Senior Program Officer, Education

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 over $440 million in community interventions, policy change, and new ideas. Last year, our grantees provided life-changing services in housing, early childhood, education, and employment to nearly 90,000 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 Senior Program Officer, Education is a seasoned professional with exceptional knowledge of the education landscape and the key levers that can impact positive postsecondary and career outcomes for students. This person will continue to refine and will lead implementation of a strategy for Tipping Point’s investments in the education space, which is rooted in grantmaking to nonprofit providers, but may also include other types of investments and policy or systems-change initiatives. Working in collaboration with community leaders, Tipping Point leadership, and the Education Committee of Tipping Point’s board, they will recommend investments in the most promising education solutions in the Bay Area that can be taken to scale.

The Senior Program Officer, Education has knowledge of current research and interventions in the education space – particularly in the realm of post-secondary and career success, strong understanding of nonprofit organizations, experience designing and/or evaluating programs, and expertise building relationships in diverse organizations and communities. The Senior Program Officer manages relationships with current grantees, screens and performs diligence on prospective issue area investments, and acts as Tipping Point’s subject-matter leader on education systems, policies, and programs. The Senior Program Officer works closely with the grantmaking team to share learnings, helps refine Tipping Point’s grantmaking approach, and assesses to what extent our efforts are reducing poverty in the Bay Area.

This position reports directly to the Senior Director of Grantmaking and Capacity Building

What will you do?

Strategy + Education Landscape Leadership

• Develop and implement an actionable strategy for a grantmaking portfolio, including a policy agenda and specific and quantifiable impact targets.
• Through research and connections with experts in the field, inform strategy and help the team to stay current on the issue and innovative solutions.
• Work with the grantmaking team to connect issue area strategies in a broader strategy to reduce poverty in the Bay Area.
• Serve as primary liaison for the board’s Education Committee, effectively engaging them as strategic partners in innovative solutions.

Grantee Relationship Management + Support

• Serve as primary contact, relationship manager and thought partner for grantees.
• Oversees maintenance of internal administration and due diligence documentation
• Work with grantees to set annual performance goals in order to increase client impact.
• Monitor and support progress toward grant goal achievement.
• Identify support and resources that grantees need; work with team and partners to deliver management assistance.
• Perform annual renewal process and recommend support based on client impact and progress on grant goals.
• Identify, communicate, and address grantee misalignment and/or underperformance.

Pipeline Management + New Grantee Diligence

• Maintain knowledge of prospective issue area grantees and partners; perform due diligence as appropriate, and propose new investments to Tipping Point’s Board.
• Gain understanding of comparable organizations and promising practices to assess, document, and communicate the relative strengths and challenges of potential grantees.

Evaluation, Impact + Continuous Learning

• Capture grantee activities and data in Salesforce.
• Monitor outcomes and establish targets for grantees.
• Meet regularly with grantees to understand and diagnose key organizational and programmatic successes and challenges, including progress on outcomes targets.
• Recommend concrete actions to strengthen grantees’ capture and use of data, and improve efficacy.
• Seek opportunities to learn from and share new grantmaking and evaluation approaches.
• Participate in sharing successes and failures to inform the team’s learning and improvement.
• Develop a research agenda to inform portfolio strategy, including core investments, policy opportunities, and potential future initiatives.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build and maintain peer funder and other community relationships.
• Create opportunities to collaborate and network among all Tipping Point grantees.
• Highlight grantees’ and Tipping Point’s work and impact with Tipping Point’s Communications and Events team, and other key stakeholders.
• Attend select Tipping Point Board meetings and events as ambassadors of grantees and Tipping Point.

All other duties as assigned.

What qualifications are we looking for?

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 Senior Program Officer must have:

• Robust professional experience including leadership experience at a direct service organization and a proven track record of grant-making, program development, capacity building and/or consulting in the nonprofit sector.
• Demonstrated mastery of understanding of the education landscape. Strategic thinker with ability to manage a portfolio of investments and experience developing and implementing strategy or complex initiatives.
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to build relationships with diverse individuals, organizations and communities, and to translate those skills to effective collaborative leadership with board members
• Customer-service orientation to supporting grantees and fellow staff in achieving their goals and results.
• Evidence of strong commitment to creating more diverse, equitable and inclusive programs and organizations.
• Excellent communication (oral + written) and ability to inspire and motivate others through compelling messaging and presentations.

Salary + classification

Tipping Point is committed to paying competitive wages. In an effort to increase equity, because we know that salary negotiations tend to have an unfair bias, we do not participate in a salary negotiation process for any candidate. We will make our best offer, and it will be the same regardless of the candidate. The annual starting salary for the Senior Program Officer, Education role is $176,800. This position meets the exemption requirements as defined by state and federal law. Exempt employees are paid on a salaried basis, and their salary is intended to constitute their entire regular compensation, regardless of the number of hours they work; therefore, exempt employees are not eligible for overtime pay.

Hybrid Work Environment

Tipping Point is committed to the safety of our staff and to facilitating connection and community with one another. While we were remote for almost two years, we are a highly in-person culture and have moved into a hybrid work environment. While managers have some discretion over the schedule, teams are generally expected to be in person Tuesday-Thursdays. All other days staff may choose to work in the office or remotely. Please note that in a constantly changing environment, Tipping Point may adjust this arrangement as it sees the need to.