Protect our Land, Ascend with Us!

Ascension is seeking a highly organized, dependable, and detail-oriented Administrative Specialist to support the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Grant Programs Directorate. This individual will provide the administrative coordination, documentation control, records support, meeting management, and correspondence tracking necessary to keep complex federal grant operations organized, responsive, and audit-ready.

The ideal candidate understands that administrative support in a federal grants environment extends beyond routine clerical work. The Administrative Specialist helps ensure that grant applications, award-processing activities, correspondence, inquiries, records, meetings, action items, and program materials move through the organization accurately and on time.

Summary of the Contractor Role

The Administrative Specialist provides integrated administrative and operational support across FEMA grant-program activities. The position may support application review and award-processing administration, correspondence and registry management, monitoring and closeout tracking, stakeholder inquiry coordination, document editing, data compilation, electronic archiving, and general program administration.

The role also supports FEMA personnel through Microsoft Teams and SharePoint administration, electronic and physical filing, template control, briefing preparation, meeting read-aheads, meeting materials, minutes, action-item tracking, and conference logistics. The Administrative Specialist helps create the administrative structure that allows program managers, grants specialists, analysts, and subject-matter experts to focus on mission delivery.

The successful candidate must be comfortable working with incomplete or evolving information, clarifying requirements, identifying missing documentation, maintaining multiple trackers, and following assignments through completion. The individual must demonstrate sound judgment, discretion, responsiveness, and the ability to work with limited supervision.

Anticipated Day-to-Day Activities

• Coordinate administrative activities associated with grant application review, award processing, award administration, monitoring, and closeout.
• Receive, log, route, and track incoming correspondence, requests, inquiries, taskings, and supporting documentation.
• Maintain correspondence logs, grant-related registries, suspense trackers, action-item logs, and status reports.
• Monitor administrative milestones, due dates, pending actions, and documentation requirements.
• Follow up with responsible personnel to obtain overdue responses, approvals, records, or supporting materials.
• Respond to routine applicant, recipient, stakeholder, or internal program inquiries using approved information and escalation procedures.
• Coordinate complex or sensitive inquiries with grants specialists, program personnel, or designated Government officials.
• Review and edit correspondence, memoranda, reports, briefing materials, meeting documents, templates, and other program products for formatting, grammar, consistency, and completeness.
• Compile administrative, programmatic, and grant-related information from multiple sources for reports, briefings, status updates, and management reviews.
• Organize and archive program records in accordance with FEMA, DHS, and federal records-management requirements.
• Create and maintain standardized file structures, document naming conventions, version-control practices, and retention procedures.
• Manage Microsoft Teams channels, SharePoint libraries, shared drives, folders, permissions requests, and collaborative workspaces as authorized.
• Prepare agendas, read-ahead packages, briefing books, attendee lists, presentation materials, decision papers, and meeting support documents.
• Schedule and coordinate meetings, briefings, conferences, town halls, interviews, and virtual collaboration sessions.
• Document meeting discussions, decisions, conclusions, commitments, and recommended actions.
• Prepare clear and accurate meeting minutes and summaries of conclusions.
• Track meeting action items through completion and elevate overdue or unresolved items.
• Support in-person and virtual conference planning, including scheduling, invitations, registration, logistics, conference materials, toolkits, and online meeting management.
• Maintain reusable templates, forms, standard correspondence, checklists, job aids, and administrative procedures.
• Assist with transition materials, onboarding information, contact lists, organizational charts, and orientation packages for new personnel.
• Perform quality checks to ensure records and deliverables are complete, current, properly formatted, and stored in the appropriate repository.
• Safeguard sensitive, personally identifiable, procurement-sensitive, and grant-related information.
• Communicate workload status, risks, missing information, and emerging deadlines to the appropriate Ascension and Government leads.
• Support urgent, expedited, or surge assignments when grant-program workloads increase.