| 

The Kresge Foundation
Deputy to the President
 

The Kresge Foundation, based in Troy Michigan is seeking to recruit a Deputy to the President.

About the Foundation

The Kresge Foundation is a $3.1 billion private, national foundation headquartered in Metropolitan Detroit, in the suburb community of Troy. The goals and aspirations of six narrowly defined programs guide its grantmaking and investing. In 2010, the Board of Trustees approved 481 awards totaling $158 million; $134 million was paid out to grantees over the course of the year.

Kresge has redefined itself as a strategic philanthropy, having completed a historic transition that began in 2007. Long known for its exclusive use of the challenge grant to help local communities raise the funds necessary for major construction and renovation projects, it now employs an array of funding methods to address and advance a set of six programs – Arts and Culture, Community Development/Detroit, Education, Environment, Health, and Human Services. Each has a particular point of view with long-term goals and strategies to guide its grantmaking and investing.

The Foundation invests in improving the bedrock economic, social, cultural, and environmental conditions of urban life, with an emphasis on reducing the disparities facing low-income people, advancing their pathways of opportunity, and promoting cultural vibrancy, systems of mutual support, and environmental sustainability in the communities in which they live.

About the Position: Deputy to the President

Reporting to the President and serving in the executive office, the Deputy to the President (Deputy) will occupy an important leadership role. As a result of the strategic direction set by the Foundation Board and President to create a highly collaborative programmatic and organizational enterprise, the new Deputy will help foster a culture of leadership in the Foundation that emphasizes interdisciplinary cooperation, creative risk-taking, and imaginative use of philanthropic tools.

As a strategic partner to the President and program leadership, the Deputy will help deepen an understanding of how the teams can accomplish and align their objectives. The position has to track and propel program implementation. It has to figure out concrete ways to give birth to more robust interconnections among the program areas. The Deputy will be the first stop in reconciling conflicting program impulses – whether rooted in different approaches to program strategy or in different interpersonal decision-making styles. It has to cross-walk program, investments, social investments, back office, and communications, making the whole hold – indeed, becoming the “conduit for us to link all areas of the organization together.”

The Deputy serves as an important strategist, facilitator, and catalyst for organizational innovation in the Foundation. Much of the authority of the position will emerge as a result of the Deputy possessing a skill set that is tailored to the challenges facing the Foundation – inter-personal finesse, problem-solving competence, management skills, and others.

The Deputy will provide direct oversight of the Foundation’s strategic communication activities and oversee the work of Network Administration, Grants Management, and Information Systems. The Deputy needs to ensure that the suite of information functions – grants management, IT, and Communications – is increasingly coherent and mutually reinforcing. The Deputy also needs to tether these three functions far more closely to the strategic aspirations of program – both as a way of helping programs use communications more strategically and to ensure that all three are deeply tied to the emergence of a learning and evaluation agenda developed by the program teams.

The Deputy will also help Communications take on a very different role by way of programs. Part of the communications functions are ministerial – describing the Foundation’s work clearly and consistently to a broad spectrum of audiences through a wide variety of methods. But an increasingly crucial role will also be to help lead programs to a far more strategic use of communications in the implementation of their program strategies. The Deputy will be an essential partner with the Director of Communications in helping ensure that communications is every bit as important a way to advance strategy as is convening or even grant-making.

Professional Qualifications and Personal Attributes

The Deputy should ideally possess the following set of professional qualifications and personal attributes:

Professional Qualifications:

• A deep commitment to the mission of the Kresge Foundation.

• Experience with the design, implementation, and execution of suite of strategic communication strategies or issue-based campaigns.

• Experience working with a range of organizational development programs that increase efficiency, strengthen employee knowledge and abilities, improve leadership and maintain the overall health of an enterprise.

• Record of entrepreneurial spirit and innovations that achieved important impacts and a commitment to a collaborative leadership style.

• Demonstrated experience identifying and remediating organizational/strategy issues that result in measurably improved impacts.

• Experience with knowledge management including research, measurement, success, program monitoring, and program evaluation with exposure to a broad range of evaluation tools, methodologies, and techniques.

• Ability to work with a multi-disciplinary team environment, managing multiple projects and priorities, and working cooperatively to satisfy internal and external requests.

Personal Attributes

• Proven success assisting individuals and organizations find clarity within complexity and guiding them through their growth and development.

• Intellectual curiosity, approachability, and openness to input from all levels of staff.

• An ability to inspire trust, to organize program and operational staff into a team, and to motivate them to work well together

• Excellent oral and written communication skills

• Demonstrated and compelling presentation skills

• Balanced and realistic perspective on life.

Compensation

The Kresge Foundation offers an excellent benefits package and a salary that is commensurate with experience.

How to Apply

Interested candidates should e-mail a cover letter explaining how your skills and background fit this position and a resume to Daniel Sherman, President, Explore Company at resumes@explorecompany.com. Refer to Kresge/DP in the subject line. No phone calls please.

The Kresge Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Download This Job Posting

Web site by Marc Nathan and Simply Computers Plus