Senior Grant Writer

The Role

The Senior Grant Writer leads proposal writing and grant reporting efforts for Impact Justice’s small-but-mighty Development team. You will work with and across program teams leading innovative projects in criminal justice reform–like a reentry housing innovation, an AmeriCorps program designed for formerly incarcerated leaders, and creative approaches to improving food in prison. You’ll craft and refine proposals for well-aligned funders and funding opportunities and manage a grants calendar of proposal and reporting deadlines.

Who You Are

You are a confident, fast writer who knows their way around a grants calendar. The opportunity to write about a wide range of innovative criminal justice reform programs is exciting to you, and you know how to ask the right questions in order to craft compelling, clear proposal language. You’re not too precious about your drafts; you appreciate edits, and your top priority is landing on the most engaging, compelling, effective narrative you can. You can juggle multiple balls without any dropping and maximize efficiency without sacrificing quality. You can anticipate problems or decision-points and elevate those rather than waiting to be told or asked, and you aren’t comfortable letting even small errors slide. You’re comfortable working with multiple different leaders and are at ease being flexible and adaptable.

What You Will Do

The anticipated start date for this position is May 2026. You will report to IJ’s Director of Development. Your core responsibilities will be:

• Proposal Writing – You will draft, edit, and submit grant proposals, letters of intent, and concept notes. This involves synthesizing past language, writing new content aligned with a funder’s goals, meeting with program leaders to gather information, and working through a review process to get the final language right. You will also help lead the development/review of proposal attachments, including budgets, budget narratives, financial documents, and supplemental organization or program-specific materials.
• Grant Reporting – You will draft, edit, and submit grant reports. You’ll also help build more efficient and effective grant reporting systems to test and refine across program teams at Impact Justice.
• Post-Award Grants Management – You will help manage Impact Justice’s portfolio of awarded grants. This involves careful review of award letters, reporting deadline tracking, and collaboration with finance and program departments on post-award grant compliance.
• Prospect Research – You will review Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and help identify and research potential funding sources, including public and private grant opportunities, contracting opportunities, and prizes.
• Institutional Fundraising Strategy – You will play a role in goal setting and strategic planning for Impact Justice’s overall institutional funding portfolio, in collaboration with the Director of Development and Senior Manager, Development and Donor Experience. This involves revenue forecasting and work to build a grants calendar that closes gaps in funding.

We are also committed to ethical, nuanced approaches to AI use in writing and fundraising and are currently exploring various options to support our development work. This will be an area of exploration and growth for Impact Justice’s Development team, led by the Director of Development. The successful candidate for this position will be comfortable with, or have experience with, large language models such as Claude and Chat GPT.

Experience Level

Successful candidates typically have 5+ years of professional experience, of which at least 3 years should have included a focus on nonprofit grant writing. Your previous experience managing the types of tasks and projects that drive fundraising success and are relevant to this role are more important to us than years of experience alone.

That said, we know there are great candidates who may not think they fit into what we’ve described above or who have important skills we haven’t thought of. If that is you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself!

Required Qualifications

• Exceptional writing and copyediting skills.
• Ability to synthesize program design, needs, and impact into clear, persuasive narrative.
• Effective project and people management skills – ability to work independently and across multiple program teams.
• Demonstrated time management skills, including the ability to work on multiple projects and prioritize deadlines.
• Strong research skills; navigate online directories and databases with ease.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Positive, solutions-oriented approach to problem-solving and receiving edits and feedback.
• Proficiency with standard office technology/software and web applications.
• Experience with or the capacity to learn AI tools

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with program design, program evaluation, and logic models
• Experience with CRMs (particularly Bloomerang)
• Experience building and enhancing systems for effective grant reporting and compliance

Applying

Consistent with our compensation philosophy, our starting salaries are established to represent strong compensation in the marketplace and to maintain internal equity. The starting salary for this position is fixed at $82,002, with annual increases defined by the current collective bargaining agreement. This is a bargaining unit position with Impact Justice United represented by OPEIU International. The benefits that come with working at Impact Justice include medical, dental, and FSA plans, significant vacation and wellness leave, and immediate vesting in our 401K with a generous match. This is a full-time, salaried position.

This is a full-time, salaried position. The candidate should be located in one of our office locations: Oakland, CA; Washington, DC; or Los Angeles, CA. The Senior Grant Writer will work under a hybrid schedule with at least two in-office days per week. Periodic deviations to the regular hybrid schedule may be required due to program needs. We are not considering remote staff for this position.

If this all sounds like a good fit for you, please send your resume and a one-page cover letter explaining why you are particularly interested in the role and why we should be particularly interested in you!

We plan on making decisions on a rolling basis, so the earlier you apply the better.

Hiring Process

Elements of the Impact Justice hiring process may include phone screen

interviews, candidate exercises (written or presentations), Zoom interviews, in person interviews, and reference checks. Candidates are welcome to ask for alternative arrangements in the process if needed (for example, conducting an interview via phone rather than Zoom), Impact Justice will do our best to accommodate reasonable requests. Please communicate any alternative arrangements requested to the hiring manager.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Impact Justice provides equal employment opportunities to all applicants without regard to race/ethnicity, color, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, religion, national origin, age, criminal history, or disability.

About Impact Justice

Impact Justice advances safety, justice, and opportunity through boundary-breaking work that honors and empowers people and is changing expectations about what we can accomplish together. We imagine, build, and scale innovations, leverage research and other knowledge to connect the desire for change with informed action, and work to shift the narrative so that decision-makers and the public understand what’s at stake and what’s possible.

This is a bargaining unit position with Impact Justice United represented by OPEIU International. The benefits that come with working at Impact Justice include medical, dental, and FSA plans, significant vacation and wellness leave, and immediate vesting in our 401K with a generous match. This is a full-time, salaried position.