Accountant, Grants

Job Description

The John

D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation is one of the nation's largest independent foundations. The Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

The Foundation supports creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. Mac Arthur invests in solving some of the world’s most pressing social challenges, including advancing global climate solutions, promoting local justice reform in the U.S., revitalizing local news, expanding who creates, uses, and benefits from artificial intelligence, and strengthening the well-being of Native communities.

In addition to the Mac Arthur Fellows Program and the global 100&Change competition, the Foundation continues its historic commitments to the role of journalism in a responsive democracy as well as the vitality of our headquarters city, Chicago. The Foundation also maintains offices in Nigeria and India.

The Finance Department is responsible for all accounting, banking, payroll, internal control, tax, audit, budget, forecasting and financial reporting & analysis for the Foundation. Finance is also responsible for maintaining the financial enterprise systems as well as end user support and training.

The Grants Accountant is a key member of the Finance team, responsible for managing the grants payment process, ensuring compliance with all policies and procedures. This person will analyze grant payments and provide information as required to program managers, grantees, external funders as well as execute tax reporting to demonstrate accountability and transparency in grants and impact investments-related financial management.

• Process all grant payments, invoices and approvals in a timely manner; verifying that payments are correct, properly authorized and coded in the grant management system (GMS) and Workday
• Manage upload of grant and trade ACH/wire payments ensuring to resolve bank payment issues including re-issuance of wires and wire payment instruction issues
• Maintain and update grant supplier records in Workday including confirmation of grantee electronic banking information
• Manage account reconciliations for all grant-related general ledger accounts
• Process grant amendments (transfers, returns, rescissions, etc.). Researching and correctly recording complex grant transactions; reconciling grant accounting applications

• Monitor payments, out-of-corpus requirements, blacklisted organizations, and donor advised funds, and report them on the annual tax return
• Participate in the grant budget process, including variance analysis and future legal commitments, monitoring funding sources on an ongoing basis, processing funding source transfer requests, and working with staff to create or restructure funding sources and program codes
• Review expenditure responsibility (ER) reports, elevate issues as necessary; prepare all ER reporting, including tax and audit schedules; clearly communicate complex grant and ER policies and regulations to employees and grantees
• Conduct all grant accounting and analysis for grants to support reporting financial statements, tax return and forecasting schedules

• Manage all aspects of accounting for Impact Investments, including tracking loans and equity investment valuations, analyses of bad debt reserve and PRI receivables aging, external communication with borrowers on payment issues, and ensuring the data integrity of the transfers across systems
• Serve as Finance subject matter expert in collaboration with Legal, Grants Management, and Impact Investments teams on system implementations and updates to policies, procedures, workflow, and system design changes related to Program-related Investments (PRIs) and Mission-related Investments (MRIs)

• Collaborate with key internal stakeholders (i.e. Legal, Grants Management, Impact Investments, etc.) to update expenditure reporting procedures, checklists, and workflow within the GMS
• En…