Principal — Operations Services

Role Overview

Title: Principal — Operations Services

Location: Philadelphia region candidates only. Work from home or our office in Fishtown, Philadelphia

Hours: Full-time

Compensation:

• Salary: $90,000 - $105,000 (and a taxable medical stipend of $500/month)
• Biannual profit-sharing
• 4 weeks paid vacation per year plus holidays
• 2 weeks paid sick leave per year
• Equipment stipend

About Good Structures

Good Structures is an operations consultancy and service provider for mission-driven organizations. We support social impact organizations and charities by running their financial, HR, recruitment, and administrative processes, so they can focus on their mission. We are a relatively new organization, but are rapidly taking on new clients, and looking to expand our capacity. In 2024, we worked with 19 clients, have been contacted by many others seeking services, and expect to grow over the next year from four to eight staff to support additional nonprofits and projects.

Our goal is to provide an unparalleled level of support and service to our clients. We aren’t aiming to be another generic bookkeeping and HR service provider for nonprofits — we want to be the best service provider they’ve worked with, where their experience is continuously and relentlessly positive in every engagement.

Our services include:

• Consulting and short-term engagements
  • New entity establishment and operational setup
  • Recruitment, especially for operations roles
  • Research and evaluation to support programmatic expansions and other operationally intensive projects
• Full-service operations support
  • Fractional COO and CFO services
  • Bookkeeping and financial reporting
  • HR and compliance services
  • Event planning and logistics
  • Grantmaking facilitation and management
• Rapid/emergency operations support
  • Emergency situations, such as the departure of a key staff member
  • Managing large, unexpected operations projects
  • Providing bridge capacity for organizations navigating transitions

About the Role

The Principal — Operations Services will have the opportunity to oversee a major part of our work — our operations support functions. They will serve as a fractional COO to multiple small nonprofits, providing advice and oversight of the services we provide. They’ll lead a team within Good Structures focused on providing ongoing, long-term services to organizations, ensuring that our clients receive an unparalleled level of support and responsiveness from us.

The Principal will also directly work on many operations tasks on a day-to-day basis.. This role is in-the-weeds and details-focused. It requires someone who is deeply comfortable with nonprofit operations, has a high degree of attention to detail, and is comfortable regularly switching contexts.

Responsibilities could include (but aren’t limited to):

• Finance
  • Bookkeeping
  • Assisting with formatting client financial data
  • Drafting and tracking invoices
  • Building budgets and other basic financial tools for clients
  • Working with auditors and CPA on annual financial reviews
• Compliance
  • Tracking mail and organizing documents / ensuring client files are promptly filed
  • Filing compliance paperwork in coordination with clients
  • Creating and managing compliance calendars for clients
• HR
  • Managing payroll and benefit programs for clients
  • Developing policies, handbooks, and
  • Setting up new payroll software, and handling conversations with vendors and payroll providers
• Governance
  • Helping organizations track board votes, meetings, and other governance information
  • Helping the organization ensure they meet their annual governance requirements
• General operations
  • Supporting the other operational needs of organizations, including in areas like:
    • Operations support for grantmaking
    • Retreat and event logistics and planning
    • Other operations tasks as needed.

Background and Experience

Required knowledge, skills, and abilities

• Key skills and abilities
  • Extremely high attention to detail
    • We are trusted by our clients to not drop the ball. We need an extremely high degree of attention to detail in everything we do.
  • Able to frequently continue working while context switching, without losing work quality
    • You’ll be working on ensuring we are meeting a high quality standard for many clients. Recalling key context and being able to stay productive when moving between tasks for different clients is a frequent requirement.
  • Ability to stay calm during periods of high stress or change.
  • An extremely high degree of conscientiousness and carefulness in your work.
  • Strong written and verbal communication skills.
  • Excellent judgement about risk, when things need to be discussed with counsel or other experts or with the client, and when something might be off track.
  • A high degree of comfort with a direct feedback culture.
• Key knowledge and experience
  • Knowledge of nonprofit bookkeeping and accounting procedures.
  • Knowledge of nonprofit compliance procedures, especially related to employment and fundraising compliance.
  • Experience with HR, especially at small nonprofits

You might be a good fit for this role if your background includes (these qualifications definitely aren’t required, but might help your application stand out):

• Genuine excitement about enabling others to do their work more effectively.
• Experience as a solo executive director, nonprofit founder, or otherwise in a role at a new nonprofit that gave you experience with nonprofit operations skills across functions.
• Experience as a nonprofit COO, Director of Operations, CFO, or similar role that required you to have oversight over staff and a nonprofit’s day-to-day operations.
• Enrolled agent or equivalent certification.
• Experience in client-facing roles.

Relevant Software Skills

While experience in all of these platforms is not required, we and most of our clients use the following tools. You’ll use these regularly at Good Structures:

• Gmail and Google Workspace, especially Google Sheets
• Asana
• Quickbooks Online
• Airtable