Vice President and Executive Director

City Year is seeking an innovative, entrepreneurial, and people-focused leader to serve as the Executive Director (ED) at City Year Kansas City. This position is an outstanding opportunity to play an integral role in advocating for and advancing educational equity in Kansas City. This seasoned executive is responsible for ensuring the Kansas City site meets its impact, revenue, district partnership, and external relations goals.

Reporting to the President of Market 2 at City Year Headquarters, this dynamic, visionary change agent leads 17 staff members and 68 AmeriCorps members serving in 7 partner schools. Additionally, the Executive Director works closely with City Year Kansas City’s local Board, comprised of 10 leaders in the public, private, and non-profit sectors of Kansas City. The Executive Director is accountable for a current annual revenue budget of approximately $3.3M (current make up of funding is 47% public sector, including school district and AmeriCorps, and 53% private sector), while also securing multi-year funding relationships that ensure the sustainability and future growth of the site.

Serving as the primary champion of City Year’s impact locally, the Executive Director leads efforts to help students stay in school and on track and efforts to deliver an excellent personal and professional development experience for AmeriCorps members. The Executive Director represents the organization within the Kansas City community and engages diverse constituencies in City Year’s work to catalyze greater educational opportunity for underserved students. These constituencies include Board members; district leadership and school partners; Missouri Community Service Commission (AmeriCorps); and private sector investors.

Additionally, the Executive Director is a Vice President for City Year Inc.’s national organization and therefore strengthens the connection between City Year’s national initiatives and the local work in Kansas City. Through this role as Vice President, the Executive Director also participates within the City Year global network to advance the mission by managing working relationships with staff at City Year’s national office and helping to lead and set organizational strategy through network-wide project teams.Job Description

Responsibilities

The Executive Director is responsible for leading and managing site staff and AmeriCorps members to ensure operational success by generating resources and building support from the public and private sectors. This executive serves as a vital link between the local Kansas City market and the City Year national office. Site supervision includes the functional areas of student impact and school partnerships, fundraising, expense management, management and retention of AmeriCorps members and staff, and site board development and relations.

Executive Directors embody our core values and must have the firm belief that education has the power to help all students reach their full potential and a passion for increasing our nation’s graduation rates. To successfully execute the job’s core responsibilities, a successful Executive Director must demonstrate the following behaviors:

• Build and forge partnerships with diverse stakeholders to advance the cause of educational equity
• Mobilize internal and external stakeholders towards a bold vision of how they can impact the lives of young people
• Build and empower teams to fully own their functions while driving accountability and taking personal responsibility for their success
• Build community and foster a caring and supportive site culture with a sense of connection and belonging
• Demonstrate curiosity and humility as a life-long learner who seeks out diverse perspectives and opportunities for self-improvement
• Possess a deep sense of personal accountability to ensure the success of both City Year Kansas City and City Year, Inc. nationally
• Connect with diverse teams of AmeriCorps Members between the ages of 18 and 25 and believe deeply in their ability to make positive change

Through these lenses, the Executive Director will focus on the following primary areas of responsibility:

• People and Culture: Lead, coach, and develop 17 full-time staff members, paying close attention to staff engagement and retention of staff year over year. Foster a dynamic culture that embodies our core values of inclusivity and teamwork.
• AmeriCorps Member Experience: Ensure the site fosters a transformational experience for all City Year AmeriCorps members. Specifically, work with the site staff and Board to support the corps throughout their year of service, with the goal of having one of the best AmeriCorps member experiences across all City Year sites (as measured by CultureAmp survey).
• Student Impact: In partnership with the site Senior Leadership Team, ensure high quality delivery of the nationally developed service delivery model implemented by City Year AmeriCorps members in partner elementary, middle, and high schools, called Whole School, Whole Child.
• Private Sector Fundraising, Cultivation, and Stewardship: Serve as chief fundraiser and lead site staff and local Board members to motivate key influencers to raise the funds necessary to meet annual and long-term revenue goals by leveraging national revenue and stewardship strategies. Identify, cultivate, solicit, and manage strategic relationships with corporations, foundations, family foundations and individuals in order to build a sustainable private revenue mix that results in annual revenue of at least $1.7M (current year goal).
• School/District Investments: Sustain transformational partnerships with existing district and school leadership and cultivate new transformational partnerships with leaders of future school partners. Negotiate contracts that result in continued financial investments from current partner schools and allows for an increased financial commitment for any additional partner schools.  
• Financial Management: Ensure City Year Kansas City raises three percent more than it spends annually by managing a fiscally-sound budget, forecasting, expense management, and cash flow for a current site budget of approximately $3.3M.
• Board Member Engagement: Recruit, develop, and manage a diverse, dynamic and deeply engaged site Board. Work with the Board to develop and achieve Board-specific goals focused on areas such as fundraising, AmeriCorps member support, community engagement and brand awareness, while also contributing to the success of the national organization. Ensure cultivation and engagement of future board leadership. (Note: While City Year’s site Boards are non-fiduciary in nature, they play a significant role in the success of the local site.)
• Government Relations and Public Policy: Engage local and national elected officials to support funding and policies for City Year and the national service movement, such as the Governor, Mayor, City Council, local school board representatives, State Legislature, and members of U.S. Congress. Maintain effective and collaborative relationships with the Missouri AmeriCorps state commission (Missouri Community Service Commission); oversee the preparation of effective AmeriCorps grant applications and progress reports and meet performance and compliance requirements associated therein.
• AmeriCorps Member Recruitment: Collaborate with City Year’s national recruitment and admissions team to ensure the site recruits, selects, and admits AmeriCorps members for the next service year. Partner with site staff to ensure a strong cohort returns annually for a second year of service, with at least 35% of first year members applying for a second year of service.
• Marketing and Communications: Lead the site in increasing visibility and brand awareness of City Year’s work in local and national media, social media and marketing channels by developing and leveraging local relationships.

In Kansas City, the top priorities include:

• Ensure continued financial solvency of City Year Kansas City by growing the current community of champions and financial investors to meet existing revenue goals and enable future expansion into additional Kansas City public schools.
• Further advance the site’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusivity and belonging by investing in people, culture, community, and partnerships while prioritizing inclusive and equitable systems, processes, and practices.
• Raise the brand awareness of City Year among the Kansas City community, with a particular focus on young people in the 18-25 year old range.

Qualifications

• Strong ability and experience in the behaviors listed above
• Strong competency in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging work; emotional intelligence
• Demonstrated success managing effective and engaged teams, including managing through multiple layers of leadership
• Proven skills in influencing and motivating stakeholders; track record in fundraising from corporations, foundations and major gifts and/or sales
• Ability to build collaborative and strategic partnerships
• Strong communication, listening, and public speaking skills to powerfully represent City Year’s mission and vision
• Ability to attend evening and weekend events; ability to travel to in-person meetings in various cities quarterly
• Significant local non-profit, volunteer, or multi-sector experience preferred
• An established cross-sector, Kansas City network a plus
• Knowledge of Kansas City and Kansas City educational landscape preferred
• Content knowledge of K-12 education, youth development, and/or national service/AmeriCorps a strong plus