Job Description

Organization Overview

GreenLight Fund is a national nonprofit that partners with communities to create opportunities for individuals and families to move out of poverty by matching needs with proven programs that drive results.

Deeply connected to local communities, we facilitate game-changing collaboration, break down barriers and build momentum so individuals and communities move forward, especially those historically impacted by systemic racial and economic inequities.

Each year, in each GreenLight site, we focus on identifying one, critical, unmet community need, and begin to take specific action against that to make real change. We identify and assess programs with successful track records of meeting a similar need elsewhere, and partner with the community to invite in and launch a program with the best local fit. GreenLight makes multi-year, catalytic investments in our portfolio organizations, galvanizes a community of support and facilitates ongoing collaboration to ensure impact. Our impact increases exponentially as we build a growing portfolio of best-in-class organizations making measurable progress each year–all across the GreenLight network.

Since its founding in 2004, GreenLight has become a national network of 11 sites and growing,  successfully running the selection process and investing in and launching 39 proven programs  thus far. GreenLight sites include Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit,  Kansas City, Greater Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and the Twin Cities. GreenLight expects to expand to two additional sites between now and 2024. To learn more about the GreenLight Fund, please visit www.greenlightfund.org.

Position Overview

GreenLight Fund seeks a mission-driven, intellectually curious, and people-centered Director of Learning to join our National Portfolio (NatPo) team, which supports GreenLight sites to effectively and efficiently execute the GreenLight Method, and creates and maintains systems and processes for continuous learning – from each other, from our portfolio organizations and from our communities. The NatPo team is led by the Vice President, National Portfolio and Learning, and includes three sub-teams: Model Design; Site Support and Network Learning.

GreenLight’s 2021-2024 Strategic Plan includes a commitment to deepen impact and leverage network learning across its growing network of sites, and this position is a new role being added to the NatPo team to help advance those organizational priorities. At the end of 2021, GreenLight engaged an external consultant to work with the NatPo Team and an internal cross-functional work group to establish the foundations of the Learning Function, and together they established the following Vision and Goals:

Vision: By 2024, equity-centered strategic learning is a core value at GreenLight, the organization has a strong understanding of both its current impact in communities and how to deepen that impact, and is effectively sharing knowledge and leveraging learning across the network.

Goals:

1. North Star – Organizational Strategy & Learning. Revamp the Theory of Change and logic model(s); develop network-wide learning plan and annual learning agenda grounded in equity and directly tied to organizational strategy and decision-making.
2. Culture & Capacity. Strengthen staff capacity and equity-centered learning culture by establishing clear roles/responsibilities, building a cross-functional learning team,  cultivating reflective practices and creating ongoing learning and development opportunities
3. Systems & Processes: Strengthen systems and processes to: build, share and manage knowledge; collect, analyze and respond to data; institutionalize reflection and learning; and communicate learning internally and externally

The Director of Learning will be a critical new hire to advance this vision and set of goals.The Director of Learning will report to the VP, National Portfolio and Learning, will manage a Learning Manager, and will work closely with the rest of the NatPo team and collaboratively across the GreenLight Fund national network.

Responsibilities

Organizational Strategy & Learning

• Steward GreenLight’s Theory of Change as a “living and breathing” framework to ensure it reflects and remains aligned with organizational strategy, and that everyone in the organization (including staff and board) understands GreenLight’s intended impact and the outcomes we are collectively working towards
• Develop, continuously iterate upon, and lead implementation of a multi-year, network-wide, equity-centered Strategic Learning Plan to ensure the organization is aligned around a core set of questions that need to be answered in alignment with GreenLight’s strategic plan, and has a clear sequence and process to reflect on and answer those questions
• Develop and facilitate an annual process for reflecting on progress and learning in the prior year and identify which priorities in the Learning Plan are or continue to be most relevant for the upcoming year
• Create and drive practices that integrate data and learning into organizational strategy conversations (staff and board), including facilitating learning conversations and identifying other ways to integrate evidence, reflective practice and application of learning into strategy work and organizational decision-making

Culture & Capacity

• Cultivate an equity-centered learning culture at GreenLight by ensuring alignment and clarity on the kind of equitable learning organization GreenLight wants to be, and intentionally working to establish and embed that culture across the organization
• Partner with the People Operations Team to integrate data use and learning into every role at GreenLight, and to ensure every staff member has the onboarding, habits of mind, and ongoing learning and development (L&D) opportunities they need to engage in reflective practice and equity-centered strategic learning
• Instill and model reflective practices throughout both new and existing meeting structures and ways of working across the GreenLight network
• Build the capacity of staff to seek out and use evidence in their individual roles and ensure that the Learning Manager and NatPo Team develop and present analyses and summaries that address complex questions and evidence in digestible, useful ways
• Develop the capacity and potential of the Learning Function at GreenLight over time by developing and maintaining a close network of peers from other foundations and intermediary organizations to ensure GreenLight is continuously learning from best practices and commonly-faced challenges in philanthropy related to data and learning

Systems & Processes

• Partner with the Learning Manager to strengthen GreenLight’s systems and processes for collecting, analyzing and reflecting on both portfolio organization data and due diligence data for prospective portfolio organizations
• Develop and lead GreenLight’s systems and processes for building, sharing and managing knowledge within NatPo and across the network – ensuring above all that key learnings that GreenLight wants to carry forward into the future are captured within those systems for easy access and use.
• Partner with GreenLight sites and the NatPo Site Support team to ensure sites engage in regular reflective practices for each stage of the GreenLight Method, and are capturing, acting on and sharing that learning across the network
• Partner with the External Affairs team to leverage network learnings, particularly around portfolio data and systems, for external communication, to convey GreenLight’s impact, our value as a learning network and thought leadership to multiple audiences of field and community stakeholders.

National Portfolio Team and Org-wide Leadership

• Directly manage the Learning Manager and ensure they have the resources, support and professional development they need to do their job effectively and efficiently
• Oversee the Learning portion of the NatPo team budget and partner with the VP National Portfolio and Learning to develop and manage the NatPo annual budget
• Cultivate and strengthen reflective and other cultural practices within the NatPo team such that the team can model and collectively support the broader GreenLight network to integrate reflection and learning into their work
• Collaborate with the VP, National Portfolio and the Site Support and Model/Design sub-teams to ensure the National Portfolio team has a coherent and aligned approach to supporting GreenLight sites, and to ensure feedback and learning from each team is being used to inform and continuously improve the design and implementation of the GreenLight Method
• Sit on GreenLight’s national leadership team and help execute the organization’s 2021-2024 Strategic Plan to deepen community impact, grow to new cities, build out our learning capacity, build strategic partnerships and center equity in all that we do
• Participate in cross-functional work groups and collaborate on special projects that advance key organizational priorities

Required Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years in leadership roles that involved generating evidence, and supporting stakeholders to apply evidence to strategy decisions through robust, equity-centered learning practices;
• A deep commitment to removing barriers to inclusive prosperity so individuals and families can thrive, and an understanding of the challenges and inequities facing families living in low-income communities;
• Expertise in leading the design and implementation of learning practices for groups or organizations, with strong facilitation and group process skills;
• Experience developing Theories of Change, Logic Models and Learning Agendas/Plans, and expertise incorporating evidence and learning into planning and implementation of organizational strategy;
• Demonstrated ability to center evaluation, learning and strategy work in principles of equity;
• Experience in gathering, analyzing and summarizing qualitative and quantitative data to generate useful findings, including high-quality data visualization skills;
• Outstanding writing and verbal communication skills; ability to translate technical language and complicated ideas into language easily comprehensible to non-technical audiences;
• Ability to collaborate and integrate across the organization, including appreciation for one’s own function and the need to tie to the broader organizational strategy and priorities;
• Learning and analytic mindset – with the ability to integrate knowledge and learning and motivation to quickly get up to speed on current and future priority areas, and to identify issues, innovate solutions, and continuously improve practice;
• Skilled in critical thinking, problem solving, and an ability to make decisions and see paths forward even when there is considerable ambiguity;
• Strong project and time management skills, able to prioritize and manage several projects concurrently;
• Cultural agility skills necessary to work effectively with diverse people, teams, and communities;
• Flexibility, humor, and a passion for GreenLight’s mission;
• Live in reasonable proximity to a GreenLight site: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit,  Kansas City, Greater Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and the Twin Cities.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree or equivalent expertise and knowledge around evaluation, learning, and assessing the impact of programs or strategy;
• An understanding of nonprofit management, finance, governance and program/ organizational design and delivery strategy, and empathy for the challenges endemic to nonprofit organizations; experience with philanthropy or intermediary organizations ideal;
• Experience building the learning function at a nonprofit, foundation or intermediary social impact organization and establishing the foundations of an equity-centered strategic learning culture;
• Specific knowledge and experience applying principles of racial equity into strategy and learning work;
• Experience facilitating learning and providing technical assistance and capacity building to staff and/or nonprofit organizations on data and learning, including through trainings and one-on-one assistance;
• Experience with adaptive strategy approaches and/or training in Emergent Learning;
• Broad knowledge in research and evaluation design, methodology, and instrumentation, including experience with collaborative or participatory approaches.

Location

Applicants must live in reasonable proximity to a GreenLight site: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Greater Newark, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, and the Twin Cities.

Compensation

The salary range for this position is $115,000 – $125,000 commensurate with skills and experience.

GreenLight offers a generous benefits package that includes medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401k match, and generous PTO and parental leave, as well as short- and long-term disability, life insurance, FSA, EAP, remote work assistance, and professional development.

How to Apply

Job Categories: Equal Opportunities. Job Types: Full-Time. Salaries: 100,000 and above.

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