Director of Learning & Professional Development – PromiseTeach (Volunteer)

Director of Learning & Professional Development – PromiseTeach (Volunteer)

PromiseTeach | Organizational Learning, Professional Development & Talent Growth

Organization: Mentor A Promise (MAP)

Department: PromiseTeach

Location: Remote with NYC-based collaboration as needed

Commitment: Approximately 5–10 hours per week

Type: Volunteer Senior Leadership Role

Minimum Commitment: 6-month commitment required

Reports To: Executive Leadership

Works Closely With: PromisePeople, PromiseRise, PromiseLearning, PromiseMeasure, division leaders, subject-matter experts, facilitators, and teams across MAP

About Mentor A Promise

Mentor A Promise (MAP) is a New York City–based nonprofit organization serving children and youth ages 5–18 experiencing housing instability through mentorship, literacy, social-emotional learning, educational enrichment, workforce development, creative opportunity, advocacy, housing innovation, and community-centered support.

MAP is also a multidisciplinary organization bringing together volunteers and professionals from education, technology, communications, finance, research, creative media, advocacy, cybersecurity, governance, youth development, and many other fields.

We believe people should have opportunities not only to contribute their existing skills, but to develop new ones.

About PromiseTeach

PromiseTeach is MAP's organizational learning and professional-development department.

PromiseTeach supports continuous learning, professional growth, leadership development, knowledge-sharing, and skill-building across the organization.

The department works closely with MAP's divisions and teams to understand their learning needs and develop training experiences that address specific priorities, challenges, and opportunities.

PromiseTeach also creates organization-wide learning opportunities and connects volunteers with internal and external professional-development resources.

Our goal is to build a culture where learning becomes part of the MAP experience:

Learn → Practice → Share → Apply → Grow → Lead

Role Overview

MAP is seeking an experienced and highly motivated Director of Learning & Professional Development to lead PromiseTeach and build an organization-wide learning ecosystem that helps volunteers grow, contribute, lead, and stay engaged with the mission.

The Director will be responsible for developing MAP's learning and professional-development strategy and translating organizational needs into meaningful learning opportunities.

This includes organization-wide training, division-specific learning, leadership development, professional skills, facilitator development, external learning opportunities, required training coordination, learning resources, and special initiatives designed to strengthen volunteer engagement and retention.

This is not simply a training coordinator role.

The Director will help answer larger organizational questions:

What capabilities does MAP need?

What do our people want to learn?

What do leaders need to become stronger managers?

Where are knowledge or skill gaps affecting performance?

How can one division's expertise benefit the rest of the organization?

How can professional development strengthen volunteer engagement and retention?

How do we help someone move from volunteer to contributor to leader?

The Director will turn those questions into a learning strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Learning & Professional Development Strategy

• Develop and lead MAP's organization-wide learning and professional-development strategy
• Partner with executive and senior leadership to identify organizational capabilities and development priorities
• Align learning initiatives with MAP's mission, strategic priorities, organizational needs, and volunteer experience
• Develop short- and long-term learning priorities
• Build a professional-development model that supports engagement, growth, leadership development, and retention
• Promote a culture of continuous learning throughout MAP

Division-Specific Learning

• Partner with chiefs, directors, managers, and team leads to identify division-specific learning needs
• Conduct learning and skills assessments
• Translate identified needs into practical learning solutions
• Develop customized training experiences for different teams and functions
• Coordinate subject-matter experts who can contribute specialized knowledge
• Help divisions distinguish between training needs and issues requiring different organizational solutions

PromiseTeach should not simply decide what people need to learn.

It should listen first.

Organization-Wide Training

Develop and coordinate learning opportunities that can benefit people across MAP.

Topics may include:

• Leadership
• Project management
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Volunteer management
• Digital skills
• Accessibility
• Cybersecurity
• Privacy
• Safeguarding
• Storytelling
• Research
• Technology
• Artificial intelligence
• Professional writing
• Public speaking
• Conflict navigation
• Time management
• Career development
• Nonprofit leadership

Create a learning calendar that balances required organizational learning with opportunities for professional exploration and growth.

Training Design & Curriculum Development

• Design workshops, learning series, training programs, and professional-development experiences
• Develop curricula, facilitator guides, presentations, activities, toolkits, and participant resources
• Use appropriate digital, live, asynchronous, and interactive learning formats
• Establish clear learning objectives for PromiseTeach programming
• Ensure learning experiences are practical, accessible, engaging, and relevant
• Partner with instructional-design and subject-matter experts when specialized expertise is needed

Leadership & Manager Development

Develop learning opportunities specifically for MAP's chiefs, directors, managers, leads, and emerging leaders.

Potential areas include:

• Coaching
• Mentoring
• Delegation
• Feedback
• Communication
• Accountability
• Team development
• Conflict management
• Decision-making
• Meeting leadership
• Volunteer engagement
• Performance support
• Cross-functional leadership
• Change management

Help managers become better developers of people—not simply supervisors of work.

Volunteer Growth, Engagement & Retention

Partner closely with PromisePeople to use learning and professional development as part of MAP's broader volunteer-engagement and retention strategy.

Help create opportunities for volunteers to:

• Build new skills
• Explore different professional disciplines
• Learn from experienced professionals
• Develop leadership capabilities
• Gain greater responsibility
• Share their own expertise
• Build meaningful portfolio experience
• Identify internal growth opportunities
• See a future for themselves within MAP

Professional development should help answer an important question for every volunteer:

How am I growing because I am here?

Internal Knowledge-Sharing

MAP has professionals with expertise across an unusually wide range of disciplines.

Create systems that allow those people to teach one another.

A filmmaker might teach documentary storytelling.

A cybersecurity professional might teach digital safety.

A project manager might introduce agile practices.

A designer might teach visual communication.

A researcher might teach evidence literacy.

An HR professional might teach interviewing.

An advocate might teach public engagement.

A writer might teach storytelling.

Turn MAP's collective expertise into a learning resource for the entire organization.

External Learning & Professional Development

Serve as an organizational resource for external professional-development opportunities.

Identify relevant:

• Workshops
• Conferences
• Webinars
• Courses
• Certifications
• Fellowships
• Professional associations
• Educational resources
• Partner-led learning opportunities

Help connect MAP volunteers and leaders with high-quality external learning opportunities when appropriate.

Required & Organizational Training

Coordinate with appropriate departments on required or organization-wide training.

Potential areas may include:

• Safeguarding
• Privacy
• Cybersecurity
• Accessibility
• Ethics
• Professional conduct
• Volunteer leadership
• Organizational systems
• Other required learning

PromiseTeach may coordinate learning delivery while the responsible subject-matter division maintains authority over specialized requirements.

Learning Technology & Resource Infrastructure

Provide strategic direction for the technology and systems supporting organizational learning.

Help MAP evaluate and develop:

• Learning management systems
• Training libraries
• Digital learning resources
• Recorded learning
• Learning pathways
• Resource repositories
• Registration systems
• Completion tracking
• Learning analytics
• Knowledge-sharing tools

Use technology to make professional development easier to discover and access.

Learning Calendar & Operations

• Maintain MAP's organization-wide professional-development calendar
• Coordinate facilitators, subject-matter experts, schedules, and learning resources
• Establish repeatable planning and delivery workflows
• Ensure learning initiatives are properly communicated
• Coordinate with the PromiseTeach Project Manager on timelines, deliverables, and program readiness
• Maintain visibility into upcoming learning opportunities and organizational training priorities

Facilitator Development

Develop systems for helping internal subject-matter experts become stronger facilitators.

Provide guidance around:

• Learning objectives
• Session structure
• Adult learning
• Engagement
• Accessibility
• Activities
• Presentation
• Facilitation
• Feedback
• Learning materials

Knowing something deeply and teaching it effectively are different skills.

PromiseTeach should help people do both.

Learning Evaluation & Continuous Improvement

Partner with PromiseMeasure and other appropriate teams to evaluate learning effectiveness.

Move beyond attendance alone.

Assess areas such as:

• Participant experience
• Knowledge gained
• Skills developed
• Application of learning
• Leadership development
• Engagement
• Repeat participation
• Division needs addressed
• Volunteer development
• Retention indicators

Use data and feedback to continuously improve PromiseTeach programming.

Career & Leadership Pathways

Partner with PromisePeople and PromiseRise to help volunteers understand opportunities for professional and leadership growth within MAP.

Support development pathways that may move through:

Contributor → Experienced Contributor → Lead → Manager → Director → Senior Leadership

Help identify learning experiences that prepare volunteers for greater responsibility.

Internal advancement should be supported by intentional development.

External Facilitators & Learning Partnerships

• Identify opportunities to bring external professionals and organizations into MAP's learning ecosystem
• Coordinate guest speakers, facilitators, trainers, and professional-development partners
• Work with PromiseBridge when learning opportunities involve broader institutional partnerships
• Help evaluate external training providers and learning resources
• Ensure external learning experiences align with MAP's mission and organizational priorities

Team Leadership

Provide leadership and direction to the PromiseTeach team.

Potential roles may include:

• PromiseTeach Project Manager
• Learning & Development Specialists
• Training Coordinators
• Instructional Designers
• Professional Development Coordinators
• Facilitators
• Learning Technology Specialists
• Curriculum Developers
• Learning & Development Analysts

Establish clear expectations, priorities, workflows, and accountability across the department.

Cross-Divisional Collaboration

The Director of Learning & Professional Development will work across MAP.

Partner with PromisePeople on volunteer development, engagement, leadership growth, and retention.

Collaborate with PromiseRise on career readiness and professional-development pathways.

Work with PromiseLearning on educational and instructional expertise.

Partner with PromiseMeasure on learning evaluation and impact.

Collaborate with PromiseShield on privacy and cybersecurity learning.

Work with PromiseGovernance on ethics, governance, and compliance-related learning.

Partner with PromisePrograms on training that supports program quality and youth-serving teams.

Engage MAP's creative, technology, communications, finance, research, advocacy, and other teams as contributors to the organization's learning ecosystem.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in learning and development, professional development, organizational development, training, talent development, education, human resources, or related fields
• Proven ability to develop learning or professional-development strategies
• Experience designing training programs, curricula, workshops, or learning resources
• Experience assessing organizational or team learning needs
• Strong project and program management skills
• Ability to manage multiple priorities and deliverables
• Experience supporting leadership or management development
• Strong facilitation and public-speaking skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Strong organizational and analytical abilities
• Ability to work collaboratively across multiple departments
• Experience evaluating training effectiveness and using feedback to improve programming
• Familiarity with learning technologies or learning management systems is valuable
• Experience supporting volunteer, employee, or talent engagement and retention is highly desirable
• Ability to adapt as organizational priorities evolve
• Commitment to accessible, inclusive, and mission-driven learning

Why This Role Matters

People join MAP because they want to contribute.

We also want them to leave every experience stronger than when they arrived.

A volunteer might join as a writer and discover leadership.

A designer might learn project management.

A mentor might develop public-speaking skills.

A new manager might learn how to coach rather than simply assign work.

A cybersecurity professional might teach someone a skill that changes their career.

A workshop might introduce someone to an entirely new professional path.

When knowledge moves, people grow.

When people grow, organizations grow with them.

The Director of Learning & Professional Development will help make that growth intentional.

Success Measures

• Development and implementation of MAP's learning and professional-development strategy
• Participation in PromiseTeach learning opportunities
• Quality and relevance of organization-wide and division-specific training
• Volunteer satisfaction with professional-development opportunities
• Growth of leadership and management-development programming
• Increased internal knowledge-sharing
• Strength of learning resources and infrastructure
• Training completion where required
• Application of learning to organizational work
• Development of internal facilitators
• Contribution of professional development to volunteer engagement and retention
• Continuous improvement informed by participant feedback and learning data

Leadership Participation

The Director of Learning & Professional Development is expected to:

• Participate in appropriate leadership meetings
• Conduct regular check-ins with PromiseTeach team members
• Meet with division leaders to understand learning priorities
• Lead PromiseTeach planning and professional-development initiatives
• Maintain the organization-wide learning calendar
• Provide updates on learning priorities, participation, and outcomes
• Foster cross-divisional knowledge-sharing
• Champion a culture of curiosity, learning, growth, and development

Volunteer Expectations

• Approximately 5–10 hours per week
• Minimum 6-month commitment required
• Maintain timely and professional communication
• Provide consistent leadership and follow-through
• Collaborate through MAP systems and communication platforms
• Maintain organized learning resources and documentation
• Support MAP's safeguarding standards, mission, and organizational values
• Promote accessible and inclusive learning
• Foster a culture of curiosity, growth, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Provide at least two weeks' notice when ending volunteer service whenever possible

What You'll Gain

• Senior leadership experience building the learning and professional-development function of a growing nonprofit
• Opportunity to design an organization-wide learning strategy from the ground up
• Experience developing leadership, professional-development, and talent-growth initiatives
• Collaboration with professionals across education, technology, media, finance, research, advocacy, governance, cybersecurity, creative fields, and nonprofit leadership
• Opportunity to develop scalable learning systems with long-term organizational impact
• Professional references and letters of recommendation
• Meaningful impact helping people grow while strengthening an organization serving children and families experiencing housing instability

How to Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly through Idealist and include their resume and cover letter.

Please highlight experience involving learning and development, professional development, organizational development, talent development, training, curriculum development, leadership development, education, human resources, facilitation, or related disciplines.

We are especially interested in candidates who have experience building learning strategies and turning organizational needs into practical professional-development programs.

Help build an organization where everyone has something to teach, everyone has something to learn, and every person has an opportunity to grow.

Thank you for your interest in volunteering with our organization. At this time, volunteer opportunities are limited to individuals based in the United States due to legal, safeguarding, data-privacy, and programmatic requirements. We appreciate your interest in our mission and your understanding of these constraints.