Senior Grants and Compliance Manager, Child SAFE

Catholic Relief Services · Baltimore

NOTE: The above Pay Range only applies to applicants who perform the job within the US and to applicants classified by CRS as International Assignees. Staff hired on local payroll would follow the respective Country pay range. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your anticipated work location during the candidate selection process.

Project Overview

CRS is seeking candidates for a multi-country child development, care, and protection project. The overall objective of the project is to strengthen national systems that protect vulnerable children, support families, and improve early childhood development through locally led and sustainable approaches. The project will improve outcomes for vulnerable children by strengthening child protection systems, supporting families and caregivers, advancing integrated early childhood health and development, and reducing reliance on residential care.

Job Summary

The Sr Grants and Compliance Manager, provides oversight of CRS grants and compliance systems across the global Child SAFE program, focusing on sub award management under an FAA. The role is responsible for leading the implementation, standardization, and continuous strengthening of CRS policies, procedures, and operational frameworks, ensuring consistent and compliant application across participating country programs and partners within the assigned ChildSAFE portfolio. The role ensures a coherent, high-quality, and risk-informed approach to grant management, with accountability for system performance, compliance integrity, and operational effectiveness at scale. The position drives institutional learning, system improvement, and global harmonization of practices to support rapid, accountable emergency responses.

Roles and Key Responsibilities

Global Policy and Systems Leadership

Lead the development and implementation of CRS ChildSAFE FAA sub awards, including compliance policies, procedures, and systems.
Establish and maintain standardized frameworks, tools, and protocols governing grant management and compliance.
Ensure alignment with donor regulations, CRS policies, and host governments.

Strategic Grants Management and Oversight

Provide detailed oversight of ChildSAFE grant and FAA management functions across the ChildSAFE portfolio.
Support agreement development, review, and approval at both the CRS and sub-recipient levels, ensuring adherence to CRS and donor requirements.
Provide support for the timely assessment of partner capacity and ability to adhere to specific donor requirements. Develop related action plans with program and finance staff to address any capacity or system gaps.
Ensure effective oversight of the full grant lifecycle and operational efficiency at scale.
Develop and maintain a reporting tracking and communications system to ensure that sub-recipients adhere to reporting deadlines, milestones, expiration dates, and donor approved changes in grant procedures.
Collaborate across various workstreams within CRS including but not limited to program quality, MEAL, SDP, finance, global supply chain, and global risk and compliance.

Reporting and Milestone Management

Lead the design and implementation of reporting frameworks and practices for ChildSAFE, ensuring consistent tracking of grant performance, compliance, and operational progress.
Track milestone progress, completion and payment and maintain records of partner milestone progress and completion for audit records.
Establish and maintain reporting systems and tools that support effective monitoring, informed decision-making, and alignment between program, compliance, and operational functions.
Provide oversight and quality assurance of country-level and partner reporting, ensuring completeness, accuracy, and alignment with CRS and donor requirements, while proactively identifying trends, gaps, and risks.
Oversee the consolidation and review of ChildSAFE reports, ensuring coherence across inputs from country programs, partners, and HQ teams prior to submission to donors and internal stakeholders.
Serve as a technical resource on reporting standards and requirements, guiding CRS staff and partners to strengthen consistency, clarity, and compliance in reporting practices.
Drive continuous improvement of reporting approaches, strengthening efficiency, usability, and alignment with broader grants management, compliance, and risk management systems.
Provide inputs for budgeting and forecasting to support the Chief of Party.

Risk Management and Compliance

Lead identification and mitigation of systemic compliance and operational risks across ChildSAFE countries.
Establish compliance monitoring mechanisms and controls for the ChildSAFE project in line with CRS policy and procedures.
Support audit readiness; ensuring integration of lessons learned into systems.
Monitor compliance with donor regulations, award conditions, consortium agreements, and CRS policies across participating countries and partners.

Capacity Strengthening and Learning

Strengthen grants and compliance capacity across CRS staff and partners through tools, guidance, and training, with a focus on FAA sub awards
Promote organizational learning and continuous improvement across ChildSAFE programming.
Support institutional strengthening of partners and country programs based on CRS and CI partnership principles. Provide key support in timely resolution of partner challenges.

Catholic Relief Services is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. Catholic Relief Services works to save, protect, and transform lives in need in more than 100 countries, without regard to race, religion or nationality. Catholic Relief Services’ relief and development work is accomplished through programs of emergency response, HIV, health, agriculture, education, microfinance, and peacebuilding. We welcome as a part of our staff people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values and our commitment to serving those in need. CRS’ processes and policies reflect our commitment to safeguarding children and vulnerable adults from abuse and exploitation.

CRS welcomes candidates from the countries and regions in which we work. In the event the successful candidate is an expatriate, the anticipated duration of the assignment is informed by a term limit, based on the type and level of the job and the needs of the agency.

CRS is committed to safeguarding program participants, community members, staff and volunteers from all forms of exploitation and abuse. The successful candidate is expected to sign and adhere to CRS´ Code of Conduct.

CRS talent acquisition procedures reflect our commitment to safeguarding the rights and dignity of all people - especially children and vulnerable adults - to live free from abuse and harm.

Disclaimer: This job description is not an exhaustive list of the skill, effort, duties, and responsibilities associated with the position.

CRS is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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