Director of Communications Irving Harris Foundation

Chaloner has partnered with the Irving Harris Foundationon their search for a Director of Communications.

Irving Harris Foundation (IHF) fuels ideas, leaders and movements led by and for people most impacted by harm. We partner with those who are reimagining systems, centering equity, and shifting power and resources to eliminate racial and gender disparities among pregnant and birthing people, babies, very young children and their families so that they thrive within just and flourishing communities. To realize our vision, Irving Harris Foundation invests approximately $18 million annually in four interconnected areas:
Early Childhood, Reproductive Health and Justice, Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health and Jewish Values. To maximize our impact, the Foundation leverages our resources, time, knowledge and influence to further fuel the efforts of our grantee partners centering our core values of justice, courage, persistence, relationships and equity. We work side by side with our partners and foster supportive relationships rooted in trust.

Irving Harris Foundation has four primary strategies: grassroots organizing and movement building to galvanize people-driven movements; advocacy, policy and systems building to address root causes that lead to disparities and shift public and private resource allocation; innovative community centered and led model development and replication to help incubate, launch and sustain new programs, ideas and institutions; and leadership and workforce development to build the capacity of current and future generations of changemakers, especially those from communities most impacted by harm who are best positioned to lead changes rooted in community that address persistent disparities.

Irving Harris Foundation is a private foundation based in Chicago and funds in Illinois, nationally and to a limited extent in Israel.

In 2024, the Foundation announced that it will be sun setting by 2032 after 85+ years in existence. As a spend-down philanthropy working in under-resourced priority areas, IHF invests in systems, policies, capacity building efforts, and leaders so that the impact of our work may endure long after Irving Harris Foundation sunsets. As the Foundation enters the final phases of spending down our assets, we are establishing our sunset programmatic and partner engagement strategies and clarifying our legacy priorities.

We seek candidates who have exceptional narrative design and storytelling experience, are detail-oriented, organized and who can contribute to our organizational culture through their lived experience and commitment to racial, gender and economic equity for all. The Foundation is committed to fostering an equitable, inclusive and diverse culture, and seeks candidates who can help the Foundation achieve this aspiration.

IHF seeks a Director of Communications to join its Leadership Team. While IHF has worked with communications consultants and contractors, the Director of Communications will be IHF’s first full-time staff communications hire and will help shape and evolve the role. This role will support IHF in advancing its strategic work through spend down, focusing on the critical role IHF’s narrative plays in advancing our legacy and philanthropic impact and using communications to leverage our partners’ impact now and after we sunset.

Additionally, this role will support internal communications including the Foundation team’s effective reporting and engagement with the Foundation’s Board of Directors.

The Director of Communications will possess a deep commitment to IHF’s mission, and be able to identify and implement strategic communications activities that reflect the Foundation’s legacy and contribute to change in the reproductive and birth justice, early childhood, infant mental health, and Jewish Values ecosystems through an integrated strategy. In addition, they will be considering how the Foundation’s legacy could impact the philanthropic sector.

The director will be excited and motivated to pursue innovative approaches and experimental thinking and know how to translate these ideas…