Grants & Impact Manager

About Common Mission Project (CMP)

The Common Mission Project (CMP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that builds the education and innovation infrastructure for the country's most consequential national interest work. Through flagship programs spanning national security (Hacking for Defense), diplomacy, maritime, and emerging civic and STEM initiatives, CMP equips student teams, educators, and university partners to take on hard problems and build the ventures, methodologies, and solutions that move them forward.

CMP delivers the methodology, educator certification, and diligence infrastructure that turn student inquiry into validated discovery, and emerging founders into the next generation of national interest entrepreneurs. CMP trains and certifies educators across 80+ universities, runs a multi-phase Innovation Fund that has deployed over $1M to student teams advancing prototypes against national interest problems, and produces senior convenings like Red Queen and the NSIE Summit that bring together military, academic, government, and venture leaders. CMP is funded through federal contracts and a diversifying base of foundation grants, philanthropy, and research partnerships, positioning the organization for the next phase of growth as a research-translation and entrepreneurship-education partner to universities, federal agencies, and the broader innovation ecosystem.

Position Summary

The Grants & Impact Manager owns the operation of CMP's Innovation Fund: application intake, budget review, diligence summaries, and recommendation memos. The Fund is a multi-phase vehicle that has deployed over $1M to student teams advancing prototypes against national interest problems, and its diligence process is becoming the standard for evaluating student teams across a federal and academic portfolio. You will run that process with rigor, expanding the funding application to cover discovery, prototyping and production stages and building mentor networks into the coaching packages that travel with each team.

Alongside the Director of Finance, you will be one of the closest people in the organization to the funded teams, and that proximity is the point. As you run diligence and stay in contact with teams, you will capture and structure the narrative-worthy material the work produces: specific outcomes, follow-on funding, traction moments, and team progress. You will not produce the polished external story; you are the source of the raw material that makes those stories land, feeding structured impact evidence to the Executive Director, the Development function, and CMP's federal reporting.

This Role is For You If…

• You love spreadsheets: you can build and design a budget, pressure-test a plan, and write a recommendation you would defend.
• You notice the story inside the spreadsheet: the traction moment, the follow-on round, the deployment that matters.
• You like being close to student teams and educators. 
• You are rigorous about both detail and process, without letting process replace judgment.
• You want your evaluation work to shape how a national portfolio funds student innovation.

Key Responsibilities

Innovation Fund Operations

• Application-Deployment: Run the Fund's intake and deployment end to end: application windows, screening, and the pipeline that moves teams from submission to decision.
• Budget Review: Conduct budget review on team applications: cost realism, spend plans, and the financial judgment that protects the Fund's capital.
• Diligence & Recommendations: Produce diligence summaries and recommendation memos that give decision-makers what they need: evidence, risk, and a clear recommendation.
• Application Expansion: Expand the funding application to cover all stages, so the Fund meets teams across their full development arc.
• Data Packages & Mentors: Build mentor networks into the data packages that accompany funded teams, so capital arrives with the connections that make it productive.

Diligence as Standard

• Methodology Stewardship: Maintain and refine CMP's proprietary diligence methodology and scoring rubrics as the documented standard, applied consistently and improved deliberately.
• Portfolio-Grade Rigor: Operate the diligence process at the quality bar required for it to serve as the portfolio-wide standard for evaluating student teams.

Impact Capture & Evidence

• Team Proximity: Stay in structured contact with funded teams, tracking outcomes, follow-on funding, deployments, and progress as they happen.
• Impact Evidence: Capture and structure the narrative-worthy material the portfolio produces, and feed it to the Executive Director, the Development function, and federal reporting in usable form.
• Metrics Integration: Partner with the Data & Insights function so Fund outcomes flow into CMP's longitudinal tracking, portfolio metrics and donor reporting.

First 90-Day Success Milestone Examples

Days 1-30: Take Over the Pipeline

Establish command of the Fund's current state: active applications, funded teams, diligence backlog, and the documented methodology. Set the working rhythm with the Director of Finance. Deliver a written Fund operations assessment covering pipeline health, process gaps, and the expansion plan for the full funding arc.

Days 31-60: Run Diligence at Standard

Run a full diligence cycle through your seat: intake, budget review, summaries, and recommendation memos delivered on schedule. Begin structured team contact with the current portfolio and stand up the impact capture format. Draft the expanded application covering all programs. 

Days 61-90: Produce the Evidence

Deliver the first structured impact package from the portfolio: outcomes, follow-on funding, and traction documented in a form the Executive Director and Development function can use directly. Ship the expanded application and the first mentor-inclusive data package. Present the Fund operating plan for the next two quarters.

Qualifications

• Diligence Experience: 4+ years in grantmaking, venture diligence, program funding, or small-business/startup evaluation, with direct responsibility for funding deployment.
• Financial Judgment: Demonstrated budget and financial review skills: you can build & evaluate a spend plan and defend your assessment.
• Analytical Writing: Strong analytical writing: diligence summaries and recommendation memos that decision-makers act on.
• Impact Capture: Demonstrated ability to capture and structure impact evidence: outcomes, metrics, and the specifics that make results credible.
• Early-Stage Fluency: Experience working with early-stage teams, student ventures, or research-stage projects preferred.
• Rigor & Judgment: Process discipline with sound judgment: consistent application of methodology without mechanical thinking.

Bachelor's degree required. Background in finance, business, public administration, or a related field preferred.

Due to the nature of our work, U.S. citizenship is required for this position.

Compensation & Benefits

Salary Range: Commensurate with experience

Benefits: Health insurance, retirement plan, PTO, professional development budget

Location: Remote, East Coast core working hours required, with travel for team gatherings

Why Join CMP?

CMP sits at the front edge of national interest innovation in the United States. Innovation in this space typically takes a decade or more from research to fielded impact. CMP's methodology and educator network compress that timeline dramatically, taking student teams from classroom inquiry to validated solutions, working prototypes, and operational adoption within a single academic year, sometimes one semester. The Innovation Fund has driven over 5,000 discovery interviews across federal agencies, allied governments, national laboratories, and university research centers, and its portfolio includes teams that have gone on to hold government contracts and field deployed technology.

As Grants & Impact Manager, you will run the capital engine behind that record. Your diligence will decide which student teams get funded, your process will become the standard a federal portfolio uses to evaluate student innovation, and the impact evidence you capture will power how CMP tells its story to funders and federal partners.