The Role
Location: Denver, Colorado Beacon
currently operates on a hybrid in-office basis, with three (3) days
per week in-office.
Reports to: Managing Director
Team: Supervises an Operations Manager
and an Administrative Assistant. Oversees a Grants Management
Associate.
Position Summary:
The Director of Impact Operations (Director) is a new role and
serves as a key partner and right hand to the Managing Director
(MD). The Director owns and advances critical cross functional
capacities, systems, and resources ensuring that initiatives have
the right level of support and technical assistance in place to
achieve envisioned impact. The ideal leader will be a strategic
systems thinker and implementer. This role will be accountable for
operations that enable strategic deployment of grants, investments,
and advocacy contributions with an emphasis on ensuring systems,
processes, and infrastructure development are geared to increase
efficiencies and effectiveness now and into the future. The
Director will also play a key role in Beacon’s organizational and
people management.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Operational Leadership:
- Direct the strategy for operational excellence and oversee the
implementation and evolution of investment and grant funding
operations, process improvement, program workflows and capacity
management, data planning and reporting, and compliance. - Lead selection of a new grants management system (GMS) and
oversee migration and implementation, ensuring all systems
integrate with each other and staff has the right support to enable
the transition. - Assess and enhance organizational infrastructure and processes
to facilitate advocacy contributions and impact
investments. - Manage investment and advocacy enabling capacity, including but
not limited to third party vendors and outsourced
supports. - Manage selection process and relationships with external
operations vendors. - Assess and identify areas for infrastructure improvement that
anticipate the future needs of a best-practice organization.
Identify gaps and proactively propose creative and innovative
solutions. - Collaborate with Director, Learning & Evaluation to ensure
operational systems and processes, including data collection and
analysis, support evaluation and learning objectives. - Oversee systems, processes, and resources to ensure team
compliance with all applicable financial and legal
requirements.
Strategic Support of the Managing
Director:
- Build and maintain a close working relationship with the MD to
understand organizational strategic goals, initiatives, and
aspirations and to deliver as effectively, creatively, and
innovatively as possible against goals. - Monitor priorities to ensure the MD’s involvement in projects
or decision-making takes place at key times, where input is most
beneficial and needed. - Manage team-wide internal meetings, balancing day-to-day/weekly
discussions with long-term strategic management and planning. - Lead annual planning processes, in the context of
organizational needs by acting as a project manager and ensuring
alignment with the MD. - Engage with external peers and thought leaders to stay current
on social impact trends and best practices to inform practices at
Beacon.
People and Team Management:
- Provide advice on strategic people and culture decisions,
including policy and system development and implementation
especially in a time of transition and organizational evolution.
Help build and develop a lean, nimble, and effective team of staff
and/or vendors/consultants, while cultivating and promoting a
culture of collaboration, transparency, accountability,
empowerment, and well-being. - Manage cross-functional, organization-wide projects and
initiatives; specifically create systems and processes to bring
together important stakeholders to improve communication and help
drive decisions. - Ensure that Beacon develops clear roles, responsibilities, and
reporting structures for staff and consultants to maintain a
strong, high performing organizational culture. - Lead all aspects of the process for staff development,
including annual goal setting and review process, needs assessments
and partnering with MD and others to provide staff with appropriate
training, and learning and development opportunities. - Propose the creation of new systems and processes to streamline
operations that promote staff leadership and effectiveness. - Oversee team capacity management.
Culture & Change
Management:
- Partner with the MD to advance an organizational environment
that maintains a culture of trust, respect, healthy conflict,
mutual accountability and reflects Beacon’s values, mission, and
vision. - Develop methods of operating that bring new practices for
systems and policies, resulting in increased coordination across
teams. These practices range from developing new contact management
systems to clear and transparent protocols for IT
management. - Develop and manage processes that lead to improved internal
decision-making and clarity of roles within and across
teams. - Help continually adapt Beacon’s use of meetings to best meet
the needs of all team members while being efficient and effective
with its time.
Qualifications & Experience
The successful candidate will be a cross-functional, systems
thinker and culture champion, capable of managing multiple internal
workstreams simultaneously. Strong candidates for this role will
possess many of the following professional experience, personal
attributes, and competencies:
- At least 10 years of senior-level operations, systems
improvement, strategy development and project management experience
gained in a mission-oriented organization, nonprofit, social
enterprise, or philanthropic foundation setting. - Experience managing organizational complexity in a matrixed
environment and enhancing an organization’s capacity and impact
with a mix of both non-profit & for-profit entities and/or
types of capital (e.g., c3/c4). - 7+ years of people management experience in a senior leadership
role with a track record of empowering a diverse group of
professionals, entrusting, and amplifying the work of
others. - Demonstrated success owning operations in a multi-tool
environment; technical operations proficiency including experience
with legal, compliance, finance, and funding operations; experience
rolling out new systems. - Experience overseeing the technology needs of an organization,
with an affinity for forward-thinking creative solutions. Prior
experience successfully leading system reengineering and workflow
improvements, including selecting and overseeing software
installations that optimize actionable grants management, financial
forecasting, knowledge management, and strong data
analysis. - Brings an understanding of how different entities can co-exist
in the same organization deploying capital in the form of grants,
investments, and advocacy contributions. Demonstrated history
of leading an effective project management process, including those
that require change management. - Outstanding communications skills and diplomacy, including the
ability to listen to, relate well to, and inspire a wide range of
people at all levels. - Demonstrates high emotional intelligence, is self-aware and
perceptive and serves as a connector ensuring awareness of every
key project, connecting the dots across the organization. A
positive can-do perspective, empathetic, flexible, curious, with a
track record of respectful collegial relationships. - Alignment with Beacon’s values and a deep understanding of
social sector trends and best practices to inform ways of
working. - Unquestionable ethics and integrity. Demonstrated ability to
protect privacy and maintain discretion in dealing with highly
confidential information.
Desired Competencies
- Demonstrated track record in operational management, with the
ability to develop and implement strategies for operational
excellence including overseeing grants management, impact
investment operations, and advocating for process improvement and
efficiency gains; experience rolling out new systems and managing
vendors. - Service-oriented approach, with a sense of accountability,
empathy, and humility. Creative problem-solving ethos, seeking to
understand the root of the problem and find a workable
solution. - Balances a process-oriented approach with a big-picture vision.
Experience setting clear goals, adapting to complex situations, and
driving results while navigating ambiguity and uncertainty. - Strong leadership skills, with experience in managing and
motivating teams; ability to delegate effectively, leads by
example, and influence up, down, and laterally. - Bridge builder who can translate between technical and
non-technical audiences and break down complex concepts into
digestible and relevant information. Brings proficiency to fluency
in operations related to grants management, advocacy, and impact
investing. - Ability to lead projects effectively, manage multiple tasks
seamlessly, and adapt to changing circumstances. - Demonstrated success applying a structured approach to prepare
and support individuals and organizations through
change. - Understanding of and appreciation for how DEI shows up in
culture, norms, practices, operations, and strategy.
Compensation & Benefits:
- Compensation will be equitable and commensurate with experience
within an anticipated base salary range of $165,000-$220,000. - The Beacon Fund offers a comprehensive and generous benefits
package which includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, a
401(k)-retirement plan and paid time off.