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Skoll Foundation
Chief Marketing Officer

The Skoll Foundation, based in Palo Alto, California, seeks to recruit a Chief Marketing Officer.

About the Skoll Foundation

The Skoll Foundation was created by Jeff Skoll in 1999 to pursue his vision of a more peaceful, prosperous, and sustainable world. The mission of the Skoll Foundation is to drive large-scale change by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs and other actors dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing problems.

The Foundation believes that social entrepreneurs see opportunities where others see problems and crises. Social entrepreneurs apply innovative solutions to social and environmental issues, empowering people and communities to envision and create positive change. They work in many kinds of organizations, including nonprofits, social purpose ventures, and hybrid organizations that mix elements of nonprofit and for-profit organizations. The Foundation believes that social entrepreneurs represent a powerful force for catalyzing large-scale impact or equilibrium change. Their work can reduce economic disparities, increase opportunities for the disadvantaged, promote healthy communities, and increase the interpersonal and intercultural understanding that is the foundation for world peace.

The Skoll Foundation invests in social entrepreneurs through its flagship award program, the Skoll Awards for Social Entrepreneurship. These multi-year awards support the continuation, replication or extension of programs that have proved successful in addressing critical societal and environmental issues clustered in six categories: tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, economic and social equity, institutional responsibility, and peace and security. These issues provide a contextual framework for the Foundation’s “invest, connect, and celebrate” strategy.

The Skoll Foundation connects social entrepreneurs and other innovators with the actors who are key to scaling promising solutions; these actors operate in all sectors: social, governmental, academic business and media. To advance knowledge and build credibility for the field, the Foundation launched the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in November 2003 at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. The first Skoll World Forum was held in Oxford in March, 2004; today, this gathering, which is widely regarded as the premier event for the world’s leading social entrepreneurs and their partners, attracts 800 delegates from 60 countries.

Building on its mission the Foundation established the following core values:

• Leverage: the Foundation seeks leverage to achieve “a whole lot of good” from its investment of time and resources.

• Respect: the Foundation respects the individual and the power of community.

• Responsibility: Individually and collectively, the Foundation embraces a profound sense of responsibility.

• Tough Minded Optimism: Foundation staff are disciplined, rigorous and hopeful.

• Innovation: Inspired by the social entrepreneurs the Foundation is committed to service and is challenged to be innovative in its own behavior.

Over the Foundation’s first decade, it has kept faith with its mission and core values by pursuing a strategy that has been recognized as both distinctive and effective: to advance systemic change benefiting communities around the world by investing in, connecting, and celebrating social entrepreneurs. That strategy has served the Foundation and the burgeoning field of social entrepreneurship well during the formative years. The Foundation learned a good deal about the strengths and flaws of social entrepreneurs; the stages and designs of their ventures; and the habits of mind and strategies that are likely, over time, to make them successful.

Going forward, the Foundation’s emphasis is shifting from organizational capacity building to focus on strategies that scale impact. In practice, this means that the Foundation will selectively build and invest in clusters of social entrepreneurs and other actors that will achieve large-scale impact where it matters most. Moreover, rather than looking for evidence of an organizational inflection point—usually in the form of a plan to grow institutional capacity— the Foundation seeks evidence of an inflection point in the issue as key to its investment decision-making.

The Skoll Foundation values individuals who have the confidence, curiosity and competence to advance its strategy, nurture its organizational values, and ultimately ensure its investments in people, organizations, and programs achieve meaningful impact. The Foundation believes that the Skoll organization itself must epitomize Jeff Skoll’s vision of a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable world.

For more information on current grantees and programs, visit the Skoll Foundation's Web site at www.skollfoundation.org.

Chief Marketing Officer

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) serves as the chief branding officer, positioning and dramatizing the Foundation’s commitment to drive large scale change by investing in social entrepreneurs and others solving the world’s most pressing problems. The CMO creates and implements a comprehensive, coherent marketing plan. In this role, the CMO designs measurement frameworks and other data driven tools and tactics that carefully align with programmatic and organizational goals to drive content through digital, media, and human networking channels. Moreover, the CMO takes the lead in ensuring key messages are targeted to specific audiences for defined outcomes and in developing tools and systems to measure brand positioning and marketing activity effectiveness. The CMO also identifies and analyzes new marketing frontiers—emerging spaces, technologies and platforms that offer opportunities for the Foundation to leverage its impact on pressing issues facing humanity.

Beyond demonstrated knowledge of a comprehensive set of branding and marketing communications competencies, including leverage of event and digital platforms, the CMO will need to grasp the nuances of brand extensibility that exist at the nexus of market demand, strategic identity, and business strategy. Said more simply, the CMO must help make choices about whether and how to expand selected activities, including specific operating programs, within the construct of preserving and advancing Foundation’s unique identity.

As the CMO builds out a comprehensive marketing plan to leverage the Foundation’s strategic assets, including its programs, talent, and other assets, she or he will work to ensure alignment with the Foundation’s commitment to achieving large scale impact on the world’s most pressing challenges. In this regard, the CMO should have hands-on experience using the web to deliver messages that compel not just awareness but funding and support for grantees and other critical constituencies. And finally, the CMO should bring a deep awareness about how to leverage social networking tools to engage key audiences in meeting organizational goals

The CMO serves in a critically important role within the Foundation. This person must embody a “service oriented” culture: working closely with the CEO and the Executive Office, and with the Program and Impact, and Finance and Operations teams to make sure the communications and marketing needs of the entire organization are met. This is a hands-on role, requiring dedication to the Foundation’s mission, strategic acumen, a bias for action, and accountability for results. The CMO must be able to execute at a tactical as well at a strategic level and be accountable for accuracy, timeliness, and excellence in all marketing and communications outputs. The CMO reports to the President and CEO and serves as a member of the Foundation’s Executive Team. The CMO is based in Palo Alto, California.

The responsibilities for the CMO are the following:

Duties & Responsibilities:

Marketing and Positioning

• Establishes indicators and a system for benchmarking and assessing, on a regular basis, Skoll Foundation brand equity.

• Creates and executes a comprehensive and coherent marketing plan in alignment with the Foundation’s mission and strategy.

• Defines and manages marketing channels and their content: all digital, media, and human networks responsible for disseminating knowledge, information, and stories.

• Determining how the Foundation’s Web presence and properties fuels a digital marketing channel strategy.

• Strengthening media partnerships and relationships.

• Coordinates, consolidating where necessary, marketing functions, activities, and programs.

• Identifies, scopes and rationalizes audiences targeted for marketing channel activities, ensuring alignment with mission and strategy.

• Establishes and manages processes that ensure marketing activities are highly leveraged, timely, topical, and strategic.

• Oversees all brand-related issues involved in strategic partnerships, alliances, and other external affiliations or relationships.

• Creates and oversees discipline that scans for and evaluates opportunities to leverage the Foundation’s impact, whether these are emerging issue areas or new technologies and platforms.

• Helps to build and reinforce and organizational culture in which all staff members embrace their role as a communicator, and each staff person regularly contributes to the delivery of key messages via approved interviews, blogging, speeches, conferences and conversation with external audiences.

Communications

• Proactively identifies and plans opportunities that advance the Foundation’s thought leadership through traditional and new media platforms: op-eds, speeches, case studies, blogs, twitter accounts, and via other social networking mechanisms.

• Generates content, working with the CEO and Foundation leadership on their written and oral communications and for other purposes.

• Creates and oversees editorial processes that ensure the tone, voice, and excellence of all communication, including that disseminated via digital channels as well as all printed material.

• Anticipates and develops messages, responding to particular needs and opportunities; oversees dissemination, internally and externally.

• Oversees production and distribution of all collateral, from the Annual Report to material produced for the Skoll World Forum, encompassing all printed material.

• Establishes protocols and provides communications training to ensure integrity and consistency

Public Relations

• Establishes media targets, builds and manages relationships, and identifies and follows through with story ideas.

• Tracks and evaluates representation of the Foundation externally.

• Recruits and manages outsourced support as needed.

Management

• Serves as a member of the Foundation’s executive team, with general responsibility for achieving strategic and annual plan goals, specific responsibilities for defining and successfully executing to achieve marketing and communications objectives that advance the Foundation’s mission and strategy.

• Manages marketing budget and communications staff and evaluates their performance.

• Establishes when and how to outsource, oversees recruitment, and defines contract terms and expectations.

• Exercises responsibility for the quality and timeliness of deliverables provided by contractors.

The CMO should ideally embody the following professional qualifications and personal attributes:

• Demonstrated passion for the Skoll Foundation and its mission.

• Ability to integrate strategic, analytical measurement and data, planning and tactical, hands-on dimensions of the position.

• Effective skills in time management, budgeting, and program and project oversight - bias for action and commitment to achieving results.

• Able to generate and deliver persuasive and clear verbal, graphic, and written communications as well as an understanding of social media, film, broadcast platforms.

• Capacity to embody the notion of “tough-minded optimist,” always acting with urgency, deliberateness, and vigilance - initiative to solve problems with energy and a positive attitude.

• Ability to adapt, to seize opportunities and embrace change while managing core responsibilities to exceptional standards.

• Positive attitude, good sense of humor, and seasoned management style.

• Highly productive and disciplined, with sound judgment and excellent interpersonal skills.

• Outstanding interpersonal skills; must have credibility, good judgment, honesty, and integrity - successful at bringing out the best in others

• Evidence of high standards and integrity.

• Advanced degree, MBA, or a background film, broadcast, nonprofit and/or philanthropic experience a plus.

Compensation

Compensation for the Chief Marketing Officer includes a competitive base salary and an excellent package of employee and health benefits.

Interested candidates should send their resumes to:

Daniel Sherman
President
Explore Company
Email: resumes@explorecompany.com

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