Program Director, Children’s Rights Innovation Fund (TF)
Posted on January 20, 2020
OVERVIEW:
Tides and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund’s Global Children’s Right (GCR) Program have launched the Children’s Rights Innovation Fund (CRIF) (a working title) to deepen and scale learning and innovation across the field of children’s rights. The CRIF will address systemic problems and structural challenges impacting the children’s rights field to date and incentivize actors to strategically shift how they design and lead their work.
CRIF Values:
The following values serve as core guiding principles to the fund’s work, and for the larger community engaged in this effort:
- Child and girl centered
- Rights-framed
- Inclusive
- Locally generated
- Gender equity and justice
- Evidence-based
CRIF Goals:
The primary goal of CRIF is to reinvigorate the children’s rights field through piloted innovation, nimble and responsive grantmaking, and robust program learning in collaboration with field partners.
Through the launch of an innovation grantmaking fund, we will:
- Fuel learning and experimentation
- Develop a robust community of diverse actors that reinvigorates the field
- Build a collaborative framework that aligns activities across the field and strengthens collective capacity of grantees
POSITION SUMMARY
The Program Director (Director) is a full-time role reporting to the Fund Steering Committee and Tides Director of Special Initiatives. The Director will lead the CRIF vision, steering committee development, and execution of grantmaking and fund development strategies. In close collaboration with the Tides Special Initiatives and Wellspring GCR teams, the Director will launch and execute CRIF’s grantmaking, innovation, and fund development priorities outlined below.
We are seeking a unique philanthropic leader passionate about advancing innovation and progress in global development and rights ecosystems. The ideal candidate will be an experienced grantmaker, charismatic leader, and deeply committed to bringing research to life through innovation. The candidate will be experienced in managing philanthropic and/or grantee partnerships and excels in building collaborative partnerships across diverse stakeholders.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
Steering Committee
- Recruit, hire, train and onboard Steering Committee members
- Maintain clear communication with the Steering Committee on evaluation of CRIF grantees, strategies, and grantmaking activities; consults with the Steering Committee when appropriate; and provides learning opportunities for Steering Committee members
Grantmaking
- Oversee grantmaking strategy design, grantee application process including interviewing, selection, and notification of selected partners
- Ensure grantmaking activities align across actors, address systemic barriers, and result in the development of new, vigorous interventions
- Develop milestones to assess capacity building needs and organize activities to develop grantee learning, collaboration, and innovation outcomes
- Create opportunities to receive grantee reflection and feedback on the fund’s strategy and activities and in assessing grantee learning and collaboration
Field Building
- Design and lead activities to cultivate trust, spur learning, encourage collaboration, and catalyze innovation across partners
- Represent the initiative at meetings and events
- Collaborate with community groups to strengthen and expand programs
- Build awareness of CRIF’s work and invite others, including funders, to join
- Initiate funder relationship building to cultivate trust and explore opportunities for collaboration
- Organize regular opportunities for cross community learning and reflection for grantees, peer funders, and other stakeholders as relevant
- Identify opportunities to pilot and scale innovations, e.g. design labs, convenings, potential strategic partnerships with innovation-leading institutions such as universities
- Ensure programs and grants comply with contracts and funding requirements
- Develop content for external facing materials and grant RFPs/reports
- Support development of long- and short-range goals
- Develop and manage program budget
- Manage designing, updating, and implementing surveys and focus groups, summarizing and synthesizing evaluation data for internal and external use
- Develop quarterly operational structure and budget, including allocations for administrative costs and fees and regranting via the CRIF
- Develop proposals and reports to Donors of the CRIF as needed
- Manage the tracking of funding and reviews incoming grantee reports of the CRIF
- Identify opportunities for outreach to other donors
- Foster conceptual learning, analysis, documentation that will help translate grants into “program learning” for the field
- Oversee the work of any employees and/or consultants
- Manage finances in accordance with Tides cash management policies; takes action when notified of cash flow shortages
- Authorize all financial transactions in accordance with funding guidelines and Tides policies
- Annually complete and sign Tides Conflict of Interest Disclosure forms, and arrange for each advisory board member to sign Conflict of Interest forms as well
EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE:
Required
- History developing strategy for, and executing grantmaking
- Understanding of program design and management
- Ability to design and lead cross sector convenings
- Experience conducting learning processes, encouraging innovation, and using adaptive management
- Examples of translating research into action and impact
- Experience with nonprofit budget management and operations
Preferred
- 8-10 years of background advancing social justice issues through a mix of research, programming, grantmaking, and convening
- Master's Degree preferred. Equivalent life and work experience may be substituted
- Familiarity with issues related to children’s rights and girls’ rights
- Work with community-led, youth-led, child-led or girl-led programming or grantmaking
- History in recruiting, managing, engaging an Advisory Board, a coalition or other collective processes
- Experience reviewing evaluations, synthesizing and interpreting impact data
- Experience developing and supervising staff
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:
- Commitment to social justice
- Ability to develop strong relationships and work with diverse stakeholders including Steering Committee members, funders, researchers, consultants, and community partners
- Strong work ethic and ability to multitask in a fast-paced work environment, prioritize among competing pressing issues, take initiative, pay attention to details, and meet deadlines in an effective manner
- Willingness to embrace challenge, be flexible, and find creative solutions that fit within established priorities
- Charisma and power to engage existing partners, and attract new partners
- Enthusiasm for working as a member of a small, scrappy, grassroots team, a strong sense of teamwork, growth, and transparency
- Good listening, critical thinking, conflict resolution, and decision-making skills
- Clear and effective communication skills
- Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Principles
- Familiarity with both Google and Microsoft Office suite of products
- Ability to maintain confidentiality
ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS:
Employee is required to work closely with diverse stakeholders including clients, partners, funders, and potential donors.
PHYSICAL DEMANDS:
Employee is required to sit for extended periods of time and work on a computer. The position requires phone conversations and in person or virtual meetings with both internal and external partners.
TRAVEL:
Program Director is expected to travel both domestically within the United States (especially to Washington D.C), as well as internationally, several times throughout the year.
CRIF and Tides believes we are strengthened by the diversity of our staff, and welcomes such diversity including race, gender identity or expression, educational attainment, disability, veteran status, and personal experience with the criminal justice system. We welcome applications from people of all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences, and we strongly encourage people of color and persons with disabilities to apply. We actively cultivate an institutional culture that reflects the values of respect, equity and inclusion that we seek through our work to amplify in the larger world.
All personnel decisions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, compensation, assignment, training, promotion, discipline and discharge, are made without discrimination based on any protected characteristic as defined by law (e.g., race, color, religion, national origin, citizenship, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, domestic partner status, veteran or military status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, and prior criminal convictions, as well as educational attainment.
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we encourage and will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records. Reasonable accommodation will be made so that qualified disabled applicants may participate in the application process. Please advise in writing of special needs at the time of application.
ABOUT TIDES:
Tides is a philanthropic partner and nonprofit accelerator dedicated to building a world of shared prosperity and social justice. Tides works at the nexus of funders, changemakers, and policy, with extensive impact solutions including philanthropic giving and grantmaking, impact investing, fiscal sponsorship for social ventures, collaborative workspaces, and policy initiatives. Our extensive tools and know-how give our partners the freedom to hit the ground running and drive change faster than they can on their own.
ABOUT WELLSPRING:
Wellspring Philanthropic Fund supports the realization of human rights and social and economic justice for all people. Our work is rooted in respect for the dignity and worth of every human being and is informed by the following beliefs:
- Social institutions and structures should promote the full realization of human rights and human potential, and should be accountable to these ends.
- The rights of all people are advanced when the rights of the most marginalized and vulnerable peoples are protected.
- Social justice movements should employ means that are consistent with their ideals, and should give agency to the people whose interests they seek to advance.
- As responsible stewards, we must strive to maximize the impact of our charitable investments.
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