Program Associate, Finance and Engagement

Overview

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is seeking a finance professional to join our team as a full-time Program Associate, Finance and Engagement. This role is situated on the Engagement Team, which is guided by the vision of the Director of Engagement, to advance NACTO’s membership-based financial management workstream and provide general support for the organizational financial systems.

The ideal candidate has a demonstrated background in accounting and project management for a high-impact nonprofit organization. This role is supervised by the Senior Manager, Member Experience, with close collaboration with and guidance from NACTO’s Fractional CFO. This role also collaborates closely with the Member Experience team within the broader Engagement team at NACTO, as well as with the entire NACTO staff, to support sustainable and transparent financial systems at the organizational level.

The position will be remote, with some travel to support NACTO events, including the annual Designing Cities Conference and other events as needed. An interest and curiosity for working for a transportation-focused organization is essential.

Who we are

NACTO is a nonprofit association of around 100 major North American cities and transit agencies (and counting), formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. Our members include cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston, and transit agencies such as LA Metro and Chicago Transit Authority. Our mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life. Our staff team is passionate, outcomes-oriented, and committed to challenging the status quo in transportation and raising the bar for city streets. Our values include transformative vision, mobility justice, collective action, meaningful impact, public leadership, and integrity.

The Engagement Team at NACTO is composed of four core areas that touch all the work at NACTO: (1) Membership & Member Engagement (2) Capacity Building (3) Events (including the annual Designing Cities Conference) and (4) Field Building. As a membership organization whose goal is to build a connected, mutually supportive community of professionals in city transportation departments and transit agencies, the Engagement Team supports our members by providing a member engagement platform that offers information, resources, inspiration, and tools to help them make change in their communities. The Engagement Team works cross-collaboratively with the Policy & Practice team to convene, activate, and inspire members through working groups, peer networks, committees, learning/collaboration spaces, and fellowship programs.

Who you are

You’re a curious, forward-thinking, and organized professional with at least introductory experience working in finance. You’re eager to use your accounting skills in order to contribute to NACTO’s organizational financial management in order to serve the organization’s mission. Your work will anchor the organization’s ability to provide our members with an exceptional experience in our network. You’re open to taking direction from and collaborating with the Senior Manager, Member Experience, in order to manage the accounts receivable process for membership-based finances. You view NACTO members as customers, and you approach tasks such as dues collection, invoicing members, engaging in member sponsorship work, and diligently following up on payments with excellent, service-oriented detail. You are open to working in close collaboration with NACTO’s Fractional CFO and following their financial best practices and guidance to manage the accounts receivable process and provide bookkeeping support in a way that is timely, accountable, and demonstrates financial stewardship.

Attention to detail is one of your strongest assets, and you apply this attribute to your approach to the reporting and communicating workstream. You capture, communicate, and translate financial information with clarity, whether it is in a report or in a meeting with your colleagues. Whether you’re supporting our Fractional CFO with grant management, supporting the closeout of our annual Designing Cities conference, partnering on our annual audit, or assisting with our budget-building process, you know how to be organized, clear, and accurate as you capture and report on NACTO’s finances.

You’re knowledgeable about financial administration, and you understand that this workstream enables our team to achieve the organizational mission effectively. Whether you’re managing the team’s travel process or collaborating with the Director of People and Culture on renewing and maintaining our essential tech platforms, you’re keeping NACTO’s budget and NACTO’s organizational effectiveness front of mind.

You recognize that thoughtful management of financial systems requires balancing project management skills with strong knowledge of financial platforms. You’re savvy with accounting systems, budgeting software, including QuickBooks, Excel for preparing reports and analyzing data, and Hubspot as our CRM. When you need to uplevel your skills around infrastructure building or learning new software, you’re open to learning and growing for the sake of maintaining a financially sound membership-based financial management approach, as well as supporting our Fractional CFO with NACTO’s general finance processes. You recognize that expert project management acumen is bolstered by mindfulness about deadlines, the ability to communicate your progress, and the ability to manage multiple financial workstreams simultaneously.

To be successful in this job, you will excel in the following core competencies:

• Accounting
  • Managing the accounts receivable process
    • In collaboration with NACTO’s fractional CFO, you use your accounting skills to manage the accounts receivable process in a meticulous and intentional manner that serves NACTO’s members. You approach membership-based financial management, including dues collection, invoicing members, and following up on invoices with timeliness and responsiveness. You are a thoughtful and dependable collaborator for conference support, collaborating with the Associate Director, Convening to cultivate a seamless financial experience. This includes sharing agreements with sponsors, spearheading sponsor collections, invoicing sponsors, and diligently following up on payments, collections, and issues that arise. You are adept at supporting NACTO’s presence in vendor portals, submitting required information in procurement portals to facilitate payments, and using your problem-solving skills to troubleshoot missing checks and payments.
    • You recognize that strong member engagement is an essential aspect of NACTO’s work and are committed to offering well-oiled financial management systems in service of our member network and our team as a whole. You have a customer service mindset in your approach to membership-based financial management and understand your role in creating a trustworthy financial platform for our member network. You work to bolster the efforts of the Senior Manager, Member Experience, and the Program Associate, Engagement, by offering financial support that elevates their member experience and member engagement efforts.
    • Should you be based in the New York City area, you will support the collection of checks at our office. You will also assist with overseeing NACTO’s virtual mailbox, ensuring consistent, attentive handling of incoming and outgoing financial correspondence.
  • Managing the accounts payable process
    • In collaboration with NACTO’s Fractional CFO, you use your accounting skills to facilitate an organized and seamless accounts payable process through bill.com. This includes W-9 collection and issuance, issuing payments to vendors, managing honorariums, and overseeing our credit card platform (Divvy) management.
  • Bookkeeping
    • In collaboration with NACTO’s fractional CFO, you use your expert attention to detail and organizational skills to support our organization’s general bookkeeping via QuickBooks. This includes maintaining accurate documentation for income, expenses, assets, and liabilities, recording transactions properly in the accounting system, and reconciling on a monthly basis. You should also be able to post accurate manual journal entries as needed, most frequently to record payroll and prepaid expense transactions.
• Reporting and communicating
  • You understand that grants bring NACTO’s mission to fruition, and you are committed to collaborating with NACTO’s Fractional CFO, and the leadership team as necessary to offer support on the grant management process. You keep the appropriate collaborators apprised as necessary, and ensure that the grant process is seamless from inception to completion.
  • You’ll also support the closeout of our annual Designing Cities conference and collaborate with both the Engagement Team and the Policy, Practice, and Design Team on reporting.
  • As NACTO pursues an organizational audit each year, you provide timely and accurate compliance support by receiving and responding to the auditor's list of deliverables.
  • In collaboration with NACTO’s Fractional CFO, you support the maintenance of NACTO’s budget efforts by making thoughtful recommendations to the Fractional CFO based on the financial needs of the organization, based on feasibility, and projected revenue. You translate the organization's needs into expense-specific category targets for the year, run reports, pull data, organize spreadsheets, take notes from meetings, and translate them into line items that capture the financial impact of the team’s annual work plan.
  • You maintain a consistent and transparent dialogue with the Fractional CFO on the state of the organization’s finances. You also maintain a consistent, transparent dialogue with your manager, the Senior Manager, Member Experience, regarding the state of membership-based financial management to ensure a seamless, transparent membership process.
  • You capture, communicate, and translate financial information in a manner that is clear, concise, and accessible for our NACTO team. You are excited to share your findings during weekly and monthly staff meetings to enhance understanding across the team, supporting the team in better serving our members, and supporting the organization in being financially sustainable and responsible.
• Finance administration
  • Effective travel management allows our team to travel to do their work toward the organizational mission. Tapping into NACTO’s travel protocol and policy, you manage the internal team's travel requests in a way that is organized, timely, and aligned with NACTO’s budget.
  • You collaborate with the Director of People and Culture and NACTO’s tech consulting firm to offer financial foresight on software renewals, ensuring that renewals are organized, timely, documented, and tracked using project management software, and aligned with NACTO’s tech budget.
• Strong project management skills
  • You understand that financial processes are brought to life through strong project management practices. You’re keen to use NACTO’s project management platforms and financial software in tandem to organize your work, make your work transparent to your colleagues, loop internal team members into your process, track deliverables, and meet deadlines. Because this role requires oversight of many financial processes, you use project management skills to handle multiple financial workstreams simultaneously, ensuring all projects stay on track.
  • You use project management skills and software to foster financial transparency in your collaborations with the Engagement Team and the Policy, Practice, and Design Team, ensuring both teams have the information and knowledge needed to make smart, informed decisions about their budgets.
  • You know how to be adaptive and flexible while still maintaining financial integrity. You treat risks and challenges as opportunities for a more sound infrastructure and more consistent communication. You acknowledge that asking questions, consulting experts, and conducting research are critical steps in turning gaps and concerns into opportunities.
  • You use self-direction, self-motivation, curiosity, inquisitiveness, and organizational skills to drive your own workstream and schedule, completing your projects in a timely and thoughtful manner.
  • You implement and champion NACTO’s organizational infrastructure, including community principles and project management practices. You participate in organizational projects as requested, ensuring your collaborative efforts align with NACTO values and community principles.

Qualifications

NACTO does not have minimum requirements for education or professional experience. We encourage all candidates with relevant experiences and professional backgrounds to apply. Generally, we expect qualified candidates to have the following baseline experience for a Program Associate at NACTO:

Program Associate

• A proven track record and a few years of professional experience as a support or co-lead in at least two core responsibilities of the role.
• A proven track record and at least a few years of experience as a project manager on both short-term projects and large-scale, multiyear projects.
• A proven track record and at least a few years of experience collaborating with a diverse team across varying career levels in a cross-functional, collaborative work environment.

NACTO engages in a negotiation-free practice for salaries and benefits that is aligned with our internal equitable compensation plan. We seek to offer competitive salaries and benefits that are aligned with market research and the requirements of the role. All salary offers are based on a combination of factors including years of experience and core competencies instead of a candidate’s ability to negotiate a salary.

NACTO is committed to workplace diversity and inclusion. We are equal opportunity employers and do not discriminate in hiring or employment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, marital status, sexual orientation, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law. We offer competitive salaries based on a nonprofit scale and commensurate with experience. Benefits include accrued PTO and family leave; healthcare, dental and vision insurance; expanded disability and life insurance; retirement savings plan; and pre-tax commuter benefits.