The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) is seeking a skilled, highly motivated and entrepreneurial individual to join the foundation as a Deputy Director - Home Region. The position calls for a solid understanding of the Home Region geographies and WFF grantees. The foundation seeks to recruit individuals with a demonstrated commitment to an inclusive quality of life, superior interpersonal and communication skills, a respectful but analytical approach to the work of grantees, and a proven ability to work effectively as part of a team.
About the Position
The Deputy Director - Home Region will lead operations, processes and planning for the Home Region team at the Walton Family Foundation.
Specific duties include the following:
• Manage, create and/or refine processes and procedures to optimize the experience of the Home Region team, foundation peers and grantees and ensure high quality grantmaking continues
• Manage program officers and support staff and support their professional growth and management and operations responsibilities
• Engage operations, legal, human resources, communications, and strategy, learning and evaluation, and other departments across the foundation to ensure effective, and strategic grantmaking processes that result in excellent team and grantee feedback and experience
• Work with Home Region leadership to oversee day-to-day program operations, including grantmaking and budget, and implementation of the strategic plan
• Build and maintain relationships with current and potential grantees
• Inform the creation of the Home Region 2020-2025 strategic plan
• Represent the foundation at professional meetings and to the broader community.
• Deliver learning approaches and tools that provide appropriate development across team
• Source and perform due diligence on proposals aligned with the Home Region’s theory of change
• Other projects and assignments as requested by the foundation’s board, Executive Director or Home Region Program Director
Who we are looking for
Personal attributes that support your success
• Ability to act as a trusted advisor to principals and colleagues while demonstrating expertise and integrity
• You are helpful, a team player, and show respect while collaborating with others
• You are results oriented and exercise sound judgment in your work
• A lifelong learner, who is inquisitive and solves problems with bold thinking and innovation
• A visionary who plans for the future with imagination and wisdom
• You are dedicated to achieving excellence and work with others to tackle the tasks at hand
About the Walton Family Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation is at its core, a family-led foundation. Three generations of the descendants of our founders, Sam and Helen Walton, and their spouses, work together to lead the foundation and create access to opportunity for people and communities. We work in 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. In 2018, the foundation awarded more than $595 million in grants in support of these initiatives. To learn more, visit waltonfamilyfoundation.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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’s annual grant budget is in excess of $40 million.
The Home Region accomplishes this goal through two initiatives:
• Northwest Arkansas – focused on 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. These strategies are: Create a World-Class System of Pre-K-12 Schools, Strengthen Coordinated Economic Development, Establish the Region as a Leader in Arts and Cultural Amenities, and Preserve a Sense of Place.
• Delta Region of Arkansas and Mississippi - focused on 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
7+ years of work in a professional environment, with significant experience in grant making, philanthropy, municipal government, or nonprofit operations
• Knowledge of one or more of the Home Region’s strategic areas of focus: K-12 Education, Arts & Culture, Economic Development and Urban Planning & Design
• Knowledge of and engagement with philanthropies, either as a donor, fundraiser or grant manager.
• Proven ability to develop and grow people and optimize team performance.
• Experience building positive organizational culture for diverse, inclusive and high-performing teams.
• 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 and ability to convey complex issues to internal and external audiences.
• Proven skills at organization and time management.
• Bachelor’s degree required; relevant master’s degree or higher preferred.
