Program Operations Manager
About The Bridge Project
is an unconditional cash transfer program that provides up to $1,000 a month to low‑income mothers across the United States. Launched in 2021, the program is designed to support mothers during the most important period of their child’s mental, physical, and emotional development.
Position Summary
The Program Operations Manager is the operational backbone of The Bridge Project’s program delivery. This role owns end‑to‑end execution across three connected domains: standing up new sites, running the payment systems that move funds to every mother in the program, and overseeing the day‑to‑day operations of participant onboarding and ongoing program support.
This is a complex operations role suited to candidates with backgrounds in nonprofit operations management, program implementation, or comparable operations leadership in regulated or mission‑driven environments. The Program Operations Manager directly supervises the Community Liaison team and partners closely with the Development Manager, Program Director, Research team, and external payment vendors.
The ideal candidate is a strong project manager, comfortable with payment systems and operational data, able to lead a small team, and able to hold multiple workstreams without losing the thread.
Key Responsibilities
1. Site Launch Coordination
- Partner with the Development Manager and Program Director to pull and analyze the data that informs new site development and program design decisions.
- Develop a clear, timely project plan for each new site launch, including milestones, owners, dependencies, and risk flags.
- Project manage the larger cross‑functional team toward successful completion of their launch tasks, holding the timeline and surfacing blockers early.
- Ensure cross‑departmental collaboration and communication across Programs, Research, Communications, Development, and Finance throughout each launch.
- Document launch playbooks and lessons learned so each subsequent site benefits from the last.
2. Payment Operations
- Manage all payment systems end to end, from transfer calculation through successful deployment of funds to participants.
- Execute bi‑weekly payments to every mother in The Bridge Project across all active sites.
- Manage payment pauses, cancellations, and reinstatements based on verification status, eligibility changes, or other program criteria.
- Investigate and resolve payment issues escalated by Community Liaisons or surfaced through vendor systems, and maintain the operational trackers that drive resolution.
- Serve as the primary operational point of contact for payment vendors (e.g., Usio, Plaid,Givecard), monitoring reliability, reconciling discrepancies, and escalating systemic issues.
- Partner with Director of Operations on payment reporting, audit trails, and controls.
3. Ongoing Program Operations
- Oversee onboarding assignments across the Community Liaison team, ensuring applicants are routed promptly and equitably.
- Support Community Liaisons in successfully onboarding mothers into the program, including coaching through complex eligibility cases and document verification challenges.
- Address onboarding concerns and questions as they arise, serving as the escalation point when CLs need a decision or judgment call.
- Communicate onboarding progress and key operational metrics to the broader team on a regular cadence.
- Identify recurring operational friction and lead process improvements, including updates to internal SOPs, trackers, and tooling.
4. Research and Program Coordination
- Coordinate with the Research team to ensure research activities and program operations are aligned, including timing of surveys, qualitative interviews, and participant outreach.
- Flag operational changes that may affect research integrity, and flag research timelines that may affect operational capacity.
- Support the CL team’s research‑related work (survey follow‑up, interview scheduling, payment questions tied to research) so it integrates cleanly with their participant‑facing workload.
5. People Management
- Directly supervise the Community Liaison team, including hiring, onboarding, performance management, and ongoing coaching.
- Hold regular 1:1s and team meetings, and create the structures (case load tracking, escalation pathways, response‑time expectations) that allow CLs to do their best work.
- Develop CLs’ skills over time, including documentation discipline, prioritization, and difficult participant conversations.
Qualifications
Required
- 3+ years of experience in complex operations management, nonprofit operations, program implementation, or a comparable operations leadership role.
- Demonstrated project management ability, including standing up new programs, sites, or product launches against a defined timeline.
- Experience owning operational systems with financial implications (payment ops, claims, disbursements, benefits, or similar) and the controls and reconciliation discipline that go with them.
- Direct people management experience, including hiring, coaching, and performance management of a small team.
- Strong analytical and data fluency: comfort working in spreadsheets, building trackers, and using operational data to make decisions and communicate progress.
- Strong technical fluency, including leveraging AI tools as appropriate to enhance operational systems.
- Clear written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate between participant‑facing, executive, and cross‑functional audiences.
- High attention to detail and a bias toward closing the loop.
Preferred
- Experience in guaranteed income, cash transfer, direct cash assistance, or other direct‑service programs serving low‑income families.
- Familiarity with payment platforms such as Usio, Plaid, or comparable disbursement systems.
- Experience working across the nonprofit functions this role coordinates with (Programs, Research, Development, Communications, Finance).
- Experience managing distributed or remote teams.
- Familiarity with case management systems (e.g., Apricot) and project management tools (e.g., ClickUp).
- Bilingual proficiency, particularly in Spanish.
Position Details
- Full‑time, hybrid
- Compensation commensurate with experience.
- Posted range: $70,000-100,000
Reporting Structure
The Program Operations Manager reports to the Director of Operations and directly supervises the Community Liaison team. The role works closely with the Program Director, Development Manager, Research team, and Communications team.
Pay: $70,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Parental leave
- Professional development assistance
- Retirement plan
Work Location: Hybrid remote in New York, NY 10013
