Learning Director

The Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation seeks nominations and applications for the position of Learning Director to lead the foundation’s learning journey and support the impact strategy of its grantmaking in the next 10 years of its spenddown.

The Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation has made more than $180 million in grants to improve the quality of life for residents in Southeast Michigan and the Great Lakes region since launching its grantmaking in 2008. Funding has been focused on improving water quality in the Great Lakes basin; promoting environmental health and justice; advancing Alzheimer’s research; strengthening sustainable business; and supporting the arts.

In May 2022, the Erb Family Foundation announced it will shift from a perpetual foundation to a spenddown model and conclude its grantmaking by 2034-35. That work is being guided by the Foundation’s new mission and vision:

The Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation envisions a flourishing, healthy, and resilient Great Lakes ecosystem and a culturally vibrant, sustainable southeast Michigan. Toward this end, we strengthen the cultural and environmental organizations that share our vision to make this a reality for generations to come.

The Foundation’s grantmaking and way of working will be guided by its values, which are: to make a lasting transformative difference; embrace possibility; work and learn in partnership; and pursue fairness and respect.

The new grantmaking strategy was announced in October 2024. It includes six areas of focus: Great Lakes, Arts and Culture, Sustainable Business, Democracy, Alzheimer’s Research, and Legacy Giving. In addition to its grantmaking, the Foundation will also be working closely with grant partners to learn how to better invest in their organizational health and long-term durability. The Foundation will also work to inspire a new generation of leaders and philanthropic partners to pass on Fred and Barbara’s passions long after the Foundation is gone.

THE OPPORTUNITY

We are seeking a Learning Director to work across the Foundation’s grantmaking areas and operations to support staff in using data to drive decision-making. This position will also help the Foundation communicate what it learns with its partners. While the Foundation has a history of employing learning, this new role is meant to co-create and implement a comprehensive learning plan to ensure staff and leadership have the right information at the right time to lean into a strategy or change course. In other words, the Learning Director will be a co-developer and interpreter of monitoring and evaluation activities to facilitate forward-facing decision-making and learning across the Foundation.

To ensure strong collaboration between the Learning Director, leadership, other staff, and the trustees, this is a hybrid position. The Learning Director will report to the Foundation’s President. This position will be supported by other staff, and when needed, external consultants. The Foundation’s communications team will also be managed by this position.

CORE DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

In the first year, the Learning Director will develop a learning plan to guide the Foundation-wide decisions. At the same time as this high-level planning, the Learning Director will ensure current grantee application and reporting questions and program officer close-out reports summarize successes and lessons learned.

Specifically, the Learning Plan will build off current practices when possible and will identify:

• An overall aim and values of learning within the Foundation, ensuring that there are consistent mental models of learning, evaluation, reporting, and their uses to lead to impactful grantmaking and organizational practices.
• Key learning questions and measurable outcomes across the Foundation, within program areas, and (potentially) across other identified cohorts of grant partners.
• How the Foundation will develop systems and structures to expeditiously, continually, and pragmatically answer learning questions. This includes data collection plans, analysis plans, and how trustees, leadership, and staff will use findings to support decision-making.
• Key capacity needs related to learning and how the Foundation will go about ensuring it has the capacity. This could include what is needed to complete technical tasks (i.e., collecting data and information, analyzing the data, and data visualization) and what capacity strengthening (i.e., how to work with stakeholders to identify appropriate data or how to effectively communicate how outcomes are measured at the Foundation) staff, leadership, and trustees need.
• Clear processes for trustees, leadership, and staff on when and how to engage with the Learning Director.

Based on the learning plan and the assets of the selected candidate, ongoing activities will likely include:

• Embracing and elevating the culture of learning across the Foundation, including with trustees, leadership, and staff.
• Contributing to the hiring, supervision, coaching, mentoring, professional development of team members.
• Facilitating program officers in developing or refining portfolio or cohort-level successes, which account for individual grants and the Foundation’s timelines. The Learning Director will use the successes and the needs of the key stakeholders in the Foundation to develop learning questions and implement plans for tracking, reflecting, and reporting progress, including identifying the appropriate methods and data for outcome measurements.
• Collaborating with program staff and grants management to refine application questions and reporting requirements to align with programmatic and foundation-wide strategies and goals.
• Where necessary, supporting program staff in the management of programmatic evaluation contracts, including RFP development, ongoing support of the contract, program officer understanding of key findings, adjust internal learning practices based on lessons learned (i.e., if the strategy shifts, shift how data are collected to match the new strategy).
• Supporting staff in understanding reporting requirements, expected outcomes, and how to communicate these to grant partners.
• Facilitating staff or consultants in performing landscape scans, gap analyses, asset mapping, or needs assessments related to programmatic outcomes.
• Co-developing communications about learning and evaluation with staff.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS

• Experience leading Learning & Evaluation teams using qualitative, quantitative, multimethod, and mixed method approaches and methods in the nonprofit sector.
• Ability to weigh the evidence available to the limitations of using different methodological approaches and guide others to determine a pragmatic approach that leads to educated and informed organizational decision-making.
• Demonstrated ability to focus on developing high-level strategy while getting in the data weeds.
• Experience getting up to speed quickly on multiple subject areas and use that information to support multiple stakeholders alignment with a vision and having similar mental models.
• Evidence of translating evaluation and learning concepts to non-evaluators, including about monitoring, data collection, analysis, and results.
• Strong organizational, analytical, and writing skills with attention to detail.
• The ability to be resilient in the face of challenges, manage conflict, and maintain a growth mindset.
• Personal passion about issues related to the arts, the environment, and/or sustainable business in Michigan.
• A collegial spirit in sharing and receiving ideas, information, and feedback.
• Demonstrated experience in building strong, positive, collaborative relationships-internally and externally-by being an active empathetic listener, maintaining openness to new ideas and perspectives, and encouraging dialogue.
• Ability to maintain the highest levels of integrity, ethics, discernment, diplomacy, and strict confidentiality.
• Proficient with Microsoft 365 including Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc. and ability to work in an online grants management system.

Education & Experience

The Learning Director will have a Master’s Degree in a social science or related field and at least ten years of work history using evaluation and learning with nonprofit organizations, foundations, or family offices. At least three years of that experience should be in leadership and supporting the development of organizational systems for learning. Candidates with an alternative but comparable level of expertise are encouraged to apply.

WORK ARRANGEMENTS, COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

The Foundation’s offices are in Birmingham, Michigan. Full-time staff work a hybrid schedule (3 days in-person and 2 days remote). Attendance at grant partners’ evening and weekend events and occasional regional travel should be anticipated.

While performing the duties of the job, the Learning Director is regularly required to communicate effectively with internal and external partners. They will be frequently required to sit and to use their hands to handle or feel. They may occasionally need to stoop, kneel, or crouch, and to lift and/or move up to 50 lbs.

In the normal course of work, employees operate a laptop, iPad, telephone, cellular telephone, web conferencing equipment, and copier/printer. This position requires the employee to make decisions in a timely manner and anticipate all the potential ramifications of decisions made. The employee must be able to read and interpret documents, understand/follow complex written and oral instructions, be able to express themselves clearly/concisely, perform mathematical functions, and handle multiple, concurrent tasks.

The salary for this position begins at $130,000 and may be adjusted according to qualifications and experience. The Foundation offers a comprehensive benefits package including employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance and a generous 401K plan.

The Foundation’s offices are in Birmingham, Michigan. Full-time staff work a hybrid schedule (3 days in-person and 2 days remote). Attendance at grant partners’ evening and weekend events and occasional regional travel should be anticipated.

While performing the duties of the job, the Learning Director is regularly required to communicate effectively with internal and external partners. They will be frequently required to sit and to use their hands to handle or feel. They may occasionally need to stoop, kneel, or crouch, and to lift and/or move up to 50 lbs.

In the normal course of work, employees operate a laptop, iPad, telephone, cellular telephone, web conferencing equipment, and copier/printer. This position requires the employee to make decisions in a timely manner and anticipate all the potential ramifications of decisions made. The employee must be able to read and interpret documents, understand/follow complex written and oral instructions, be able to express themselves clearly/concisely, perform mathematical functions, and handle multiple, concurrent tasks.

The salary for this position begins at $130,000 and may be adjusted according to qualifications and experience. The Foundation offers a comprehensive benefits package including employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance and a generous 401K plan.