Associate Specialist, GP Field Program Operations

Major Function

The Associate Specialist is responsible for assisting with the administration of outgoing programmatic and operational agreements for the Great Plains (GP) and Native Nations Conservation (NNC) programs. Provides support to Financial Leads and Program staff throughout the agreement process and ensures coordination. Contributes to agreements issuance, tracking project deliverables, payments to recipients, processing journal entries in Workday (e.g. reclasses, assistance with year-end accruals for grants, etc.) and agreements close out. Coordinates with Financial Leads to ensure financial, contractual, and administrative information of outgoing and other operational agreements is accurate and well-organized in related Operations Systems (SmartSimple, Workday, SharePoint and AirTable), deadlines are met, and problems or inconsistencies are raised and addressed. Provides support with operational functions of field-based program as needed, including Accounts Payable, field equipment management and tracking, and GP’s fleet vehicle data monitoring and record keeping.
Key Responsibilities

- Supports Financial Leads with outgoing agreements, including grants; consultancies; MOUs; travel support, equipment loan, licensing, milestone infrastructure, and participation agreements; honoraria; and field office space related agreements.

- In coordination with Program staff, supports pre-agreement preparation by collecting and reviewing documents such as recipient and tax forms, identifying and resolving issues, following up with partners and Program staff as needed, and setting up or updating partner records in SmartSimple and troubleshooting any system integration issues.

- Assists Program staff with the issuance of new agreements, including the Scope of Work and Budget development, and the use of the agreements management system, as needed.

- Drafts all types of agreements, ensuring that pertinent Prime Donor provisions are included, as applicable.

- Prepares paperwork and routes agreements for internal review, secures timely signatures and distributes documents to appropriate parties.

- Processes and tracks outgoing agreement payments in a timely manner and in accordance with WWF policies and procedures, including reconciling receipts and expense reports as needed.

- Monitors and clears advances, records expenses for conditional grants.

- In coordination with Financial Leads, supports monitoring of compliance with deliverable requirements, including issuing reminders to subgrantees and consultants.

- Processes journal entries in Workday throughout the lifecycle of the agreement (e.g., agreement accounting reclasses, obligation adjustments, assistance with year-end accruals for grants, etc.).

- Closes out agreements following WWF policies and procedures and coordinates with Financial Leads, Program staff, and partners accordingly.

- Maintains information and files pertaining to agreements across multiple systems. Regularly monitors on-going compliance with WWF reporting requirements and individual project deadlines. Assists in ensuring all project reports are routed to appropriate individuals for review and approvals are recorded.

- Ensures all accounting throughout the agreement lifecycle adheres to FASB guidelines.

- Provides weekly status updates to Operations team on in-progress agreements/amendments, deliverables, closeouts, etc.

- Provides support to the management and coordination of day-to-day administrative operations and special projects, as directed.

- Identifies, coordinates and expedites the communication of information and issues both inter-departmentally and intra-departmentally, as well as externally with partners, as appropriate.

- Provides support in tracking and analyzing GP’s fleet vehicle data and helps troubleshoot inconsistencies.

- Performs other duties as assigned.

Core Competencies:

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Attention to Detail & Quality: Demonstrates a high level of accuracy and attention to detail