Manager, Program Operations; BF

The Barr Foundation’s mission is to invest in human, natural, and creative potential, serving as thoughtful stewards and catalysts. As stewards, Barr nurtures and enhances vital community assets. As catalysts, the Foundation cultivates and advances the breakthrough ideas that will shape our collective future. Barr focuses on achieving impact as a constructive partner, willing to exercise leadership.

Based in Boston, the Foundation focuses regionally, and selectively engages nationally, working in partnership with nonprofits, foundations, the public sector, and civic and business leaders to elevate the arts and creative expression, advance solutions for climate change, and expand educational opportunity. Barr is one of the largest private foundations in New England with assets of more than $1.7 billion and a 2018 grantmaking budget of $85 million.

A set of core values defined by the Barr Foundation’s founding trustees expresses beliefs about what constitutes effective philanthropy and guides how the Foundation carries out its philanthropic mission. The Foundation is committed to strive for excellence, act with humility, adopt a long-term perspective, and embrace risk. Additionally, while each program is guided by distinct priorities and goals, Barr embraces a common set of approaches in all aspects of its work, namely flexibility and nimbleness, a broad range of tools, knowledge and learning, openness and transparency, and active collaboration.

Reporting to, and in close partnership with Barr’s vice president, the individual in this role will interface across all levels of Barr Foundation leadership and staff, and with functional teams (HR, IT, finance/ accounting), to drive organizational processes and process improvement initiatives, with a focus on efficiency, grantee impact, and staff effectiveness. This person will play a key role in developing and refining processes and tools to enable staff and trustees to make more strategic decisions and increase impact, particularly with the foundation on a growth trajectory.

This position will supervise at least one staff member.

Organizational Effectiveness and Process Improvement

• Build strong relationships with staff across Barr’s program, learning and evaluation, communications, and operations teams; deeply understand staff and grantee workflow and context
• In an ongoing way, assess, and where necessary, streamline, integrate, simplify, and improve Barr’s current processes and systems for grantmaking and internal operations
• Identify, initiate and collaboratively design approaches that increase and sustain productivity, effectiveness and responsiveness
• Coordinate roles, responsibilities, timelines and deliverables for process-improvement initiatives; track and communicate on progress
• Act as a partner on joint project teams with Information Technology and Barr Grants Management teams/colleagues to ensure staff needs are well-articulated and resources are aligned to deliver; problem-solve for competing priorities

Organizational Processes, Policies and Systems

• Oversee and coordinate cross-organizational processes, such as annual workplanning, trustee meeting planning, and annual master calendar
• Develop reports, dashboards, and data aligned to organizational priorities and decision-making, with attention to integration across systems and integrity/consistency of data
• Review operating policies; research and implement approaches that both streamline and evolve with Barr’s continued growth
• Manage and support organizational systems and platforms for processes such as document retention and shared cloud organization/codification (e.g., Box, Docu Sign)

Staff Learning and Development

• Support and implement staff learning and development efforts, in partnership with the vice president, director of learning and evaluation and director of HR (workshops, retreats, staff meetings, onboarding, etc.)
• Support team cohesion across grants management, IT, and other functions

• Professional experience in a mission-driven, cross-functional environment, which could include consulting experience
• Minimum of a Bachelor’s degree. Project Management…