Chief Administrative Officer

Suncoast Partnership to End Homelessness is seeking a CAO to join the leadership of our organization, adding internal strength and capacity to our operations. This is an essential leadership role in ensuring a solid foundation for Suncoast Partnership in our work with the Suncoast Continuum of Care to increase the effectiveness of community partners through education, data, advocacy, system operations, and shared governance.

About Us

Suncoast Partnership aims to provide dynamic, proactive leadership that engages the area service providers, community, funders, and policymakers to end homelessness in Manatee and Sarasota Counties. Suncoast Partnership is the lead agency for the HUD-designated Continuum of Care (CoC) FL-500, serving as the Collaborative Applicant, Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) lead, State of Florida lead for homeless services, and the homeless crisis system lead including coordinated entry. As such, Suncoast Partnership is responsible for overseeing the local planning process for the distribution of CoC Program funding, State of Florida funding, and resources dedicated to ending homelessness, evaluating community needs, and coordinating plans to deliver housing and services to meet those needs. Suncoast Partnership works closely with nonprofit partners and community stakeholders to accomplish the Homeless Response System’s goals.

About the Position

Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, this position is a key member of the executive team and is considered critical in organizational resiliency and succession planning. The CAO is responsible for driving internal work, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and operational excellence.

The CAO’s work is essential for ensuring the fulfillment of the organization’s responsibilities to the community as the lead agency; all our internal work drives community systems and impacts other organizations. Please see our website for more information on specific tasks in this role.

To be successful in this role – the CAO needs to:

Have exceptional attention to detail.

Be experienced in homeless services and preferably in CoC work. In the absence of experience in CoC work, you must, at minimum, have a clear understanding of what CoC work encompasses. You must be knowledgeable in subject areas around homeless response systems, CoC governance, strategies and systems for ending homelessness, and/or housing issues.

Be a systems thinker with an ability to see the big picture and drill down to all the details that create it.

Thrive in a fast-paced, multi-focused, changing environment.

Have an all-hands-on deck mentality. Suncoast Partnership is a small but mighty team and this is a working executive role. You must be able to manage effectively, drive the work of the organization, and roll your sleeves up to get the job done.

Have exceptional attention to detail.

Work well in team approaches and value collaboration. All of our “jobs” inside Suncoast Partnership are interconnected; we all hold a piece of the puzzle. AND, what you do impacts not just your co-workers and the organization, but the whole community. (Again, systems thinker).

Be comfortable both leading and following. Our ultimate goal is a healthy community for all of its people, where homelessness is rare and brief, and the roadmap to getting there is pretty well defined. We have federal and state regulations and requirements, community plans, and evidence-based practices to utilize. The CAO is “following” a lot but also needs to take the lead to ensure our team is on the right page and “following” along correctly. And often times, that the community and homeless crisis system is “following” along too.

Understand and value data. Data is essential in shaping direction, informing funding and services, and evaluating effectiveness. Also, we are responsible for the community data as the HMIS lead so, it’s our job!

Have exceptional attention to detail.

Not be afraid to have difficult conversations. Our goal is always to collaborate and convene but we are dealing with a large number of stakeholders and things aren’t always smooth. We are responsible for the homeless crisis system, implementing community plans, a number of regulatory and statutory items, and keeping everything moving forward; this sometimes requires some hard conversations.

Have a strong understanding of nonprofit organizational management.

While we take pride in being a training ground for developing tomorrow’s CoC experts here at Suncoast, this position is critical to our capacity and requires that the candidate already BE an expert in CoC work.

This position is hybrid in alignment with current agency guidelines, or remote within the State of Florida. Highly qualified candidates outside of Florida may be considered for a fully remote with occasional onsite time.

If you are a detailed oriented implementer, passionate about ending homelessness, and interested in this fantastic opportunity at the lead agency for Manatee and Sarasota Counties (FL-500), please submit a cover letter and resume to tara@suncoastpartnership.org or apply here through Idealist. Responses without cover letters will be considered incomplete.

Suncoast Partnership offers generous paid time off, 11-13 paid holidays, a comprehensive benefit package including health, dental, vision, long-term disability, short-term disability, term life, all 100% employer paid for the employee. We also have a 401k with 4% match along with retention incentives and other benefits.