Chief Impact and Fieldbuilding Officer

About Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation (MRBF)

-MRBF’s mission is to help people and places move out of poverty and achieve greater social and economic justice. The board and staff have committed to centering racial equity across all their work and partnering with communities to build power for people who have been denied access to instruments of power throughout American history.

-MRBF works across 11 Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia), supporting organizations and networks making progress along three interconnected pathways of change: economic opportunity, supportive policies and institutions, and democracy and civic engagement. It is exploring new ways to amplify a broad range of voices and strengthen leaders who reflect the full diversity of the South’s demographics while continuing some core approaches: centering communities in solutions, helping organizations build their capacity to do more, cultivating innovative partnerships, and advancing systems change with long-term resources.

-MRBF seeks to use all available tools, including grantmaking, impact investing, influencing, leveraging, communications, and learning, to advance its mission. The blueprint for MRBF’s work can be found here.

-The Chief Impact and Field building Officer (CIFO) will drive the Foundation’s influence and leverage strategy, deepen impact for grantee partners, program-related investment partners, and narrative partners, and connect the relationships, knowledge, and infrastructure needed to move more dollars and power towards Southern communities and movements. A newly created role, the CIFO will work closely with the CEO and leadership team to design, advance, and refine the impact and field building strategy.

In close, genuine partnership with the Chief Strategy Officer, the CIFO will help shape the Program Team’s strategy and approach and ensure that insights related to program learning and impact, narrative and storytelling, and influence and leverage are aligned with and inform Board learning and decision making.

-The CIFO will also serve as one of the Foundation’s key external representatives across networks, coalitions, and movement infrastructure, sharing insights and shaping conversations that help move resources and power to movements, leaders, and organizations in the South.

• -Provide strategic and collaborative leadership of four core functions: impact, learning, influence and leverage, and narrative and storytelling.
• -Define, advance, and refine the Foundation’s Impact and Field building strategy, providing oversight for how field intelligence and best practices are collected, translated into actionable strategies, and developed into compelling narratives.
• -Collaboratively lead with Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) and partner closely with their team to align programs with impact, learning, field building, and narrative strategies, and to ensure insights are integrated across grantmaking and program-related investments.
• -Foster two-way learning between the institution and the field, ensuring insights from grantee, narrative, philanthropic and PRI partners shape the Foundation’s strategy and practice, while also channeling the Foundation’s own learning back out to strengthen field knowledge and funder behavior.

• -Supervise the Learning and Impact Officer, the Narrative Fellow, and the Field and Influence and Leverage Officer, providing oversight and ensuring alignment with the Foundation’s Impact & Field building strategy
• -Guide the development and implementation of tools and systems that collect and organize…