After extensive efforts to gather feedback from key stakeholders and community leaders, United Way California Capital (UWCCR) launched the Square One Project. The focus of this effort is to increase individual and community level outcomes through prevention and intervention services in the school setting. To that end, the goal of the Square One Project is to greatly increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college or career.
Using a collective impact approach the Square One program is grounded on the belief that no single policy, government department, organization or program can tackle or solve the increasingly complex social problems we face as a society. This approach calls for multiple organizations or entities from different sectors to abandon their own agendas in favor of a common agenda, shared measurement and alignment of effort. Unlike traditional collaborations or partnerships, collective impact models have centralized infrastructure – known as a backbone organization – with dedicated staff whose role is to help the key stakeholders to shift from acting alone to acting in concert.
The Square One Program Officer will lead a team responsible for driving the program’s work forward. More specifically, working with other United Way staff, partner agencies, and supervising five AmeriCorps Vista members, the Program Officer will manage the internal and external backbone functions of this effort, including implementing strategy, developing communications, targeted community engagement, and facilitating data collection and analysis.
- Develop and maintain a list of community partners and upcoming events.
- Coordinate research and other activities with initiative partners to minimize redundancies and to align strategies and actions, including conducting individual outreach and education as needed.
- Work with team members to update outreach strategy as new needs emerge.
- Maintain understanding of current implementation challenges and developing comprehensive solutions to address them.
- Work with United Way team members to coordinate with other related projects and coalitions to maintain a full understanding of the current landscape of local and regional activities, and integrating their work.
- Communicate the goals and objectives of Square One Project to the key stakeholders, community member, and potential partners, including sharing the Common Agenda, Logic Model, or other collateral items.
- Facilitate ongoing communication between partners by hosting regular conference calls, in-person meetings, or coordinating regular email updates to ensure alignment of activity.
- Plan and manage logistics of, and attending, community events’ including Square One Committee meetings.
- Facilitate the development, refining, and maintain of community and program level indicators, in partnership with evaluation consultant, evaluation sub-committee, and Square One Steering Committee.
- Other duties as assigned.
- Experience in leading Collaborative efforts.
- Understanding of the collective impact model.
- Previous history of grant management.
- Working knowledge of United Way and its mission.
- Knowledge of project management best practices.
- Ability to recruit key stake holders, community volunteers, and corporate partners.
- Demonstrated good interpersonal skills.
- Good proficiency in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
- Ability to perform with minimal supervision.
- Ability to appropriately represent United Way in public settings.
- Excellent communication skills, verbal and written, including the ability to communicate well in a variety of settings with a variety of stakeholders.
DESIRED EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE
- 3-5 years of full-time experience in business or organizational management, community development, social services or a related field—with demonstrated progressive increase in scope of responsibility and authority.
- Experience working with volunteers.
- Experience developing and implementing operating plans and budgets.
- Experience facilitating and arriving at actionable decisions in large, medium and small-scale community meetings.
- Experience working as a member of a management team.
PHYSICAL AND MENTAL REQUIREMENTS
- Communicate orally with coworkers and the public in face-to-face, one-on-one setting; moderate size (up to 100) group settings (gives information, and responds to questions), and by telephone.
- Ability to maintain a polished professional appearance.
- Work in an office environment, lift and move objects up to 40 pounds such as large binders, books, boxes, and small office equipment.
- Excellent communication skills, verbal and written, including the ability to communicate well in a variety of settings with a variety of stakeholders.
- Ability to work independently with a high attention to detail.