Organizational Overview
Safe Passage Project provides free lawyers to child refugees who are being deported. To date, we have supported more than 1,000 children in NYC.
Many children embark alone on the long and dangerous journey to the United States seeking protection. They are fleeing trauma such as gang violence and recruitment, abuse, and sexual assault. In 2019, the government reported that they apprehended over 70,000 immigrant children seeking entry to the United States. Closer to home, the New York Immigration Court has more than 15,000 cases involving unaccompanied minors on its docket.
Immigrant children are not afforded free legal representation by the government, regardless of their age. As a result, more than half of immigrant children must go through immigration proceedings without the aid of a lawyer. Unable to effectively argue their claim for the legal protections they may qualify for, more than 80% of these children are issued deportation orders. To many, this means returning to the danger from which they fled.
This is where Safe Passage Project steps in, providing free legal assistance to these refugee and immigrant children in New York City and Long Island who are facing removal despite their strong legal claim to stay in the United States.
About the role – Finance & Contracts Manager
As Finance Manager, you will be responsible for maintaining a high-level perspective on Safe Passage Project’s finance and accounting functions, while conducting highly detailed work on a daily basis.
While the main focus of this role is managing our finances, a good portion of your work will be using your expertise to ensure compliance for contracts across the state, city and philanthropic sectors.
This role is suited for someone who is excited by process, details, and deadlines and wants to improve upon and develop effective internal controls, guidelines, and procedures. The Finance and Contracts Manager is charged with ensuring these functions align with Safe Passage Project’s goals and values, finding ways to bring greater impact to the finance function. This is a tremendous opportunity for a finance and operations leader to maximize and strengthen the internal capacity of a well-respected, high-impact organization.
The Finance and Contracts Manager reports directly to the Executive Director, receives some support from the Senior Operations Associate, and is the main liaison for our outside bookkeeper.
Responsibilities of the role:
- Oversee financial operations and financial planning for the organization.
- Lead and direct annual budgeting and planning process in partnership with the Executive Director and Program Directors; lead quarterly finance meetings with board finance committee.
- Develop, analyze, and monitor contract compliance; track obligations and expenditures against budgets.
- Monitor and maintain internal controls to ensure accounting processes reflect best practices and meet regulatory requirements.
- Monitor compliance with grant funding restrictions; provide guidance to staff regarding allowable/unallowable costs.
- Manage organizational cash flow and forecasting; ascertain financial risk areas and methods for improvement; work with ED on cash flow modeling.
- Update and implement all necessary business policies and accounting practices; improve the finance department’s overall policy and procedure manual.
- Coordinate and lead the annual audit process, liaise with external accountants, auditors and board audit committee.
What you will need to apply:
- 4-7 years of accounting and financial management experience; ideally 2+ years of broad financial and operations management experience.
- Experience working for non-profit organizations, preferably with some experience with startup or smaller organizations.
- Ability to translate financial concepts to – and to effectively collaborate with — programmatic and fundraising colleagues who do not necessarily have finance backgrounds.
- Experience of final responsibility for the quality and content of all financial data, reporting and audit coordination for either a division or significant program area,
- Experience managing direct and indirect cost segregation, cost pools, and allocation bases.
- Ability and willingness to perform a range of tasks – from audit prep to monthly reconciliation to assisting with project reports.
- A growth-mentality, you are not afraid to shift, stumble, and grow within an ever-changing landscape.
What You’ll Bring:
- Analytical Mindset: You are extremely logical, reasoned, and adept at discovering root causes and assumptions. You are particularly skilled at assessing the relative tradeoffs between alternative courses of action and at performing proper cost-benefit analyses of various decisions.
- An intense hunger to learn: You are constantly seeking out new information, alternative methods and perspectives, tips and advice, and new tools to improve yourself and the functional areas you are tasked with leading.
- High integrity: You will be asked to make sensitive and critical judgment calls, and as such, you are known for your integrity; you take that reputation seriously. You always choose to make the right decision versus the easy decision. You know what information is sensitive, and you will protect it accordingly.
- Low ego: You have a positive, rolls-up-your-sleeves mindset. You possess humility and grit, willing to take on both “lower level” and “higher level” work based on what needs to be done.
- Keep many balls in the air: You are efficient and organized. You can take in a range of events at different levels of urgency and importance, formulate responses, and keep progress going on many fronts at once.
- Unwavering attention to detail: You are meticulous and have excellent organizational skills. You are able to work fast without cluttering your desk or mind. You have a knack for project management and a love for bullet points. You cringe at typos, and you are the first to identify a formatting error. You obsess about the details (in a healthy way).
The Application Process
Please complete the following simple form. Individuals who submit by Friday, April 17th will be given priority; therefore, we encourage you to submit yours soon!
When you apply, we kindly ask you to remove your schools from your resume. There is no need to reformat your resume, and you may leave your degree (e.g. “B.A. Economics”). Just remember to remove any undergraduate and graduate school name references where possible. This “bias blind” process is aimed at opening this opportunity to more candidates; reviewing applicants on performance assessments instead of resume proxies (e.g., where you went to school). Lastly, we intentionally do not ask for a cover letter, so we kindly request that you not send one in your application.
This evaluation process will follow best practices shown to reduce bias in decision making and may be different from other application processes you have experienced. Our plan is to perform all steps virtually in response to the pandemic.
If you have any questions about this opportunity, please feel free to email [email protected].
