Grants & Trusts Officer At Open Cultural Center

Do you have experience in fundraising and grant writing in the social sector, and are you interested in working in a multicultural and growing nonprofit organisation? Open Cultural Center is looking for a motivated new team member to manage the process of writing grants and trusts, in our office in Barcelona. This position requires strong writing and time management skills, as well as experience in grant writing. Spanish and English fluency is also required for this position.

The organisation

Open Cultural Center is a non-profit organisation that carries out various projects with migrants and refugees in Spain and Greece. In Barcelona, we offer various educational and cultural activities to both local people and newcomers to increase social inclusion and support migrants and refugees in finding their way into Spanish society. We do this with the support of public institutions such as Ajuntament de Barcelona and in strong collaboration with the private sector for ensuring funding, volunteers and other forms of support, while also working closely with other organisations through Erasmus+ projects.

What will you do?

The mission of the Grants & Trusts Officer is to write project proposals and project justifications for public grants and private trusts supporting all projects at OCC in Spain and Greece. This role involves drafting the logical framework of each project proposal, writing the proposal and following up at the end of the project in order to write its justification. The Grants and Trusts Officer will report to the Fundraising and Communications Manager and will collaborate daily with project managers across OCC Spain and OCC Greece to ensure grant writing fits the needs and reality of each project and follow up with the monitoring and evaluation actions needed for justification. The Grants & Trusts Officer will work with tight deadlines following the schedule of publication of grants and trust calls from public institutions such as Ajuntament de Barcelona, Generalitat de Catalunya or the European Commission.

Below you can find a detailed description of the responsibilities related to this role:

Writing Project Proposals

• Researching of new grants and trust opportunities at local and international level.
• Staying informed and aware of the date of publication of calls from different grants and trusts from local to European level and planning the application process.
• Drafting the logical framework of each project proposal including objectives, activities, indicators, impact, etc.
• Writing project proposals in Spanish and/or English.
• In the case of European calls: search for project partners or consortiums, coordinating with European partners for the project framework design and grant-writing process, leading writing work and partner meetings in the project proposal phase.

Project Justification

• Throughout the implementation phase of an approved project, making sure each project manager is aware of which grants are currently financing their project and has been informed of which goals need to be met and which indicators have to be monitored.
• Monitor and support project managers in assigning project expenses to the applicable grants in accordance with the approved budget and breakdown.
• Throughout the implementation phase of an approved project, coordinating with the communications team to ensure that the dissemination guidelines of each grant or trust provider are correctly being followed.
• After the end of each project, gathering all information needed to write the justification by coordinating with different stakeholders within the organisation: monitoring and evaluation data of the project; dissemination material; financial information; etc.
• Using this information, write each project’s justification.

Management Tasks

• Meet fundraising objectives. Income through grants and trusts for 2023 and 2024 is 700.000€ and 800.000€ respectively.
• With the support of the Fundraising and Communications Manager, managing the “Grants” database to ensure all information related to each grant –from finances to dissemination– is up to date.
• Staying aware of proposal and justification deadlines and managing time to ensure each submission is made on time.
• Coordinating with different project managers, as well as with the management team of the organisation, to stay conscious of the organisation’s strategy and priorities, as well as the yearly goals of each project.
• Based on the above, participating in the decision-making process of which projects need to be presented to each call for grants or trusts.
• Communicating with donors during the proposal, approval and justification processes, when needed.

What do we offer?

The OCC is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace that fosters the active participation of everyone and the generation of a positive impact to the team and the target groups. We offer our employees the following:

• Annual gross salary of 21.000€-25.000€ depending on experience.
• Working schedule of 38hs a week, with 13 payments, permanent contract, 3 months probation, and a holiday period of 42 natural days (30 working days per year).
• Starting date: ASAP
• The opportunity to work in the passionate environment of a grassroots organisation in the heart of Barcelona and with strong connections to our Greek branch.
• A flexible working schedule and the opportunity to work remotely 2 days a week.
• An opportunity to work in an intercultural team consisting of employees, volunteers and external partners.
• The opportunity to develop profound knowledge and experience in the system of public and private grants in Catalunya, as well as European grants.
• The possibility to join transnational meetings with partner NGOs throughout Europe.

What are the job requirements?

Must haves:

• A minimum of two years experience in proposal and justification writing for grants and trusts.
• Outstanding writing skills in both English and Spanish.
• Advanced level of spoken English and Spanish.
• Excellent time management and communication skills.
• Analytical and synthetic thinking, the capacity to adapt one’s discourse to different audiences.
• Good skills in Excel/Google Sheets and preferably also in other Management tools such as Airtable and Slack.
• To be flexible, proactive and open-minded: we work in a fast-changing environment and you have to be capable to adjust to sudden changes and new developments.

Preferable skills:

• Experience working in sector the Spanish social sector, or in the field of migration.
• Experience working with international partners and EU grants.
• Speaking Catalan is a big advantage.
• Academic background in Social Sciences, Migration Studies, Human Rights Studies or similar.
• Academic knowledge or experience in logical frameworks for social action projects.
• Experience with digital tools and no code tools such as Airtable, Notion, Slack and/or Trello.

What is the application process?

We always let you know if you are selected for the application process or not. Applications have to be submitted through our application form (see link below). We will not consider applications that come in through other channels. Once selected, the process is as follows:

1. We will invite you for a first interview to get to know each other, talk about the position and the organisation in more detail, discuss your expectations and ambitions and answer any questions you may have.
2. When the first interview result is positive, we will ask you for previous job references, and the completion of an assignment. The assignment will relate to database and reporting skills.
3. When the result of the assignment is positive, there will be a second interview. In this interview we will discuss in more detail the skills and experience you have, and how these fit the position. We will also discuss the result of the assignment and any feedback you have regarding the assignment.
4. When the second interview is positive, you will have your final interview with the director of the organisation. Together with our hiring team, the director will make the final decision about the hiring process outcome.