Partnerships Manager

Location

Maine | United States

Job description

DonorsChoose makes it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. Projects range from art supplies to build the set for a school musical, to books and puzzles that affirm students’ identities, to bird seed for an at-home science project. We proudly serve all US public schools, public charter schools, and Head Start centers, and we combat systemic inequity by driving a majority of donations to schools that have been historically underfunded due to economic and racial inequity.

DonorsChoose has been recognized as a best place to work by GOOD Magazine and the Nonprofit Times, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Our dedicated team works from across the United States bring classroom dreams to life.

About the Partnerships Team

Our team raises funds for teachers and students by designing and executing philanthropic partnerships with corporations and foundations. This year, we aim to raise $46M for public school classrooms through creative, collaborative partnerships with our institutional donors. We especially focus on partnerships that address racial and socioeconomic inequity in education. (More about our partnerships.)

About the Role

As Partnerships Manager, you’ll own relationships with multiple corporate and foundation partners, drive meaningful business and impact outcomes for our partners, and grow classroom support over time.

Our team operates like a customer success team, delivering an excellent experience to our partners and using B2B consultative sales techniques to renew partner donations. We drive the DonorsChoose mission by unlocking partner support to address educational inequity.

In this role you will...

• Grow and sustain partner support
• Contribute to our revenue goal by securing fundraising from your portfolio of partners
• Cultivate deep relationships with your partners. Become the expert on what motivates them, what constraints they might face, how their organizations are structured, and what may be on the horizon. 
• Identify opportunities to meet additional business or impact goals for your partners and craft customized pitch ideas to engage each partner and inspire them to join our equity focus.
• Write and compile compelling emails, proposals, and presentation decks to prepare for partner meetings.
• Manage and execute best-in-class partner campaigns
• Work directly with corporate and foundation partners and lead cross-functional project teams to meet partner goals, impact milestones, and organizational priorities 
• Deliver excellent operational outcomes and creative solutions for challenges such as partner school visits, employee engagement, media storytelling, and funding logistics
• Analyze and present data and stories to illustrate partners’ impact
• Own and maintain partnership records, continuously updating key details and logging emails, calls, and meeting notes

• Contribute to team 
• All team members share sales and partnership strategies, support teammates when needed, and identify other opportunities to contribute to the team and organizational culture.  
• You’ll also play a key role in our evolution to more directly address racial inequity in education through our partnerships. 

Who You Are

This position might be for you if:

• You’re committed to our mission to support public school teachers and students and energized by sharing that passion with others. You’re passionate about equity and excited to learn more and engage partners with our equity focus. 
• You enjoy making someone’s day. It could be exceeding their expectations on a business commitment. Or it might be something minor, like sending them an article you read that made you think of them. You ask great questions and are a close listener because you care what people think and like learning from them. 
• You’ve thrived in a role where you built relationships in the past and can point to examples of professional relationships you’ve deepened over time. 
• You have experience with fundraising or sales, or you’re hungry to learn how to manage an effective sales process and secure partnership commitments. 
• You have strong project management and organizational skills and a history of leading projects or campaigns that involved multiple stakeholders and lots of moving pieces.  A robust Google doc, new project planning tools, and Salesforce tasks/reports make you want to jump for joy.
• You’re an inventive problem-solver. You love finding solutions to challenges and identifying opportunities to grow and improve.
• You’re receptive to feedback and love growing/improving your current skills and developing new ones.  
• You embrace flexibility, ingenuity, teamwork, humility, and transparency and are curious and excited to learn.

Compensation and Benefits

Our compensation philosophy ensures that we are both externally competitive with tech-forward nonprofits of a similar size and internally fair in our pay practices. The following ranges represent the target offer range given the scope and experience expectations for this role.

• The hiring salary range for this role is $66,000-$72,000.
• We have a hiring salary range of  $73,000-$80,000 for specific higher cost of labor locations, which include New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Compensation for this role is competitive with equivalent roles at other nonprofits of our size. In addition, we offer full-time staff 25 paid vacation days per year and 11 paid holidays, a rich employer-paid individual and family health plan, a matching 401(k) plan (up to 5% of base salary), annual professional development stipend, and casual and flexible work environment. To learn more about what it is like to work for DonorsChoose, visit our careers page.

Hybrid Workplace and Other Details

In this role, you’ll have the option to work a flexible hybrid schedule in our NYC office, or to work fully remotely from CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, ME, MA, MD, MI, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, TX, VA, WA, or WI. 

Candidates who are not in the NYC area should expect to travel to our NYC office on an as-needed basis, about 4-6 times per year. All work-related travel expenses will be covered by the organization and proper safety precautions will be taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

DonorsChoose participates in E-Verify. We will provide the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and answer the application questions online. Since we’re trying to get to know you through our hiring process, we ask that you please refrain from using AI writing tools to craft your response to our application questions. A cover letter is optional and may be addressed to Tonisha Nicholls, Vice President of Partnerships.

A Final Note

The DonorsChoose team works toward a nation where students in every community have the resources needed for an excellent education. To do this we hire and support a diverse team of the best and the brightest talent available.

We are an organization increasingly representative of the varied races and ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, religious and political beliefs, and abilities that comprise our nation. DonorsChoose focuses on attracting, retaining, and advancing diverse talent because it makes us more effective, high-performing, creative, and resilient.  If you are passionate about our mission, highly skilled in your field, and looking for a place where you can bring all of yourself to work, we want you.

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