Job Description

Job Title: Program Manager, Early Childhood
Internal Job Level: Manager
FLSA Status: Exempt
Reporting to : Director, Early Childhood Strategy and Partnerships
Salary Range: $88,000 - $100,000

POSITION SUMMARY
The Program Manager helps to onboard, support and engage a portfolio of more than 50 early childhood partners/grantees with minimal supervision. Through a community-led and equity-centered approach, this person collaborates with their supervisor and other team members to build and manage trust-based relationships with partners/grantees.

The Program Manager helps grantees navigate through a partnership cycle that includes onboarding, partner convenings, site visits, reporting, and renewing. This partnership cycle also requires the Early Childhood team to provide technical assistance to help partners and the foundation meet shared outcomes. In this role, the Manager develops and manages systems to ensure that data from partners and stakeholders is gathered, analyzed, and used to strengthen partnerships, align partners, drive systems change, and inform strategy implementation.

This position is responsible for effective knowledge management, ensuring that all pertinent information about partners is consistently accurate, updated and can be readily available for the Early Childhood team. They will also serve as a liaison to the Grants Manager for Early Childhood to ensure partnership and grant cycles are properly executed.

The Program Manager attends and supports partner events to both collect and share information. They provide a high-level overview of the work of the Early Childhood team and the foundation with accuracy and autonomy to various stakeholders. They also support the implementation of special projects designed to complement and enhance the capacity and effectiveness of partners.

_ ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES_

Stakeholder Relations

• Implement strategies to ensure meaningful engagement and trust-based relationships with early childhood partners and key stakeholders, including attending and actively participating in both virtual and in-person partner events.
• Schedule and conduct touchpoints with partners to assess progress, ensure compliance with agreement terms, and determine optimal timing for engagement throughout the grant cycle.
• Assess partner challenges and determine resource or technical assistance needs, providing guidance to support achievement of outcomes and impact metrics.
• Help facilitate collaboration when needed and identify peer learning opportunities to strengthen relationships among partners, enhancing early childhood partnerships.
• Gather and document insights from partners and key stakeholders to support shared learning and best practices.
• Conduct site visits to practice partner locations to provide support, assess progress, and strengthen partnerships. Occasional out-of-area travel is required for special conferences or events.

Program Management

• Serve as a liaison to the grants management department, facilitating and supporting the agreement process to ensure strategic alignment.
• Monitor agreements throughout their life cycle to ensure internal compliance and adherence to guidelines and processes established by the grants management department.
• Develop, manage and maintain an annual planner to track partnership activities, strategy implementation and key milestones, ensuring alignment with grant timelines and internal reporting requirements.
• Maintain processes and systems to readily provide pertinent strategy implementation data to stakeholders.
• Approach knowledge management in a manner that informs the Foundation’s investments across all early childhood priority areas (early learning, health, mental health, family economic security/workforce development, housing stability), and in alignment with the organization’s knowledge management policies and practices.
• Stay abreast of current issues in the early childhood field.
• Understand the context of the geographic areas that are a priority for early childhood initiatives.

Other

• Support major convenings and events hosted by the EC team (WeVision EarlyEd, DC Early EdX, etc.), by partners, and other stakeholders
• Process conference sponsorships and other administrative tasks associated with partner convenings
• Develop and sustain meaningful connections with teams across the Foundation and the Fund.

Qualifications

FUNCTIONAL/TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The requirements listed below represent the knowledge, skills, and/or abilities required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Equivalent combinations of work experience and training that provide the required knowledge, skills and abilities will also be considered.

• A bachelor’s degree is strongly preferred; a combination of education and experience will be considered in lieu of a degree
• Three to five years of relevant work experience. Experience in the social and human services sectors is preferred
• Strong interest in issues directly related to the Foundation’s or the Fund’s mission
• One to two years of grants cycle-related work preferred
• Intermediate to advanced skills in Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and web-based research; experience using grants management software preferred
• Ability to serve as a strategic partner to build, grow and maintain reciprocal and long-lasting relationships with partners/grantees
• Excellent writing skills and attention to detail
• Customer-service mindset in serving internal and external stakeholders.
• Strong planning skills; ability to prioritize, problem solve and meet multiple competing deadlines with a high degree of autonomy
• Advanced systems of organization to ensure efficiency and timely completion of tasks
• Ability to travel to partner events, conferences and other comparable convenings as needed

Additional Information

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The physical demands described below are representative of the requirements by an employee for the successful performance of the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may occur to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee may regularly be required to talk and listen. The employee is frequently required to sit and use their hands. The employee is occasionally required to stand and walk. The employee may be required to lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

WORK ENVIRONMENT

This position is designated as “Local ” and the employee will be expected to regularly commute to the Washington, D.C. Central Workplace location – or alternative meeting locations in the DMV – to attend in-person Bainum Family Foundation and Children’s Equity Fund monthly staff meetings and quarterly learning sessions, as well as other scheduled ad-hoc in-person meetings. The foundation reserves the right to adopt different hybrid operating practices in the future that make sense for the evolution of our work and could require more in-person work. Telework requires logging onto your computer at home during work hours, responding to emails, and participating in video calls and meetings throughout the day; therefore, access to high-speed, reliable internet is crucial. The Foundation provides all required equipment and supplies to undertake the tasks of the job at home, including laptop, monitors, and other accessories, which are shipped to the employee’s home.