Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) is looking for an Executive Director who will lead CJSF into our next phase as an independent abolitionist-oriented organization. Founded in 2010 by individuals in philanthropy who understood that in the education justice ecoystem, grassroots organizers are the least resourced and most impactful, CJSF is a national collaborative that links philanthropy with the power of grassroots organizing to transform schools.

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We are seeking a leader for this season in our organizational growth and evolution - to help us shift to and formalize an independent organizational infrastructure while broadening, deepening, and sustaining support for our partners and a vibrant healthy movement. Do you have experience growing organizations and coalescing stakeholders for action? Are you an adaptable person who understands adjustments will happen? Our new leader will enthusiastically & incisively center CJSF’s partners - grassroots community organizers - when convening members, funders, partners, & friends alike.

 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve as a key organizer for CJSF members and philanthropy to move the sector towards more deeply understanding and resourcing grassroots, community-led efforts to build, wield, and sustain community power.

 

• Lead strategic priority-setting, in partnership with staff and members.

 

• Collaborate with senior staff to build and maintain a cohesive, supportive, and collaborative organization with a culture that attracts, inspires, invests in, and retains a diverse, professional, & experienced staff.

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• Supervise staff including Deputy Director of Programs, Director of Storytelling & Deputy Director of Organizational Health and Abundance.

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• Develop and lead the implementation of a comprehensive fundraising strategy to ensure CJSF’s financial health and organizational capacity.

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• Lead financial oversight and planning in collaboration with Deputy Director of Organizational Health and Abundance, including crafting an annual budget for member approval and providing updates to members.

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• Provide strong leadership to the CJSF Executive Committee and others to ensure CJSF members are effectively engaged in advancing CJSF’s vision and positioned to be of service to CJSF’s partners and the movement for racial justice in education. Plan for creation of a strong board structure as a strategic component of becoming an independent organization.

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• Collaborate with the Director of Storytelling, members, partners, and others to ensure that our communications strategy is accountable to the field’s need for narrative strategy resources as well as their call for narrative power-building strategy space and support.

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• Strategize with the Deputy Director of Programs to convene members for rich learning and strategy opportunities that ground collaborative efforts in a nuanced understanding of organizing and our partners’ demands while being responsive to our members’ interests and needs.

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• Serve as a principal voice for CJSF, including representing CJSF at meetings, events, & conferences across the country, and offering a critical perspective on topics related to education justice, philanthropy, and more, through writing, public scholarship, and engagement with press/media.

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• Develop and expand relationships and networks with CJSF’s members, other philanthropy colleagues, and movement leaders.

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• Listen deeply to CJSF’s partners and other movement actors and lead in ways that model a genuine commitment to authentic solidarity and action.

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CANDIDATE PROFILE

CJSF’s Executive Director will have significant experience successfully leading, ideally in an organization of similar or relatable complexity. For CJSF, our complexity to date has manifested as being both nimble & creative to proactively move unencumbered resources and respond to partners’ learning needs. We prioritize moving significant resources to our partners. Our new leader will have experience building an organization with insights into how to center staff wellness and will have knowledge of and experience with both grassroots organizing and philanthropy. They will be a visionary who can call others towards abolitionist pathways and the journey from here to there.

 

• Political alignment: deep commitment to justice and a nuanced understanding of the intersections of multiple forms of justice (e.g. racial, gender, climate) and why those are important to the work of advancing education justice.

 

• Movement expertise: experience with organizing including a nuanced understanding of power-building and political education and comfort effectively convening and supporting a network grappling with strategies and challenges as provocative as dual power and as mundane as policy change. First-hand experience as an organizer is preferred.

 

• Philanthropy expertise: experience with philanthropy and the strategies, challenges and opportunities that foundation staff and boards encounter and how to strategically navigate the sector forward.

 

• Relationship builder: centers relationships in their approach to work. Demonstrable experience building and sustaining relationships across roles, place, and perspectives.

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• Equity Advocate: centers the voices of those most directly and acutely impacted and understands our place in philanthropy with different degrees of privilege. Models a deep understanding of how justice and equity advocacy play out in our work and relationships as well as an orientation to intersectionality and a commitment to leadership practices grounded in the philosophy of Black feminism.

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• Collaborative Leadership Style: leadership style prioritizes authentic collaboration, demonstrating explicit intentionality with regard to power-sharing and distribution, toward building trusting relationships internal and external to the organization.

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• Visionary: in addition to research, uses engagement with communities, partners, members, staff and advocates in the field toward conceptualization of an achievable ideal, and the design/co-design of plans to achieve that ideal.

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• Organizational Strengthening: Orientation toward reflexive, recursive and iterative evaluation of organizational work, operations, processes, interactions and procedures, to engage all actors in efforts to see the organization, see themselves in the organization, and build the organization needed to implement vision.

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• Fundraising and Financial Management: Demonstrated success fundraising in relationship-centric ways to build institutional resilience and flexibility. Demonstrated record of sound financial planning, oversight, and accountability.

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• Governance and Accountability: Knowledge of risk management and legal compliance, including knowing when to involve legal counsel. Experience working with financially complex organizations. Grantmaking experience, traditional or otherwise, is a plus.

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LOCATION AND TRAVEL

CJSF is a fully virtual team. Travel needs will be evaluated and determined on an ongoing basis with critical consideration towards staff safety as we continue navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The CJSF team hopes to resume coming together for in-person team-building and strategy-setting quarterly retreats.

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The Executive Director is expected to travel both locally and nationally. Out of area travel by plane and/or train is estimated to be approximately 25-30% depending upon where the Executive Director is based.

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COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS

CJSF’s Executive Director will be compensated in the range of $170,000 - $200,000, commensurate with experience plus a competitive benefits package that includes health coverage, retirement benefits, paid sick leave, vacation and holidays, professional development support, and more. The Executive Director reports to the CJSF Executive Committee.

 

In alignment with CJSF’s commitments to equity & justice, this range reflects an internal commitment to ensuring that the salary of the highest-paid employee will not be more than three times that of any other employee.

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APPLICATION PROCESS

CJSF is partnering with Roadmap Consulting, LLC to identify candidates to fill the CJSF Executive Director position. Roadmap Consulting, LLC provides capacity-building assistance to organizations within or supporting social justice initiatives and movements.

 

We invite you to share this position announcement widely or to request a networking call with Roadmap consultants by emailing ccason.cf@gmail.com. Phone inquiries are discouraged.

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The priority deadline for applications is December 10, 2022 and final deadline for applications is December 20, 2022. Applications received during the priority period will be reviewed by the transition committee ahead of others.

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Applications should include the items listed below as a single, combined PDF and emailed to ccason.cf@gmail.com: cover letter, resume, and a list of three references that includes names, affiliation, relationship to you, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. References will not be contacted until the final stage of the search and candidates will be given an opportunity to notify their references in advance.

 

Selected applicants will be contacted for interviews with CJSF’s Leadership Transition Committee in January 2023.

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Download the full job posting.