full pre-award process—from opportunity identification and proposal development through submission and transition to implementation.
• This position does not lead fundraising strategy, write grants, or cultivate funders. Instead, it ensures grant development work is organized, collaborative, timely, and consistent across departments.

Responsibilities

• Manage pre-award grant development projects, including workplans, timelines, milestones, task assignments, and submission requirements.
• Facilitate proposal kickoff, planning, status, and review meetings with program, finance, legal, communications, development, and executive leadership staff.
• Monitor proposal progress, identify risks and bottlenecks, support problem-solving, and escalate issues as needed.
• Coordinate internal handoffs from proposal submission to post-award implementation, including grant documentation and reporting requirements.
• Maintain grant pipelines, calendars, workflows, dashboards, document libraries, proposal records, and reporting schedules.
• Administer NMILC’s grants management platform, including records, workflows, document repositories, dashboards, and reports.
• Maintain registrations, credentials, certifications, and user access for federal, state, local, and funder grant portals, including Grants.gov, SAM.gov, and UEI.
• Research and track funding opportunities aligned with organizational priorities; prepare concise opportunity summaries addressing eligibility, deadlines, capacity, staffing, and readiness considerations.
• Develop and maintain standardized templates, checklists, procedures, file-management practices, and organizational grant documentation.
• Improve grants workflows, dashboards, automations, and cross-functional processes to strengthen efficiency, transparency, accountability, and organizational learning.

Requirements

• 3–5 years of progressively responsible experience in grant proposal development, grants administration, project management, nonprofit operations, or a related field.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex, deadline-driven projects involving multiple stakeholders and competing priorities.
• Experience coordinating proposals or similar cross-functional projects involving budgets, technical content, approvals, and external deadlines.
• Experience using project management, grants management, or comparable workflow systems.
• Exceptional organizational, facilitation, communication, and follow-through skills.
• Ability to build accountability and coordinate work effectively without direct supervisory authority.
• Strong judgment, attention to detail, and ability to manage multiple priorities.
• Experience administering or serving as a power user of grants management platforms such as Fluxx, Foundant, SmartSimple, Instrumentl, Monday.com, or similar systems.
• Experience improving grant-management workflows, dashboards, automations, or organizational processes.
• Experience with federal, state, local, and/or philanthropic grants.
• Familiarity with Grants.gov, SAM.gov, state grant portals, and other electronic submission systems.
• Experience facilitating cross-functional planning, organizational change, or operational scaling in a nonprofit environment.
• The above statement reflects the general duties considered necessary to describe the principal functions of the job as identified and shall not be considered a detailed description of all work requirements that may be inherent in the job.

Skills

Required

• Project management
• Grants management
• Workflow systems
• Organizational skills
• Facilitation
• Communication
• Follow-through
• Judgment
• Attention to detail
• Ability to manage multiple priorities

Preferred

• Workflow improvement
• Grants.gov, SAM.gov, state grant portals
• Cross-functional planning
• Organizational change
• Operational scaling

Benefits

• 100% of Individual Employee Health Premium paid by NMILC for the Base Plan and 50% for dependents. Buy-up Plan also available.
• Access to a 401K plan and discretionary employer match up to 10% of base salary (determined each fiscal year based on funding projections).
• Optional Flexible Spending Account for pre-tax funds for medical and/or dependent care cost.
• This is a full-time, non-exempt position. Starting rate for the Grants and Program Project Manager position is $31.50/hour