The Field Building Director reports directly to the President and is responsible for managing the external field building strategies for Ploughshares Fund. The Field Building Director will work with a large network of external stakeholders, strengthening relationships, facilitating meetings, supporting collaborations, and creating inclusive, collaborative spaces for many different stakeholders to come together. This position is highly strategic with some tactical activities. This is a new position designed to help Ploughshares Fund implement a new field building strategy which includes providing some of the backbone support that can help strengthen the nuclear threat reduction field.
In this job you will:
Facilitation and Network Weaving (50%)
- Provide visionary, adaptive leadership to the field building strategies, modeling Ploughshares Fund’s guiding values of collaboration, understanding and adaptability at all times and fostering a culture that reflects them.
- Serve as a strong, neutral, and skilled facilitator who can guide the team, partners, and stakeholders towards consensus and defined, shared vision and results. This includes:
- High level facilitation design skills;
- A wide toolbox of facilitation techniques and approaches;
- Ability to listen and adapt facilitations and meeting agendas in real time;
- Effective conflict resolution skills, including ability to act as a neutral arbiter;
- Convening and supporting community forums, external committees, work groups, and other collaborative efforts.
- Coordinate with other projects and coalitions to maintain a full understanding of the current landscape of related activities, and integrate their work into the Ploughshares Fund field building approach.
- Build deep relationships and weave together a network including:
- Weave together different parts of the field - individuals, organizations, coalitions, projects, etc. - to help align and advance many different pieces of related work;
- Coordinate and work together with other staff to ensure all partners, working groups, grantees, committees, etc. work well and effectively together, and to create a positive view of the work in the community;
- Build relationships within the nuclear threat reduction field and beyond, in related fields;
- Cultivate excellent working relationships with senior leaders in the nuclear weapons system and larger community in a way that can inspire collective action without formal authority;
- Help identify and recruit additional cross-sector stakeholders;
- Catalyze and support self-organizing among field members;
- Share power and lead from behind including:
- Facilitating and supporting inclusive decision-making spaces;
- Understand and challenge assumptions and ways in which Ploughshares Fund is holding power;
- Create a safe environment and actively solicit insights about how power is functioning within the field and in Ploughshares.
- Build our organization’s identity as a respected, neutral convener among a broad spectrum of local stakeholders.
Project Management and Strategic Planning (30%)
- With the President, design, implement, and evaluate Ploughshares Fund’s field building strategy; track progress on goals and make strategy modifications as needed.
- Manage and coordinate Ploughshares Fund field building activities in partnership with internal and external stakeholders, including any steering committees, work groups, or other collaborative processes.
- Maintain understanding of current implementation challenges and develop comprehensive solutions to address them;
- Maintain effective processes and share leadership and responsibility with external partners.
- Ensure DEIA goals are met for the field building strategy and support meeting organizational goals.
Systems sensing (10%)
- Facilitate systems sensing strategies with the field, including identifying systems barriers, strategizing actions to address them, and listening and making sense of how the field is changing over time.
- Identify and monitor signals of change related to field building strategies, some of which may also require developing simple data collection approaches.
- Model the use of data to inform decision making and adaptation of field building strategies.
Communications and Development (10%)
- Ensure the field is kept apprised of goals, objectives, priorities, successes, and opportunities of the field building work.
- If interested, contribute to Ploughshares Fund’s weekly podcast, Press the Button, including recruiting guests, conducting interviews, and helping develop the podcast’s strategy.
- Assist the development team as requested to support the organization’s fundraising goals, including supplying content for proposals and donor inquiries; reviewing the substantive content for reports to foundation and individual donors; and assisting in the writing of proposals for foundations and individuals.
- Assist the communications team in drafting messages and emails to various audiences in support of our field building work.
Physical requirements:
- Ability to work at a computer for the majority of the day.
- Some travel is required.
- May be required to work weekends, nights, or be on-call during emergency situations.
To do this job, you will need to have the following skills. We understand that candidates may not initially have all of these skills, but we ask that you have most of them when you apply.
- Advanced facilitation, meeting/event design, and presentation skills before multiple types of audiences.
- Advanced strategy and planning skills, including an ability to think strategically on both organizational and systemic levels over multi-year horizons.
- Experience with complex project management and stakeholder management.
- Demonstrated experience working with systems frameworks, complexity frameworks, and other tools relevant to systemic change.
- Outstanding communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build authentic relationships with a diverse, cross-sectoral set of high profile stakeholders.
- Experience and success with conflict management, including helping stakeholders resolve differences, discover new pathways, and de-escalate frustrations.
- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to thrive in a fluid, uncertain context (the nature of field building work). This includes a willingness to “roll up one’s sleeves” and extend beyond formal responsibilities based on the needs of the work.
- Experience working as part of a multidisciplinary team and ability to work in a complex environment requiring significant collaboration.
- Strong planning and organizational skills, with the ability to think strategically in the design, integration and execution of programs through utilization of different kinds of resources and partnerships.
- Demonstrated effectiveness in written and oral communication; ability to communicate complex issues to a variety of audiences.
We require all of our staff to have the following skills, drawn from our organizational values of cooperation, adaptability, understanding and our commitment to Equity Rises:
- Generate new ideas with other staff members by cultivating curiosity.
- Build trust by forgiving others’ mistakes and taking responsibility for their own.
- Communicate needs around tasks, priorities and deadlines clearly to colleagues.
- Adjust their workflow (pace, topic, relationships) to respond to immediate challenges.
- Ensure their workflow does not diverge from the organization’s mission and goals.
- Learn from and respond to others through active listening.
- Communicate how their own work derives from the organization’s mission and goals (for example, in strategies and work plans).
- Reflect on and address power (personal and organizational) when communicating and making decisions.
- Help set and achieve departmental and organizational DEIA goals.
For this position we require that you have the following experience:
- 7 or more years of relevant work experience, including:
- 3 or more years of meeting and/or event design and facilitation (beyond meeting management);
- 3 or more years working with a project, strategy, or organization that is seeking to advance systemic change;
- 3 or more years leading, managing, and taking increasing responsibility for the success of multi-stakeholder initiatives/coalitions.
Compensation and Benefits
FLSA Designation: Exempt
This is a full-time position. We prefer candidates based in Washington, D.C., but are open to San Francisco-based or other remote applicants provided they are willing to travel to D.C. for in person meetings as needed, potentially up to once a month. For all staff, Ploughshares Fund allows for some remote work flexibility regarding both location and scheduling. For example, in person meetings may be required for collaboration and onboarding, with remote flexibility allowed for independent project work.
This is a Director A level position which has a set salary range between $106,800 and $160,200. The maximum starting salary will be the midpoint, $133,500, and depend on your skills as stated above. Ploughshares Fund offers a full range of benefits including health, dental and vision insurance, a retirement matching plan, paid sick leave and paid vacation time. Ploughshares Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
To Apply
Please apply here:
https://www.fitzii.com/apply/78894
with a resume and cover letter that highlight how you meet the required skills and experience noted above. Applications are due by August 31, 2023.
The final round of interviews will include a facilitation exercise, where applicants will be given an assignment to plan a meeting approach using a systems thinking framework and help the hiring team advance their thinking on an issue facing the nuclear field. Applicants who are invited to this stage will be compensated for the time spent developing the facilitation approach. This activity does not require nuclear weapons/nuclear policy knowledge, but does require strong facilitation and systems thinking skills and knowledge.
Please do not contact us by phone. To learn more about Ploughshares Fund, please visit ploughshares.org.