Strategic Initiatives Director
Tipping Point Community · San Francisco, CA · hybrid
About Tipping Point
Tipping Point finds, funds, and strengthens the most promising poverty-fighting solutions so one day everyone in the Bay Area can prosper. Since 2005, Tipping Point has invested $510 million in the community to support organizations, advance policies, and develop new ideas to increase economic opportunity. Last year, our investments funded life-changing services in housing, early childhood, education, and employment for more than 100,000 of our neighbors across the Bay Area. Visit www.tippingpoint.org to learn more.
Values
Tipping Point’s core values are at the heart of everything we do and we look for individuals who share our commitments:
- We cultivate community because we know we are more powerful together.
- We practice gratitude.
- We hold ourselves accountable to achieving impact for and with the communities we serve.
- We relentlessly pursue equity because one’s background and identities should not predetermine one’s opportunities.
Position Overview
The Strategic Initiatives Director builds Tipping Point's newest funding strategies from the ground up, recommending what to fund, getting outside partners to work together, and reporting on what's working. A high-level individual contributor, the Strategic Initiatives Director leads through influence rather than direct reports, driving the strategy and external partnerships that determine each investment area's success.
The two investment areas mark a significant expansion of Tipping Point's approach to economic mobility, and this role holds the strategy and external partnerships both depend on:
- The Critical Decade is an intersectional strategy spanning education, employment, and housing. It coordinates career-connected education, workplace training and experience, and housing stability for low-income young people ages 15–24 in order for them to secure durable economic futures.
- Sector-Focused Pathways connects to Tipping Point’s Employment portfolio. It establishes a regional, sector-based career pathway strategy that connects low-income workers to quality jobs in high-growth Bay Area industries through employer-aligned training, work-based learning, and advancement supports.
This position is accountable for the coherence and performance of each investment area including its strategy, evidence base, and external relationships with employers, public systems, funders, and conveners that drive its impact. They own ecosystem-level investments, including the direct deployment of grant funding. In addition, they work in collaboration with the Policy Director and Senior Program Officers to source, scope, and fund aligned projects.
The position reports to the Senior Director of Grantmaking + Capacity Building and works across the grantmaking, capacity building, impact, and operations teams.
Responsibilities
Strategy Development + Implementation
- Translates each investment area's theory of investment into an executable plan with timelines, milestones, budget, and decision rights, and revisits the plan as evidence comes in.
- Builds the systems and drives day-to-day execution for each investment area, including managing budgets, consultants, and research partners, in partnership with Program Operations, Senior Program Officers, and the Policy Director.
- In collaboration with Senior Program Officers and the Policy Director, identifies aligned projects and organizations, performs due diligence, and proposes new investments to the Board.
- Assesses potential new investment areas in collaboration with the Senior Director of Grantmaking and Capacity Building and turns approved concepts into a first-phase plan outlining early partners, key learning questions, and the evidence needed to justify continued investment.
Project Leadership + Internal Coordination
- Serves as project lead for The Critical Decade and Sector-Focused Pathways investment areas, building alignment and driving workstreams, dependencies, and decision points across internal teams.
- Convenes and leads a working group for each investment area, setting the agenda and rhythm, surfacing the decisions that need making, and ensuring decisions once made are carried through.
- Prepares the analysis and materials required for Chief Program Officer review, program committee engagement, and Board approval, and maintains the documentation that keeps strategy and learning accessible over time.
External Partnership + Engagement
- Serves as the primary internal and external point person for each investment area, using creative problem solving and consensus building to move partners with differing incentives toward shared action, and create partnerships and shared accountability.
- Builds and sustains the external relationships each strategy depends on by establishing credibility with public systems (e.g. Workforce Development Boards, community colleges, K-12 districts and county offices of education, city and county governments, and state agencies) and with employers and industry associations, either directly or through a convener.
- Manages relationships with peers and co-funders, and identifies opportunities for aligned investment.
Learning + Impact
- Collaborates with the Research + Innovation Director to ensure grantmaking is producing answers and outcomes rather than activity.
- In collaboration with the Research + Innovation Director, maintains processes that use early-stage indicators to inform decisions to increase, redirect, or discontinue investments, distinct from the longitudinal outcomes framework used for external reporting.
- Commissions field assessments and analysis, converts findings into technical assistance and investment decisions with the Capacity Building team, and makes honest recommendations — including that Tipping Point stop what is not working.
External Relations + Communications
- Communicates strategy, progress, and impact to Tipping Point leadership, the Board, key supporters, and external audiences through updates, presentations, and written materials, collaborating with the Communications team and keeping the story of the work clear and consistent.
- Serves as the program team's point person for funder relationships connected to each new investment area, including complex or multi-party funding engagements, and keeps the Development team supplied with current, accurate information.
- In collaboration with the Policy Director, structures investments to leverage public and employer funding and pursue the long-term sustainability strategy each investment area requires.
All other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
In addition to our core values, Tipping Point staff exhibit four core competencies: flexibility, exceptional communication skills, ability to work well on a team, and the ability to continuously problem solve in the face of challenges.
Additionally, the Strategic Initiatives Director must have:
- Significant relevant work experience and a proven track record of building initiatives from concept through execution, including designing new approaches when existing models do not fit and testing them before scaling.
- Knowledge of or experience in Bay Area nonprofits, public systems, and systems change, with a strong preference for knowledge of or experience in Santa Clara County.
- Expertise in workforce development, education, or housing; experience working at the intersection of two or more is strongly preferred.
- Exceptional project management skills, including experience driving complex, multi-workstream strategies with many contributors and external partners, and the ability to self-direct and prioritize among competing goals.
- Demonstrated success leading cross-functional or cross-organizational strategies by building trust and alignment, moving colleagues and partners toward a shared timeline without a reporting line.
- Experience building and managing employer or industry partnerships, or a demonstrated ability to establish credibility wi