Director of Impact Operations

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.

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.

Janet Albert 

 Partner, Bridge Partners

 Janet.Albert@bridgepartnersllc.com