Pittsburgh

The Organization
Established in 1945, The Pittsburgh Foundation is one of the nation’s oldest community foundations and is the 13th largest of more than 750 community foundations across the United States. As a community foundation, our resources comprise endowment funds established by individuals, businesses and organizations with a passion for charitable giving and a deep commitment to the Pittsburgh community. The Foundation has approximately 2,000 individual donor funds and, together with its supporting organizations, assets of more than $1.14 billion. Grantmaking from the funds benefits a broad spectrum of community life within Pittsburgh and beyond with more than 2,000 grantees receiving funding annually. The Foundation typically awards grants of more than $40 million each year. Grantmaking from the Foundation’s discretionary funds leverages a broad range of resources and enables the Foundation to be an important change agent for the region. Approximately 85 percent of all grant-making dollars stay within the Pittsburgh region.

Position Overview
The scholarship coordinator is responsible for the administration, execution and integrity of the Foundation’s scholarship program which consists of more than 300 scholarships totaling approximately $2.8 million in distributable income each year, as well as managing the grant process for the West Allegheny Physicians’ Association Fund. The scholarship coordinator will be a key member of the Grants Management team providing assistance to the grants manager and grants coordinator during peak and vacation times. The scholarship coordinator will work closely with the systems owner for the Foundation’s online scholarship platform, ensuring its effective use and implementation of best practices.

Essential Duties:

Scholarships

Responsibility and accountability for all scholarships once funds have been established and review committees have been staffed, with the exception of donor outreach and relations which are maintained by the scholarship associate when donor is still living.

• Understand and communicate to colleagues and committee members IRS scholarship requirements, including suggesting and implementing policy and procedure changes as required.
• Review all scholarship nominations to ensure legal compliance.
• Review committee recommendations and committee structures to ensure compliance.
• Serve as the main point of contact to high schools, colleges/universities, students and other interested parties regarding scholarship deadlines, application requirements, committee structures and grantmaking amounts.
• Ongoing process analysis, improvement and updating of all scholarship-related standard operating procedures.
• Work collaboratively with the scholarship associate to effectively manage administrative functions for all scholarship funds.
• Provide guidance to scholarship associate when new scholarships are being designed to ensure a robust applicant pool.
• Collaborate with scholarship associate to ensure renewable and multiyear scholarship recipients are engaged.
• Provide timely updates to scholarship associate should a scholarship grant payment be returned by the school on a living-donor fund.
• Assure data integrity and accuracy in all of the Foundation’s repositories of information.

Responsibility and accountability for management of the online scholarship portal, which includes:

• Assisting students with inquiries.
• Engaging scholarship committee members in use of portal for review purposes.
• Managing the dashboard to ensure approval and declination of applications and declination correspondence where appropriate.
• Monthly updates of the Foundation’s website to reflect new funds, changes to existing funds and applications.

Working closely with the system owner for the database by:

• Collaborating with the full scholarship team to ensure all viable scholarships are migrated to the online portal.
• Designing scholarship applications within the portal.
• Providing technical support to colleagues and students.

Use of Granted Edge platform to process scholarship awards, which includes:

• Creating scholarship grants.
• Generating scholarship notification letters to students.
• Encumbering scholarships once required paperwork is received.
• Communicating with grants coordinator regarding volume, timing and correspondence for scholarship payments.
• Tracking missing payments and request cancels/voids/reissues when required.
• Manage scholarship committee records in the Raisers Edge platform, including creation and regular updates of committee records and members.
• Responsibility and accountability for all paper-based applications, ensuring that communication to scholarship associate, scholarship committee members and other interested parties is undertaken. This includes:
  • Checking applications for completeness and eligibility.
  • Using technology to circulate applications/distribution of applications.
  • Communicating with scholarship committee members.
  • Scheduling committee meetings.<
  • Creating unique rating sheets to aid committee members in their selection process.
  • Acquire appropriate signature(s) of approval.
  • Provide project coordination and assistance to the grants manager.
  • Other duties assigned by grants manager.

West Allegheny Physicians’ Association:

Divide distributable income equally between committee members, notify physicians, collect recommendations, compile/distribute ‘mail ballot,’ notify physicians of unanimous agreement or lack of agreement. Send award notifications, grant agreements, and request letter of intent for use of funds from recipients. Release payment when conditions are met.

Grants Administration

• Competence in and understanding of donor-advised grant process, which includes processing online requests through the Foundation’s portal.
• Awareness and understanding of legal compliance requirements around donor-advised fund grants.
• Provide position coverage to the grants coordinator during peak processing times and absences.

Qualifications:

• High degree of technological curiosity and competency.
• High degree of competency in Microsoft suite of products, especially Excel.
• Ability to manage a high-volume position with competing priorities.
• Ability to prioritize work, manage time effectively and meet deadlines.
• Work in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong analytical, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Embrace change, innovational thinking and Continuous Improvement methodology.
• Be a team player; approachable, open to suggestions and ideas from colleagues, be flexible, have a positive outlook and sense of humor.
• Strong communication and customer services skills.
• Be open to learning new skills and professional development opportunities.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a related field.
• Expertise in data/database management.
• High-level knowledge of Blackbaud suite of products, in particular Granted Edge platform
• Knowledge of Foundant Grant Life Management platform.
• Five to seven years of community foundation or nonprofit experience.>