Program Director at Thompson Family Foundation

The Thompson Family Foundation selects high performing nonprofits and contributes to their impact, primarily by awarding grants, but also by providing funding, advice, and connections aimed at strengthening their operations.

Thompson's team is small and entrepreneurial by design so that more resources move out the door and less time is spent on unnecessary processes. That means Thompson operates with urgency, discipline, flexibility, and a willingness to change. Thompson selects partners with the aim of staying with them for the long run. We make annual grants, often with multi-year commitments. We either award general operating dollars or target funding to distinct programs to better observe progress.

We are data-driven, working with our partners to isolate the qualitative and quantitative measures they find most meaningful. Then we hold up a mirror, supporting them in defining and assessing results, and planning adjustments as needed. We measure our success by the success of each of our partners in meeting their self-defined mission.

We also strengthen our partners through targeted organizational funding, which we are growing through the launch of our Organizational Resilience Fund. We provide advice and support in key areas: governance, strategy, program, fundraising, finance, human capital, technology, legal and real estate.

Thompson is also differentiated by our willingness to make transformative investments, supporting major initiatives, including capital projects.

We believe philanthropy can do better. We do this in three key ways:

• We aim to provide larger grants to fewer groups to counter the issue of too many nonprofits with too few resources.
• We prioritize deeper relationships with our groups, rarely setting our sights on field-level impact.
• Our small team manages a substantial grantmaking portfolio and an unusually high volume of strategic, analytical, and operational work. Everyone at Thompson is expected to think strategically, execute carefully, build tools, solve problems, and improve the way the foundation works.

Our core portfolios include Arts, Culture & Public Space;
Medical Research & Public Health;
Justice & Safety; and College & Career Access. We work primarily in New York City, but our grantmaking extends through the tri-state region. We occasionally make national and international grants.

We live our values:

• Accountability
• Transparency
• Flexibility
• Responsiveness

The Program Director will identify, steward, and support the nonprofit organizations that Thompson funds. Beginning from prospect development through grant design and renewal, they will define opportunities and track both progress and outcomes, with an eye toward helping portfolio organizations deliver strong programmatic results. In partnership with the Executive Director, they will develop new and growing portfolios that respond to community needs and opportunities.

In addition, they will partner with colleagues to test and refine grantmaking models, maximizing impact while minimizing cost and administrative burdens. The Program Director will help advance the systems, tools, practices, and habits that allow a small foundation to do excellent work at high volume without passing unnecessary burden to grantees. Equally as important, they will serve as a thought partner and sounding board, both to colleagues within Thompson and partners in the field.

Because Thompson is small by design, the Program Director must be energized by building while doing. This is a role for someone who can shape strategy in the morning, pressure-test a logic model at noon, draft a board memo in the afternoon, and troubleshoot a Salesforce or Excel reporting need before the day ends. Seniority at Thompson does not mean distance from the work;

it means greater responsibility for making the work stronger.

Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Develop and implement grantmaking strategies:

• identifying organizations that make a meaningful difference in the lives of New Yorkers;
• working with those organizations to design / understand their logic models and assess the current and potential impact of those models;
• b…