Grant Writer

About Ownership Works

Founded in 2021, Ownership Works (O.W.) is a fast-growing nonprofit organization with a mission to increase prosperity through shared ownership at work. O.W. helps companies and investors implement shared ownership programs that make every employee an owner and honor the collective effort behind a company’s success. At scale, employee ownership can help millions of lower-income workers and people of color build savings and wealth, often for the first time, at businesses that are more dynamic, resilient, and successful.

O.W. has set an ambitious goal of creating at least $20B of wealth for workers by 2030 and, over the long term, making broad-based employee ownership the new norm at work. To achieve these goals, O.W. has two areas of focus:

Movement Building. Through partnerships, network-building, education, data, and storytelling, O.W. is building a movement to increase the adoption of shared ownership by private and public companies. Over 90 private equity firms, financial institutions, foundations, labor advocates, and pension funds have joined the O.W. consortium as Founding Partners and made unprecedented commitments to advance the shared ownership movement.

Hands-on Guidance. In collaboration with its Founding Partners, O.W. helps public and private companies implement broad-based employee ownership programs that improve corporate cultures, increase employee engagement and satisfaction, and create an alignment of interests between employees and employers, all of which can support better outcomes for companies and workers. Since O.W.’s founding, over 113 companies have implemented shared ownership programs, reaching over 163,000 workers.

In 2024, Ownership Works was certified as a Great Place to Work.

For more about O.W.’s programs and impact, visit https://ownershipworks.org.

About the Position

Ownership Works is seeking a self-motivated and ambitious fundraising professional interested in a substantial internal-facing role that will help them develop their career as a grant writer, content developer, and rising fundraising leader in the economic justice space broadly, with a focus on worker ownership, specifically.

With more than $57 million raised since our founding in August 2021 and with an incredible opportunity to capitalize on our momentum following our 2022 public launch, Ownership Works is recruiting a talented advancement professional and grant writer to grow our team’s capacity and resources. The Grant Writer will serve as O.W.’s lead funding proposal and report writer and generate decks and content for a range of differing funding opportunities – from corporate and foundation institutional support to HNWI, CEO, and Board individual support. The Grant Writer will support the Advancement team in crafting and refining the highest quality external-facing products to share with our prospective funders as we pitch shared ownership more aggressively in 2025 and beyond. The Grant Writer will need to proactively manage up and anticipate team needs on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis while also being able to step back and creatively support Ownership Works’ broader fundraising and impact strategies. These efforts will be in service of O.W. reaching its 2030 funding goals as we evolve out of Phase 1, focused on our launch, and into Phase 2, focused on growth.

As O.W. expands, this role will be uniquely positioned to take on increasing responsibility and larger independent projects. A successful applicant will be excited by this professional opportunity. The ideal candidate will be a self-starter who has a builder’s mindset, and enthusiasm for rolling up their sleeves to create from scratch key fundraising proposals and decks. The ideal candidate will have both superb professional writing abilities and outstanding deck development skills, not in need of coaching or editing to achieve excellence. They must have the flexibility to then adopt these skills to capture O.W.’s unique voice and perspective. The ideal candidate will also have a demonstrated commitment to social justice, an entrepreneurial spirit, and strive to meet the highest standards in mission-driven excellence and fundraising. At present, this position reports to the Associate Director for Advancement & Partnerships. The Advancement team is currently searching for a Senior Director and Associate role to double our team size from three to six FTE in 2025.

Key Responsibilities

• Writing: Serve as lead writer for funding proposals and lead reporting manager, drafting new proposals, interim and final reports, and ad hoc narratives that demonstrate O.W.’s impact, while working with the team to drive successful and prompt submissions prior to funder deadlines.
• Reporting: Own the reporting process from start to finish: tracking all deliverables, proactively creating timelines, and managing up teams to ensure content and funder needs are met early and with ample review time for the Advancement team and, when necessary, schedule review time for O.W. leadership. This includes managing both narrative content and budget reporting obligations in coordination with the account manager.
• Deck & Other Content Creation: Serve as an internal content developer for the Advancement team’s decks, supporting the team in creating, refining, and sharing the highest quality external content. Creatively develop new ways to make the O.W. case, and constantly update and control Advancement team’s pitch decks. Serve as lead author of other discrete advancement content projects, including funder event collateral, campaigns including Giving Tuesday, annual reports, sponsorship opportunities, and some partner engagement collateral pieces as applicable.
• Project Management: Execute outstanding project management skills for complex writing and reporting projects by proactively managing up the Advancement team (and, as needed, program teams) on grant application content and reporting content. Ensure the Advancement team is fully prepared -- well ahead of meeting dates -- with the necessary external-facing content for all external meetings. Successfully collaborate with several internal teams (Client Advisory Services; Marketing & Communications; Finance, etc.) to ensure their content is collected in a timely, thoughtful, and proactive way that builds trust and accountability across O.W.
• Salesforce: Work closely with the Salesforce Administrator to ensure that all proposal and reporting records are 100% accurate. Ensure that Salesforce is O.W.’s source of truth for advancement operations, especially as it relates to prospect requirements, renewal opportunities, deadlines, reporting deliverables, and any and all other aspects of the funder relationship that are text and/or content-based.
• Impact Data: Act as a key Advancement team point person on program impact metrics and ensure that the full universe of impact reporting obligations and metrics for funders are integrated into and addressed by O.W.’s evolving Data & Impact program. Work collaboratively with the program team to collect ad hoc data from across our initiatives and translate this data into successful external-facing advancement reports and proposals.
• Team & Strategy: Serve as a collaborative Advancement team member contributing to the strategic direction of both the team and O.W. as an organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• B.A./B.S. required.
• 3-5 years of experience with professional writing, preferably in a fundraising and grant writing context.
• 3-5 years of experience in project management at a mission-driven organization.

Preferred Qualifications

• Passion for social justice and the mission of Ownership Works; interest in becoming a subject matter expert in employee ownership.
• An outstanding writer who can persuasively and succinctly make the case for shared ownership.
• Highly responsive, accountable, and collaborative team member.
• Superior organizational skills; an ability to maintain constant attention to detail; strong instinct to proactively document and track everything.
• Exceptional project management skills that enable the execution of complex, multi-stakeholder projects over short-, medium-, and long-term timelines.
• Empathetic and compassionate, with an understanding that positive relationships (both internal and external) are essential components of successful fundraising.
• Interested in joining a fast-paced organization on the cutting edge of doing good.
• Basic experience in Salesforce or a willingness to learn.

At Ownership Works, we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. If you’re excited about this position but your experience doesn’t precisely align with every qualification, we still encourage you to apply.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Ownership Works is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women, people of color, people with disabilities, LGBTQIA persons, and veterans are encouraged to apply.

Compensation

Compensation for this role is determined by several factors, including work location, individual skills, relevant experience, and business needs. For candidates based in New York City, the estimated salary range is $100,000 – $120,000, plus an annual discretionary performance-based bonus subject to board approval.

Benefits

We offer a comprehensive benefits package aligned with the professional services sector, which includes excellent health, vision, and dental coverage for you and your family, unlimited paid time off, a 401(k) plan with generous employer contributions, and 18 weeks of fully paid parental leave.

Location

O.W. is building a New York City-based team. The team works from our brand-new Midtown Manhattan office space two days per week.