Program Associate, Human Rights

About the Foundation

The Heising-Simons Foundation is a family foundation based in San Francisco, California. The Foundation works with its many partners to advance sustainable solutions in climate and clean energy, enable groundbreaking science research, enhance the education of our youngest

learners, and support human rights for all people. In 2025, the Foundation awarded more than $169 million in grants. The Foundation’s work is guided by the values of humility, courage, justice, opportunity, sustainability, innovation, relationships, and integrity.

About the Human Rights Program

The Foundation’s Human Rights program envisions a society where people are free to live whole, safe, and dignified lives. At present, we are far from this vision in the United States because structural racism pervades our society and manifests through systems of punishment — mass incarceration and immigrant detention. The result is the criminalization of poor Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), and it is visible all around us: these communities are over represented in our country’s jails, prisons, and detention centers, and are under-resourced in our economic, political, and social justice sectors.

To best challenge mass incarceration, immigrant detention, and the mass criminalization of BIPOC communities, the Human Rights program invests in
1) building the power and capacity of grassroots;
2) creating healthy justice reform and immigrants’ rights ecosystems that center the grassroots in their work; and
3) advancing reimagined approaches to safety, justice, and accountability. Through these investments, the Human Rights program seeks to contribute to a country where grassroots movements have the power to lead and define change to dismantle the footprint of incarceration and immigrant detention systems and create new paradigms of safety, justice, and accountability not appended to the current punishment systems. In 2025, the Human Rights team made 161 grants totaling over $36 million in 501(c)(3) grant funding.

The Opportunity

The Heising-Simons Foundation’s Human Rights program seeks a Program Associate to project manage and support its grantmaking. This role offers a unique opportunity to build knowledge and skills in grantmaking and social justice by working closely with subject-matter experts and engaging directly with grantee organizations leading this work.

This full-time (37.5 hours per week) exempt (salaried) position is based in San Francisco and reports to a Program Officer and works collaboratively with the entire program team.

Our work is centered around relationships with our grantees and with one another. Hybrid work allows us to tend to relationships and collaborate in person while also offering the flexibility to work remotely. Beginning April 2027, the Foundation's in-office schedule will shift to three days per week.

Primary Responsibilities

Provide grants administration support.

• Represent the Foundation as the primary point of contact for grantees and grant seekers as they prepare and submit grant proposals, reports, and other deliverables as part of the grant cycle.
• Work with Grants Management to develop and implement workable solutions and advise Program Officers and Directors on grant structuring.
• Interpret and implement the Foundation’s grantmaking and contracting policies, procedures, and deadlines, and work with the team to ensure compliance.
• Coordinate with the Program Manager to ensure that the program’sgrantmaking budget is continuously up-to-date.
• Ensure team members and grantees are aware of upcoming deadlines by tracking grant start and end dates, due dates for deliverables and reports, and changes to grant timelines and scopes of work.
• Maintain grant files and the grants…