Interim Director of Grants Operations (Sabbatical cover)

1.  Background

At Thousand Currents, we believe the people most affected by injustice are the ones already building the solutions. Around the world, peasant farmers, Indigenous communities, women's collectives, and grassroots movements are organizing across borders to transform food, energy, and the commons as well as the underlying economic systems. Our role is to back them with flexible funding, with the relationships and platforms that amplify their leadership, and with the long-term solidarity that movement-building requires.

Thousand Currents funds, connects, and supports visionary grassroots groups and movements leading solutions in food, climate, and the economy. We support our movement partners in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia and the Pacific with core, flexible, long-term grants and value-added services.The Director of Grants Operations leads the systems, practices, and people that ensure this grantmaking and partnership stewardship are partner-centered, timely, compliant, and scalable.

2. Purpose of the Role

The Interim Director of Grants Operations leads the systems, practices, and people to ensure that Thousand Currents’ grantmaking and partnership stewardship are partner-centered, timely, compliant, and effective. The Interim Director leads the end-to-end systems and processes that move resources with rigor and care by strengthening internal controls without creating undue burden, and building a stewardship backbone that supports partnerships from prospecting through renewal or dignified transition.

3. Reporting Lines & Key Relationships

Reports to the Vice President of Global Programs

Line-manages: the Grants Operations Manager

Works closely with: Finance, the technology team, and the regional programs and learning team.

4. Scope of Work

This is a full time role leading Grants Operations and partnership stewardship across Thousand Currents’ portfolio. The role is remote.

5.  Key Responsibilities

5.1 Grants lifecycle

Continuously improve the full grants lifecycle so that funds move reliably while compliance and risk are handled with intention and care:

• Maintain clear intake, review, and approval workflows with decision checkpoints and documentation standards for timely, consistent decisions.
• Ensure grant agreements and amendments are accurate, legally compliant, plain-language where possible, and right-sized to partners.
• Manage disbursements and payment operations in coordination with Finance so funds move on time; prevent avoidable delays and track exceptions.
• Maintain minimal, clear reporting requirements and ensure complete closeout (documentation, final payments, learning).
• Support due diligence and risk review across partner types, with clear escalation pathways for higher-risk situations.
• Uphold internal controls (approvals, segregation of duties, reconciliations, exception handling) and coordinate with Finance and Legal/Compliance on restricted funds, sanctions screening, data and privacy.
• Ensure smooth ongoing collaboration, planning, process alignment, and troubleshooting with Regional Teams and Finance; support and participate in monthly cross-team meetings.

5.2 Partnership stewardship

Support the team and partners through an integrated, end-to-end stewardship pathway, mirroring the grants lifecycle so that relationship history, expectations, decisions, learning, and transitions are consistently documented and easy to work with:

• Build and maintain a prospect pipeline with a minimal-but-useful profile that supports continuity and equitable decision-making.
• Maintain selection and invitation workflows and decision templates that synthesize strategic fit, ecosystem role, movement accountability, feasibility, and risk, with decisions and rationale tracked.
• Operationalize plain-language partnership expectations: what partners can expect from us and what we expect from partners through onboarding materials appropriate to movement partnerships
• Support teams to document key milestones and support partnerships over time (touchpoints, renewals, risk and context shifts).
• Support infrastructure for light-touch, periodic reflection rhythms (annual check-ins, partnership reflection) whose insights inform strategy, support learning, and remain useful to partners.
• Work in collaboration with the learning team to develop practical ways to document how partnerships strengthen movement capacity and ecosystem health, aggregating without flattening context.
• Lead process to build consistent renewal and transition stage, and responsible protocols for pauses, early exits, and closures, with a focus on partner care (timing, safety, reputation) and clean system closeout; collaborate with small working group for input and refinement.

5.3 Systems & information management

• Collaborate with the Technology team to maintain the grants management system and related workflows, including configuration, permissions, integrations, and adoption.
• Define essential data fields and governance standards so that information is accurate, secure, and genuinely useful.
• Collaborate with learning and technology to refine dashboards and reporting for leadership and teams.
• Strengthen documentation and knowledge management so that processes are repeatable and resilient through staff transitions.

5.4 Team leadership & capacity building

• Lead, manage, and develop the Grants Operations team with clear roles, goals, and supervision.
• Maintain a culture of care, accountability, and continuous improvement, where systems get better because people are supported to improve them.
• Create onboarding, training, and internal enablement so staff across the organization understand and can collaborate on grants and partnership processes.
• Assess capacity needs over time and propose staffing plans matched to portfolio scale and complexity.

6.  Expected Deliverables

• Support the Regional Teams in moving the Round 1 Grantmaking Cycle on time.
• Support the Grants Operations team in moving one cycle of fiscally sponsored grants on time and in preparations for a second cycle.
• Grants moving on schedule throughout the interim with no avoidable delays in approvals, disbursements, or closeouts.
• Existing systems, records, and controls kept current, accurate, and compliant. Collaboration on the ongoing Salesforce redesign.
• Partnerships well-stewarded through the period, with renewals and transitions handled cleanly.
• Ongoing coordination with the Finance team on scheduled grant payments.
• A steady, supported Grants Operations team, with day-to-day issues resolved or safely escalated.
• A clear end-of-interim handover, including current pipeline status, decisions pending, open risks, and anything the returning Director needs to pick up cleanly.

7. Qualifications & Experience

• Substantial experience leading grants management or grants operations, ideally in philanthropy, a foundation, or international development with knowledge of US Government compliance for global grantmaking.
• Deep knowledge of the grants lifecycle, compliance, risk management, and grants management systems (configuration and administration).
• Demonstrated experience designing partner-centered, proportionate processes and internal controls in collaboration with finance and legal/compliance functions.
• Experience leading and developing a team, with a coaching, care-centered management style.
• Familiarity with resourcing grassroots movements in the Global South, and a commitment to trust-based, movement-aligned, and decolonial philanthropy.
• Strong systems and process design, data governance, and documentation skills; comfort with dashboards and reporting.
• Excellent cross-functional collaboration and clear, plain-language communication.

8. Competencies & Values

• Balances rigor and care. Strengthens controls without creating undue burden.
• Centres partner sovereignty, dignity, and non-extractive practice.
• Commitment to equity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Sound judgment and discretion in handling sensitive information and risk.
  
  

9. Contract Terms

Contract Type: Consultant Agreement (fixed term)

Time Commitment: 37.5 hours per week, or equivalent level of effort as agreed.

Duration: Approximately 14 weeks consultancy, commencing around September 07,2026 to December 18, 2026.

Team: Global Programs

Location: Remote, Anywhere in the United States, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, or Latin America and Caribbean

Travel: None

Position Reports to: Vice President, Global Programs

Compensation: $10,750 USD monthly payable upon satisfactory completion of the agreed monthly work and submission of an invoice.

Deadline to apply: By 3pm ET September 4th, 2026