Position Title: Senior Program Officer, Matching Grant Program
Division: Community Integration Programs
Reports to: Associate Director
Status: Full-Time/Exempt
Location: Arlington, Virginia
The Ethiopian Community Development Council, Inc. (ECDC), established in 1983, is a non-profit, community-based organization that advocates on behalf of refugee and immigrant issues; conducts cultural, health education, and socio-economic development programs; and resettles refugees in the U.S. through a network of affiliate partners. While organized to respond initially to the needs of a growing Ethiopian community in the Washington, D.C., area, ECDC from its inception has been serving newcomers from diverse cultural backgrounds while maintaining a focus on African refugees and immigrants. Currently, ECDC has a network of 26 local resettlement sites that resettle refugees and provide employment and other social services to help the newcomers become economically self-sufficient and integrated members of their communities.
Job Summary: Under the supervision of the Associate Director for Community Integration Programs, the Senior Program Officer (SPO) supports ECDC's affiliates and branch offices achieve programmatic compliance and refugee employment and self-sufficiency goals through training, technical assistance, monitoring, and evaluation. The SPO supervises Matching Grant Program Officers and a Program Assistant. Perform other tasks as needed.
Key Responsibilities
Program Support
- Leads MG proposal writing, reviewing and approving affiliate budgets, and local site design development.
- Leads the completion of MG semi-annual program progress, annual, and final closeout reporting.
- Leads affiliate creation of effective performance improvement plans (PIPs), roll-out plans (ROPs), and system improvement plans (SIPs). Review monthly updates of plans and conduct follow-up as appropriate at pre-determined intervals. Design and implement the next steps as needed.
- Monitors network spending down of administrative, per capita, and match reports in coordination with grants management staff and follows up with affiliate program management and CIP Associate Director with trends and concerns.
- Leads review of monthly match reports and follows up with affiliates who are struggling and communicates best practices across the network.
- Reviews and verifies monthly affiliate enrollment rosters, track enrollments, and site capacity to inform slot allocations, and submit suggested allocations to leadership.
- Assists in creating/updating Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and other materials related to the MG Program for both HQ and affiliates’ use.
- Leads coordination of the provision of training to affiliate MG staff, designs and/or updates training materials; runs the annual and quarterly program implementation training, conducts annual training needs assessments, and implements online training using tools such as ProProfs in collaboration with the Network Training Coordinator.
- Stay informed about trends and policies in refugee resettlement through RCUSA and other relevant stakeholder meetings.
- Communicates with ORR to provide monthly reports and late enrollment requests following receipt and review from affiliate sites.
Affiliate Support
- Serves as the primary contact person for assigned MG sites.
- Conducts monthly calls with MG affiliates; maintains regular communication with network agencies. Ensures affiliate-led peer-to-peer sessions take place and are a productive space for affiliate professional growth.
- Provides regular, ongoing program guidance, technical assistance, and policy analysis.
- Provides onboarding materials to new MG program staff at affiliate sites and follow up to ensure comprehension of MG program guidelines and policies.
- Plans annual monitoring schedule, oversees, schedules, and conducts on-site and routine desk monitoring of ECDC’s MG sites to ensure compliance, document findings and prepare and submit monitoring reports in a timely manner.
- Coordinates and prepares MG sites for an ORR site or desk monitoring, including working with affiliates on their monitoring report response.
Staff Supervision
- Onboarding new headquarters MG staff through a training schedule including all aspects of the program, resettlement, and affiliate relations.
- Design workflows and systems to improve internal procedures within the MG program in collaboration with other ECDC HQ program staff.
- Assign tasks and programmatic priorities while paying attention to the strength of the team to ensure strengths are being utilized and grown.
- Approves PTOs, approves and submits bi-weekly timesheets. Any PTO request for more than 3 days must be approved by the Associate Director.
Other Responsibilities
- Assists in the planning, preparation for, and implementation of ECDC’s annual national training and conference for ECDC’s resettlement affiliates, and associated training, events, conferences, and meetings.
- Handle other tasks as needed.
Qualifications and Experience
- Bachelor’s degree required. Master’s degree preferred.
- Proven experience in supervision or leading a team. Experience supervising service providers, working with clients preferred.
- At least two years of work experience in refugee resettlement, employment, community engagement, or case management programs.
- Two-year program/project management experience is required. Familiarity with federally-funded contracts/programs is a plus.
- Proven experience in producing high-quality program reports, data collection, and analysis, preparing and tracking budgets, and writing and editing proposals.
- Proven experience in designing and conducting workshops and training for a large audience.
- Ability to plan and manage work to meet deadlines occasionally under limited time constraints.
- Ability to travel to affiliate sites for monitoring and evaluation.