The Walton Family Foundation is seeking a skilled, highly motivated and entrepreneurial individual to join the foundation as an Associate Program Officer for the Home Region Program.
About the Position
The Associate Program Officer will work in a small, entrepreneurial team under the supervision of the Senior Program Officer guiding the Preserve a Sense of Place strategy. The purpose of this strategy is to preserve a sense of place in Northwest Arkansas through quality urban planning by investing in mobility, design, and green space preservation. The vision is to continue to position Northwest Arkansas as a desirable region for businesses and residents to grow and/or relocate because of the quality of the built and natural environment.
Specific duties include the following:
• Implement the Home Region Preserve a Sense of Place Strategy.
• Engaging community partners and seeking grantees to execute against the overall strategic goals.
• Help manage relationships with grantees, potential grantees, and other partners. This will include performing due diligence and shepherding grant proposals through the foundation’s approval process.
• Conducting site visits, providing guidance and working with grantees to achieve significant impact.
• Develop and build new relationships with a broad network of partners who can leverage the foundation’s goals.
• Assist grantees in developing and implementing monitoring, maintenance, and funding strategies that lead to the achievement of strategic goals.
• Defining grant terms and expectations; obtain agreement on reasonable outputs and outcomes including how they will be measured and reported.
• Review budgets for appropriate expenditures; monitor ongoing operations, review financial and narrative reports and ensure timely payments
• Assist with other projects and assignments as requested by the foundation’s board, Executive Director or Director of the Home Region Program.
Who we are looking for:
You are a highly effective team member who understands that the success of the foundation’s Home Region strategy is built on a strong team culture that values partnership and provides support through honest and respectful feedback.
Personal attributes that support your success
• Ability to build internal and external relationships and networks in order to achieve results.
• Intellectual agility and the ability to analyze, think critically and understand progressive urban planning principles and issues.
• Demonstrated interpersonal skills combined with an ability to listen to others and learn from their best ideas.
• An engaging presence, possessing political savvy and a demonstrated track record of success communicating effectively with people from different sectors of society.
• Strategic thinker, who will be capable of deploying an innovative program framework and vision.
• Excellent written skills and experience in producing both brief and longer written products in a timely fashion for internal and external audiences.
• Oral communication skills, with experience in public speaking that emphasizes conveying complex issues to internal and external audiences.
• Demonstrated capacity to work as part of an action-oriented team, as well as independently.
• Ability to handle confidential issues and practice discretion
• Down-to-earth approach with a good sense of humor
• Unquestionable ethics and personal integrity
• Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint
About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation is, at its core, a family-led foundation. The children and grandchildren of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. The Foundation’s giving is focused on three areas: improving K-12 education, protecting rivers and oceans and the communities they support, and investing in our home region of Northwest Arkansas and the Arkansas-Mississippi Delta. The Foundation also invests in areas of deep personal interest to individual family members.
Headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, with offices in Washington, D.C., Jersey City, New Jersey and Denver, Colorado, approximately 110 staff conduct the day-to-day operations of the foundation.
About the Home Region Program
The Home Region’s goal is to honor the Walton Family’s special and ongoing commitment to the region where they launched one of the best known American business success stories, by creating and sustaining long-term economic development for residents and business in the area.
The Home Region accomplishes this goal through two initiatives:
• Northwest Arkansas – by attracting and retaining top talent at all levels and ensuring the long-term viability of the region by investing in four major strategy areas that have been shown to impact both current quality of life and the long-term economic viability of the region and its residents.
• Delta Region of Arkansas and Mississippi – by addressing key basic needs in targeted counties in order to establish a base on which future economic development can occur by investing in a strategy for Pre-K-12 educational improvement in the broader Delta geography, and three specific strategies targeted to Phillips County, Arkansas, and Coahoma County, Mississippi, where the foundation has worked for a number of years to develop an understanding of the communities, their leaders, and the issues they face.
The Walton Family Foundation is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building and maintaining a culturally diverse workplace. We encourage women, minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, status of protected veteran, among other things or status as a qualified individual with a disability.
Basic Qualifications
• Bachelor’s degree required
• 2+ years of work in a professional urban planning or relevant non-profit setting or related field, with experience in serving internal and external “customers”
• Demonstrated organizational, detail-orientation, time management and project-management skills
• Willingness to travel throughout the Northwest Arkansas region to evaluate potential grant projects and monitor approved grant projects.
Preferred experience
• Master’s or professional degree in urban planning, design or related field.
• Deep familiarity with mobility systems, including trails, on-street facilities and mass transit.
• Emerging open space preservation and conservation practices
• Design, development and/or construction management.
• A passionate commitment to the goals of the Home Region program, and the ability/willingness to adapt as those goals evolve
• Experience in nonprofit and/or grants development and management.
