| Reports to: |
Chief Philanthropy Officer |
| Location: |
In-person, Philadelphia (with some remote flexibility) |
| Travel: |
Minimal, approximately 5-10% |
| FSLA Status: |
Regular, Full-Time, Exempt |
| Salary: |
$180,000-$200,000 |
The William Penn Foundation, founded by Otto and Phoebe Haas in 1945, is a leading American philanthropy located in Philadelphia with over $3.7 billion in assets and a $155 million annual grant budget. Our approach to grantmaking is focused on one central idea: let’s help make more lives better by connecting more people to more opportunities and more resources. We aim to do this work in the Philadelphia region particularly for groups of people who have often been shut out of opportunity in the past because of disinvestment, discrimination, or systemic inequities.
The Foundation makes grants in five programs, primarily focused in Philadelphia and its surrounding counties:
- Arts and Culture – Increase access to diverse, inclusive arts and culture experiences.
- Children and Families – Expand access to programs and resources that support the healthy development and academic success of young children, ages 0-8.
- Environment and Public Space – Increase access to the benefits of natural areas, public spaces, and community assets while decreasing harmful impacts on the environment.
- Democracy and Civic Initiatives – Expand engagement in democratic processes and collaborative efforts that make the city and region responsive to the needs of residents.
- Workforce Training and Services – Support Philadelphia residents to successfully prepare for, secure, and retain family sustaining employment.
In pursuing our program goals and objectives, we will be guided by the following values:
- Prioritize opportunities for communities that have been most affected by economic inequity, discrimination based on race, gender, or sexual orientation, and other forms of injustice.
- Elevate community voice.
- Value partnership, collaboration, and transparency.
- Minimize and respond to the impacts of climate change.
- Leverage our leadership to advance important citywide and regional initiatives and to respond to changing needs of the city and region.
- Share our learning locally and nationally.
Further information on the principles that define these values is available on the Foundation’s website: https://williampennfoundation.org/funding/understand-our-grantmaking
Position Summary
The Program Director, Workforce Training and Services will be responsible for oversight of the Foundation’s newest grantmaking program, focused on reducing barriers to accessing and completing workforce training and employment retention. The program is focused on program and policy change that can help more people to engage with high quality training programs, complete those programs, and secure meaningful long-term employment in the fields for which they have been prepared.
Reporting to the Chief Philanthropy Officer, the Program Director serves as the intellectual and operational leader of the Workforce program. The Program Director will develop and execute a coherent grantmaking strategy, build and sustain a portfolio of high-impact grants, and represent the program to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, grantees, peer funders, professional associations, and the broader community.
The Program Director is expected to manage work successfully in the domains described below, while ensuring connections to the Foundation’s overall mission working in collaborative fashion with fellow Program Directors, Program Officers, other members of the management team, and staff throughout the organization.
This staff member is joining the team at an exciting time for the Foundation, when economic mobility in the Philadelphia region has garnered increasing attention from multiple stakeholders across government, nonprofits, and philanthropy. The Program Director, the first for our Workforce program, will have the opportunity to advance this critical work as the Foundation concludes the second year of our 10-year grantmaking strategy.
At this time, the Workforce program currently has an annual grantmaking budget of $5 million per year and 33 active grantee organizations. In addition, the two most recent Requests for Proposals (RFPs) the Foundation released in this program area have been supported in collaboration with peer funders. The Program Director will, through a combination of developing and managing RFPs, strategic individual grantmaking, and close collaboration with peer funders and the grantee community, manage grantmaking and related activities to achieve the following objective: By 2035, 10,000 individuals with high barriers to employment will complete workforce training and 85% will still be employed 12 months post-training.
In addition, the Program Director will develop deep knowledge of the organizations and communities they serve and support; manage relationships with internal and external stakeholders; and serve as an internal and external subject matter expert on issues related workforce training in the Philadelphia region.
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