Denver Executive Director

Position Overview

The Denver Executive Director for America’s Promise Alliance (APA) is responsible for ensuring the growth, success, sustainability, and impact of APA’s Alliance community in Denver. This work includes inspiring the leading youth-supporting organizations in Denver to join our community, ensuring that deep engagement with our programming leads to organizational improvement for participating organizations, leading the ideation and launch of new Denver based multi-organization collaborations, and raising the funds necessary to scale and support this work. Reporting to APA’s Chief of Staff, this position is an exciting opportunity to create greater alignment among Denver organizations, launch new collective action efforts in the city, and contribute to the design and evolution of a powerful local-national network. Ultimately, the Denver Executive Director is responsible for ensuring our Alliance community becomes a powerful force for change in Denver, with a focus on issues in K12 education, youth development, postsecondary to workforce pathways, and democratic and civic engagement.

About APA

Our Alliance is a community of the leading youth-supporting nonprofits working in K-12 education, postsecondary to workforce pathways, and democracy and civic engagement. All member organizations enroll their CEO and leadership teams in our community. Over the last two years, 100 organizations and 500+ leaders have joined us in this effort.

We add annual value to our member organizations by helping them improve, through an integrated model of leadership development, knowledge sharing, and capacity building. In this programming, leaders in our community build trust, relationships, and the habits for working together and we are consistently reinforcing the practical benefits of sharing and collaboration across organizations. We then use the “culture of the collective” in our community to ideate, design, and launch multi-organization collaborations, focused on opportunities in our issue areas that are too large or too complex for any one organization to address on its own. Learn more about our Alliance community here and access the complete 2022-2026 strategic plan here.

Our Denver expansion is part of APA’s efforts to build a hybrid local-national community. This allows APA to support the development of local and more proximate organizations (who have historically had less access to these networks and supports) in their efforts to innovate, grow, and increase their impact. It also allows Denver nonprofits to learn from their peers in similarly sized cities and connects these organizations to leading national organizations working in their issue areas. Perhaps most importantly, it provides the infrastructure and empowers Denver organizations to ideate and design on the new collaborations that have the greatest potential to increase outcomes and opportunity for young people in the city.

Responsibilities

The Denver a Executive Director will be responsible for:

• Holistic responsibility for the execution of APA’s Partner City strategy in Denver, including management of the financial model, member experience, team growth and management, and collective action work.
• Recruiting new organizations to join the community and leading their onboarding.
• Ensuring high engagement and satisfaction of all participating organizations and leaders.
• Leading the fundraising necessary to sustain and grow the Denver Alliance, establishing robust relationships throughout the Denver philanthropic community.
• Building and leading a high-performing team, including hiring and onboarding new staff, developing and managing team performance.
• Contributing to APA’s national strategy and organizational development.
• Ensuring local data and metrics are effectively tracked and managed for optimal performance management.

Local Member Recruitment and Engagement

• Lead local recruitment strategies and processes to build our Alliance community to reach at least 40 organizations by 2027.
• Onboard new member organizations, generating excitement and understanding necessary for deep engagement and durable impact within the local ecosystem.
• Execute highimpact
• member engagement and management strategies to ensure deep knowledge necessary to support the needs of local organizations and leaders.
• Navigate the successful integration of Denver organizations into the overall Alliance community.
• Ensure APA’s capacity building, knowledge sharing, strategic support, and leadership development programming is responsive to the needs of organizations in Denver.

Fundraising and Stewardship

• Partner with APA’s VP of Development to create and implement an annual fundraising plan including strategies for revenue diversification and growth.
• Solicit and steward individual donors, foundations, corporations and government agencies.
• Serve as APA’s local representative and ambassador, speaking publicly about the organization to media, at conferences, and at related external events.
• Superior writing skills and demonstrated ability to develop proposals, reports, and presentations.
• Guide local in-market funder prospecting, building local funder collaboratives to support the work that emerges as priorities of our community.

CollectiveAction & Multi-Organization Collaborations

• Lead Denver organizations in the ideation, identification, and design of the most impactful ideas for multi-organization collaborations in K12 education, youth development, postsecondary to workforce pathways, and in democratic / civic engagement.
• Lead the selection process of which ideas APA will attempt to launch in Denver and secure the funding necessary to launch and support the work.
• Recruit Denver organizations to participate in the collaboration and ensure high engagement among all participating organizations.
• Steward each initiative toward intended outcomes.

Leadership and Management

• Develop a high-performing team to support Denver goals across administrative, development and/or program functions
• Manage team to execute new member recruitment, onboarding and engagement
• Working closely and collaborating with APA national teams to fulfill strategic goals
• Contribute to the inclusive, values driven culture of the APA team Steward the coaching and professional advancement of team members towards their career goals and maximizing potential within the organization

Competencies and Experience

• 7+ years of senior leadership in Denver organizations working in our issue areas.
• Deep understanding of the local landscape and strong relationships with key community stakeholders.
• Adept fundraiser with demonstrated ability to identify, cultivate and close new sources of investment across a diverse set of funders and funding types
• Proven ability to identify and build strategic partnerships that lead to impact among non-profit organizations and between community stakeholder groups (i.e., municipal agencies and corporate institutions).
• Exceptional communication skills and the ability to build authentic connections and partnerships with a range of community stakeholders.
• Compassionate, empathetic, collaborative leadership style with a strengths-based approach to management.
• Proven experience building and scaling a team and programs effectively with sustainability in mind.
• Ability to work effectively in a remote environment while managing multiple priorities.
• Ability to thrive in an entrepreneurial, startup environment.