It’s Time to Rewrite the Job Description

The systems funders have relied on for decades are cracking under the pressure of unrelenting, paradigm-shifting events. We haven’t responded to political hostility in a meaningful way, we’re failing our grantees by creating funding reports that have very little, if any, perceived value, and in the midst of the chaos we’ve shown an irresponsible lack of leadership in driving the use of technology like artificial intelligence to right the ship. 

So the scene was set this spring at the 2025 PEAK Grantmaking conference in New Orleans, where thousands of grantmaking professionals arrived eager to diagnose the malaise and take assertive action.

I wasn’t on the conference floor long before I noticed that grants managers – not foundation CEOs or philanthropy consultants – were building bridges, asking provocative questions, and leading with clarity and care. Grants managers showed up for the moment and took the reins. This isn’t a time for minor tweaks or equivocation, they seemed to be saying. It’s a call for leadership. 

As AI accelerates across the sector, as risk conversations grow more fraught, and as funders face political persecution for even naming equity, we can’t afford to remain stuck in yesterday’s thinking. Irrelevant job descriptions and sclerotic reporting systems won’t take us where we need to go.

Grants managers know this and need to be seen for the work they do – as equity strategists, data stewards, narrative curators, and tech ethicists. But they’re not just doing the work. They’re shaping how the work is done and leading with courage in a time that calls for nothing less.

Leadership is a relationship, not a role

If there was a single throughline at PEAK2025, it was this: leadership is a relationship built on collective purpose and trust, not authority or rank.

We heard it from the main stage, Genise Singleton paraphrased Joanna B. Ciulla, professor and director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers University Business School. “Leadership is not a person or a position. It’s a complex moral relationship between people, based on trust, obligation, commitment, emotion, and a shared vision of the good.” Nearly every speaker who followed shared a version of the theme. 

Grants managers know this instinctively and live it everyday. They’re the closest point of contact for grantees. They hold the institutional memory. They track patterns no one else sees. And increasingly, they’re being asked to interpret data, build bridges across departments, and shepherd new technologies into practice – with few resources, no training, and even less recognition.

Despite outmoded perceptions that grants managers lack influence or mandate, their broadening function allows for a unique proximity to the levers of institutional change and an emerging responsibility to lead the way. Marilyn Benjamin, a grants manager at the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, who started as a receptionist, spoke candidly about questioning her own value until she realized that her presence and purpose, not her position, were her strengths.

“You are supposed to be there,” she reminded the room filled mostly with grants managers. “Even if you’re not being given props.”

Reports that no one reads

In one of the most honest sessions I attended, one funder laid down a simple truth that we’ve all been thinking (and saying) for years: “No one reads the reports.”

In an effort to appease their funders, grantees collect long narrative blocks into paragraph after paragraph of jargon that many on the grants side don’t have the expertise to interpret, rendering the time consuming exercise useless for making better funding decisions. Grantees know that reports can be a condition of their funding but many aren’t sure who the reports are for or why they’re even writing them.

But rather than scrapping the process or outsourcing it to an AI tool, the funder redesigned their reporting framework from the ground up. They implemented a 360-degree evaluation approach – not to audit individual grantees, but to assess the process itself. Staff, volunteers, and community partners all played a part in the review. They asked open-ended questions like, “What stood out to you?” and “What does success mean to you?” 

Grantees noted trends they were seeing and action items to collaborate on, building transparency and trust on both sides. The result? Reporting became a relationship, not a requirement. The power dynamic shifted. And learning was no longer a one-way street.

AI Is not the strategy. You are.

We should be clear: AI isn’t going to save philanthropy. And it isn’t going away.

What will matter is how we use it—and what our choices say about what we value. At United Way Suncoast. grants staff are taking a rare step: offering public-facing AI guidelines for both grantseekers and fellow funders.

“We know that AI isn’t going anywhere,” said Aaron Neal, Director of Data Analysis at UWS. “It’s up to all of us—funders and grantees—to create our own recommendations and best practices, or else trust will continue to decline.”

That trust is central. UWS is experimenting with generative AI in ways that prioritize integrity alongside efficiency. Instead of replacing human judgment, staff use AI to support reflection and refinement—generating draft language from existing program documents or testing prompts that help identify gaps in a narrative. Crucially, AI isn’t making decisions. It’s serving the team, not steering it. Final submissions still reflect the authentic voice of their authors.

This is a sharp contrast to what I’ve seen elsewhere. Too many funders are adopting AI tools—embedding them in applications, intake calls, and review systems—without rethinking the deeper design: data practices, consent protocols, or the impact on relationships. The power dynamic becomes painfully clear when grantees are told a funder call will be recorded without invitation or conversation. Consent is assumed. Trust is eroded.

A dropdown menu with predictive text won’t get us closer to justice. An auto-generated summary won’t deepen understanding unless someone asks: Who’s being summarized? What gets lost? And who benefits from the framing?

That someone is often a grants manager. The person bridging macro strategy with micro decisions. The one watching for blind spots in new features, checking for harm beneath the automation, asking the question no dashboard can generate: Is this what equity looks like?

The courage to be specific

Ann Mei Chang reminded us: “It’s a time for courage.” The stakes are high—and they’re personal. Leaders from small, community-based orgs spoke of being deemed “statistically insignificant” in big data systems. Others described being targeted for DEI commitments, or asked to gut their demographic data work for political safety. We are not just living through a technological shift—we are moving through a political one.

Grants managers aren’t just navigating compliance forms and workflows. They’re now working in a moment when equity data can become weaponized, when foundations are being targeted for supporting DEI, and when communities are under legislative attack simply for existing.

As one keynote speaker at PEAK2025 reminded us: “You may think you’re safe by staying silent. But statistically, we’re all going to be targeted anyway.”

In this context, ethical grantmaking isn’t just about values alignment—it’s about political courage. When a funder decides what demographic data to collect, or what kind of reporting to require, or whether to publish grantmaking patterns, these aren’t neutral decisions. They are choices with public consequences. They shape who feels seen, who feels safe, and who gets left out.

Grants managers are already making these choices. Quietly. Carefully. Often without a framework.

So let’s name it clearly: the new job description of a grants manager includes macro-scale ethical awareness. It includes not just asking “what’s required,” but “what’s right for this moment?” It includes the ability to say, “This field we added may put our partners at risk.”  We need to navigate nuance and honor community voice. We need job descriptions that call for ethical tech fluency, not just form management. And we need space to ask each other: What are we trying to learn, together?

A call to action: We need to rewrite the job description

Grants managers are ready. Many already embody the future of philanthropy – one that is data-literate, values-aligned, rooted in relationships, and acts with a sense of urgency against political threats. But they need institutional support from their organizations and the legitimacy it conveys. And they need their job descriptions to catch up with their emerging influence within the halls of philanthropy.

The new job description includes:

• Designing right-sized, participatory reporting systems
  
• Facilitating grantee feedback loops and learning sessions
  
• Translating organizational values into operational tools, including stewarding AI adoption with equity and transparency
  
• Modeling data equity and narrative accountability
  

In this moment, where public attacks on equity data are escalating, and AI is reshaping power dynamics. Grants managers are like penguins at the edge of the iceberg. They're scanning the terrain, balancing risk, and often being the first to move.

They don’t need applause. They need backup.

This is not a tweak. It’s a transformation. And it starts by recognizing that systems change isn’t theoretical – it lives in the workflow. Grants managers, it lives with you.