Operations / Administration Chief External Relations Officer
Job Description
About the Organization – 100Kin10
To solve the world’s most pressing problems, we need all of tomorrow’s problem-solvers to be equipped with STEM knowledge, skills, and inspiration. And tomorrow’s problem-solvers need excellent STEM teachers today to guide them. 100Kin10 unites the nation’s top academic institutions, nonprofits, foundations, companies, and government agencies to prepare 100,000 new STEM teachers for classrooms around the country by 2021. To do this, we have built a new type of networked-impact effort that rethinks how organizations collaborate, learn from one another, and together identify and tackle challenges that none could successfully address on its own. On target to meet our ambitious 100Kin10 goal this year, we are launching a massive and participatory unCommission to identify goals for the future of the STEM education field, focused on the experiences and opportunities of students of color. One of these goals will become our next moonshot, continuing our decades-long effort to address the underlying reasons for the STEM teacher shortage.
About the Role – Chief External Relations Officer
As 100Kin10 prepares to embark on its second decade, we are seeking an exceptional relationship builder who will drive our fundraising and strategic partnerships to ensure we meet a new set of audacious goals.
The Chief External Relations Officer is a newly created role at 100Kin10. This position reports to the Executive Director and will sit on the management team which sets the strategic direction of the organization. This person will lead our work developing and maintaining relationships with key constituents outside of the organization. Specific responsibilities include:
- Leading our development function,
- Overseeing our external Strategic Advisory group,
- Building and growing relationships with strategic external allies, including:
- The US Department of Education and the White House
- Leaders of other major STEM or education organizations
- Change-makers and leaders in other sectors
- Managing our communications work in partnership with our program team and external vendors
The Chief External Relations Officer will manage a full time operations manager who will support the external relations work and will manage the organization’s budget. Much of this work has previously lived with the Executive Director with support from the management team. This person will also sit on 100Kin10’s Management Team and thus play an important role in organizational decisions and direction.
Our total budget in years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic was ~4.4mm and our total budget in 2021 is ~3.5mm, largely reflecting decreases in expenses related to travel, convening, and rent. Our budget will likely return to pre-COVID levels over the next 6-18 months. Our current funders are primarily grantmaking and corporate institutions.
This role requires a broad range of skills including depth of knowledge of fundraising best practices, nuanced external relationship development and management, strategy development and implementation, strategic communications, and multi-stakeholder coordination.
The person who fills this role can be based anywhere geographically but will, post-COVID, likely need to be present for team retreats every 4-8 weeks, most likely held in the New York City region. There is also likely some travel in 2022 and beyond for core work obligations, pending the return of safe air travel. In addition, we are open to hiring a phenomenal candidate who is looking to work 60-80% of full time. In the event that a candidate is hired at less than full time, we will work in partnership with them to adjust the job description accordingly. Anyone working 20 hours or more would be eligible for benefits.
Your responsibilities include:
- Creating and Executing on Fundraising and Development Strategy:
- Telling the story of 100Kin10 – our impact, goals, and direction – to excite new funders and recommit and deepen existing funders’ support for the next moonshot
- Growing our development pipeline
- Managing relationships and communication with donors and funders
- Overseeing grant proposal preparation, with external support as needed
- Managing grant budgeting and reporting
- Reporting progress against grant requirements to senior management and funders
- Developing, Growing, and Managing High-Stakes Relationships:
- Overseeing our Strategic Advisory Group, which includes a range of external experts in the field who are charged with workshopping our most pressing strategic questions over the course of the year
- Nurturing partnerships with the US Department of Education and The White House with a focus on creating new relationships with the current administration and reengaging networks from previous administrations
- Ensuring our organization has a coherent and effective communications strategy
- Partner with 100Kin10’s programmatic team to build a coherent and clear external communications strategy, develop messaging
- Manage an external vendor to execute our social media strategy
- Identify and pursue any other internal or external capacity necessary to deliver strong communications outcomes
- Managing the day-to-day work and professional growth of a fundraising and finance operations staff member whose responsibilities include:
- Development operations including supporting grant reporting, acknowledgements, and administrative support for fundraising activities
- Managing financial operations and compliance requirements in partnership with our fiscal sponsor
- Preparing periodic budget reports to track budgets month to month
The Chief External Relations Officer will possess the following competencies:
Skills:
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- Strategic Thinking: The ability to interpret, summarize and synthesize information to create better understanding. The ability to select a path forward and/or develop appropriate solutions and take action that is consistent with available facts, constraints, opportunities, goals, and probable consequences
- Project Management: The ability to initiate, plan, execute, monitor, evaluate and close the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria within a specified time
- External Relationship Development and Management: The ability to navigate complex political and fundraising networks in order to nurture, build, and maintain relationships in service of 100Kin10’s goals and objectives
- Written and Verbal Communications: The ability to independently create original public content and deliver verbal presentations in multiple settings, with excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Organizational Leadership: The ability to hold and act upon the organization’s full set of priorities and needs
Mindsets:
- Growth Mindset: The ability to identify new areas for learning; regularly create and take advantage of learning opportunities; use newly gained knowledge and skill on the job and learning through their application
- Host not Hero: The perspective of being a network entrepreneur, facilitating and enabling change, not dictating it
- Self-motivation: The drive to proactively take the initiative, identifying problems and opportunities across your portfolio, developing recommendations, and taking action on those recommendations
- Adaptability: The ability to thrive in an ambiguous environment where you have autonomy to drive your work
- Developing Others: The ability to plan and support the development of individuals’ skills and abilities so that they can fulfill current or future job/role responsibilities more effectively
- Passion for Social Change: The drive and desire to contribute to making change in our society, in education and beyond, with interest in social change theories and putting those theories into practice
- Racial Justice and DEI Leadership: The ability to lead in a way that is centered on racial justice and DEI with a focus on both the experience of our staff and challenging the way fundraising is done
Your experience:
12+ years of overall professional experience in a role that includes:
- Crafting a compelling narrative that invests an audience and spurs them to action
- One or more of the following:
- Leading development and fundraising strategy in a nonprofit setting
- Directing a philanthropic portfolio within a grantmaking institution or corporation
- Managing and nurturing high-stakes relationships with external constituents
- Proactively identifying and addressing opportunities for growth, expansion, and coherence and potential roadblocks
- Distilling and drawing connections across complex ideas into strategies, approaches, or clear analyses
- Communicating persuasively using multiple verbal and written formats (e.g., PowerPoint, memos, emails)
- Experience in education, a related social sector, or policy advocacy
Working at 100Kin10
People who thrive at 100Kin10 are team-oriented, open-minded, creative, and flexible and possess a strong desire to learn and grow in a feedback-rich environment. Our culture embraces colleagues with genuine warmth, a curiosity to learn, a drive toward excellence, the ability to laugh at themselves, an eagerness for feedback to spur growth and impact, and an interest in co-workers as colleagues and as human beings.
We believe in community. We believe that diverse perspectives and background create a rich work environment that is essential to our work. We are committed to building an organization with raised consciousness in order to impact how we collaborate with our partners, support our network, and work together as a team. We aim to build each other up, empower each other, and give each other what we need to grow and thrive. We hope you will join us as we continue to build a diverse organization that fosters a work environment where people from all backgrounds are welcomed, valued, and supported.
The salary band for leadership roles at 100Kin10 is $125,000 – $185,000. This role will pay in that band, commensurate to the experience of the individual who is hired. Benefits are highly competitive including four weeks of paid time off, ten paid holidays, a week of paid time off at the end of the calendar year, 5% match for retirement contribution, and highly competitive health benefits.
