The Foundation

We are the largest nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Founded on a simple premise: people everywhere, regardless of identity or circumstances, should have the chance to live healthy, productive lives. We believe our employees should reflect the rich diversity of the global populations we aim to serve. We provide an exceptional benefits package to employees and their families which include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage with no premiums, generous paid time off, paid family leave, foundation-paid retirement contribution, regional holidays, and opportunities to engage in several employee communities. As a workplace, we’re committed to creating an environment for you to thrive both personally and professionally.

The Team

Our Economic Mobility and Opportunity (EMO) team works with local and state governments and policymakers, small and medium-sized businesses, community and advocacy organizations, funders, and researchers to help increase long-term economic security for people in the U.S. earning low incomes. Our focus population is the 47 million people ages 16 to 64 whose annual incomes are below 200% of the federal poverty level, which translates to $27,180 for an individual and $55,500 for a family of four as of 2022.

The Economic Mobility & Opportunity strategy has three pillars:
• Making Lives Better Now: Work to address the immediate needs of our focus population by supporting the creation and use of tools that help individuals and families access safety net benefits tax credits and navigate resources unique to their needs as well as connect employers with skilled workers
• Public Good Creation and Dissemination: We provide tools, insights, and resources to local governments, businesses, and organizations to help them create more opportunities for people living in poverty to achieve economic success.
• Critical Enablers: We collaborate with government agencies, businesses, nonprofits, funders, and others to increase the flow of capital, facilitate learning, and advance shared goals in a way that builds momentum around efforts in our two other focus areas.

Your Role

The Sr. Program Officer, U.S. Economic Mobility & Opportunity (SPO) is a cross-cutting role that will help lead initiatives to ensure the tools, platforms, and public goods we are building are as accessible and useful as possible to those best positioned to have a direct impact on increasing mobility from poverty in the U.S., including individuals who have or are currently experiencing poverty. The Senior Program Officer will develop strategies to effectively expand the adoption of public goods across multiple portfolios, including using a community of practice to encourage collaboration and shared learning among local leaders, intermediaries, and other key partners, ultimately driving community-level impact. This will also require close partnership across the team to ensure appropriate development of these public goods investments.

The role will also provide strategic leadership for the Economic Mobility & Opportunity team with responsibility for ensuring the team’s work is responsive to insights on the users of our public goods and leverages emerging technologies to provide local governments, practitioners (e.g. those delivery services), and philanthropy with what they need to be successful in their work.

The SPO will also be responsible for measuring and reporting on uptake and efficacy of our core investments, with an eye to evaluating how our public goods may be prompting behavior change for local decision makers and contributing to the overall flow of dollars towards evidence-based practices for Economic Mobility. The SPO will take a strategic approach to ensuring the long-term sustainability of programming, including identifying long-term revenue models to support strategically important work. You will help assess how these efforts are driving behavior change, strengthening the field, and building a lasting infrastructure that supports the ongoing success of local leaders and their communities.

This is a 9-month Limited Term Employment position, relocation will not be provided.

What You’ll Do

Strategy Development and Implementation (55%)

• Develop dissemination strategies, oftentimes leveraging technology, to enhance awareness and adoption of core public goods across the portfolios that comprise the Economic Mobility & Opportunity program. This work will include deep engagement with a range of partners – from other funders to those implementing services – to pinpoint opportunities for greatest leverage and impact of our core public goods.
• Develop deep insights on the needs and methods to influence and reach decision-makers, especially local governments and philanthropy, in adopting strategies and tools to increase mobility from poverty.
• Partner with program officers on the team to develop approaches for reaching critical users with the capacity to positively impact structural barriers to mobility.
• Identify and engage a diverse set of priority dissemination partners/networks to support work across EMO portfolios.
• Lead relationship management with our key partners, particularly our partners leading the Community of Practice efforts and those leading work on our public goods.
• Lead efforts to improve team capabilities in delivering/disseminating public goods, including developing standards, tools and resources that can be deployed by the entire team throughout the end-to-end investment process.
• Capture data/insights from grants, contracts, partners and use these insights to interrogate team hypotheses and support better decision making.

Measuring and Reporting (20%)

• Implement framework for measuring and learning about the uptake, adoption, and efficacy of EMO-funded public goods and solutions and assess how our investments are contributing to stronger and more equitable field, and ensuring those data and insights drive continuous improvement to our strategy.
• Analyze data, collect insights, and develop materials to communicate progress within this portfolio for annual program reviews with leadership.
• Help represent strategy and investment portfolios to leadership.

Grantmaking and Management (20%)

• Make investments to leverage technology to enable reach to priority adopters of solutions/tools such as local decision-makers.
• Consult with grantees and other partners to generate creative and high impact projects and ensure grants are meeting outcome goals. This may include: site visits, providing operational guidance and convening meetings of key partners.
• Build relationships/connections and approaches to engaging the field (e.g. scholars, practitioners, community voice) that will enable efficient landscaping of investment opportunities linked to pillars of strategy.
• Represent the team and foundation to key program-related internal and external constituencies, as appropriate, on committees related to area of expertise and responsibilities of the position.
• Review letters of inquiry and grant proposals; provide clear, concise and insightful written analyses and recommendations for funding, including drafting and editing proposal summaries and progress reports for review by foundation leadership.

Team Building and Culture (5%)

• Help cultivate an inclusive, welcoming team culture.
• Works with Director and Deputy Director to help ensure consistent approach to strategy development and analysis across portfolios.
• Collaborates with other US Program strategies on areas of programmatic alignment.

Your Experience

• 9+ years of experience. Two years of experience may be substituted by the attainment of an advanced degree. Experience with public interest technologies is strongly preferred.
• Track record of leveraging technology to drive impact across sectors. Deep knowledge of and desire to apply emerging technologies, including AI, to drive social change
• Experience driving impact in designing and implementing strategies to launch and disseminate “public goods” – tools, platforms, collaborations – as widely as possible, inclusive of public and social sector actors, with a keen understanding of what it takes to change behavior.
• Expertise in deeply understanding local decision makers – the primary audiences for our public goods, creating actionable audience segmentations, and articulating value propositions of services and solutions intended to achieve social impact goals.
• Track record leading strategy development, execution, and monitoring: guiding implementation, delivery, and impact measurement of approved strategic objectives.
• Demonstrate excellent leadership, intellectual quickness, creativity, curiosity, and resourcefulness.
• Demonstrated excellence in clear written communication and data analysis and experience advocating and communicating with a broad and diverse audience.
• Creative problem solving with a rigorous approach and the skills for quantitative analysis.
• Demonstrated record of working in a collaborative fashion in previous “cross-team” role.
• Experience connecting to/working within communities, the private sector, or the public sector on addressing systemic barriers to opportunity.
• Familiarity with the field of potential investment partners (public and private) for economic mobility public goods.
• Experience working on dimensions of poverty and barriers to opportunity within the U.S.
• Demonstrated expertise on social impact delivery, working with partners and assembling capital to support and sustain promising work, and familiarity with primary economic mobility barriers that contribute to persistent poverty in the U.S.

Must be able to legally work in the country where this position is located without visa sponsorship.

The salary range for this role is $182,600 to $283,100 USD. We recognize high-wage market differences where our offices are located, in Seattle, WA and Washington D.C. The range for this role in these locations is $199,000 to $308,400 USD. As a mission-driven organization, we strive to balance competitive pay with our mission and new hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary range between the minimum and the midpoint salary range. Actual placement in the range will depend on a candidate’s job-related skills, experience, and expertise, as evaluated during the interview process.

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Hiring Requirements

As part of our standard hiring process for new employees, employment will be contingent upon successful completion of a background check.

Candidate Accommodations

If you require assistance due to a disability in the application or recruitment process, please submit a request here.

Inclusion Statement

We are dedicated to the belief that all lives have equal value. We strive for a global and cultural workplace that supports ever greater diversity, equity, and inclusion — of voices, ideas, and approaches — and we support this diversity through all our employment practices.

All applicants and employees who are drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equality of opportunity and fair treatment without regard to race, color, age, religion, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation, disability, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, and prior protected activity.