Distributed Organization – This position is ideally based in the U.S. Gulf South (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, or Alabama)

Gulf South Program Officer, Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice

The Organization

The Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice raises funds and makes grants to organizations working at the intersection of climate, gender, and racial justice crises in the U.S. that have historically lacked access to funding. Founded in September 2019, we spent our first year cultivating community and co-creating values and practices that position us well to bring on our first full-time team members to work with the founding co-directors. This is an exciting time for a collaborative partner with relevant lived experience in the South to take our work to the next level.

The Hive Fund supports groups advocating for strong policies; building social movements to intensify public demand for change; facilitating civic engagement to build political power and hold decision-makers accountable; and conducting creative communications efforts to move hearts, minds, and imaginations. The Hive Fund supports grantee partners with significant amounts of multi-year general support and trust in their expertise. A majority of our funding is awarded to groups in the South, where pollution levels are higher and philanthropic funding levels are lower than elsewhere in the country.

We approach grant-making differently, with a vision of resources rooted in abundance, not scarcity, and a recognition that relationships, trust, and integrity are essential and invaluable assets to propel social change. As a re-granting organization, the Hive Fund is in relationship with funders and grantee partners: we operate in a space between movements and money that is rich with the possibility of individual, organizational and systemic transformation. We move toward a more equitable and just future, in part, by unlocking resources and returning them to the communities from which they were extracted. We are accountable to and make all major decisions in consultation with key advisors, participatory working groups, and grantee partners. We foster collaborative relationships with funding partners and allies to challenge and change harmful practices in the philanthropic sector that reflect and reinforce white supremacy and misogyny.

More information about the Hive Fund can be found at www.hivefund.org.

Position Overview

In this newly created position that the selected candidate will help shape, the Gulf South Program Officer will manage an annual grant-making portfolio of approximately $6M focused in the Gulf South, anchored in Texas and Louisiana with consideration for additional future grant-making in Mississippi and/or Alabama dependent on fundraising.

Oil, gas, and petrochemical pollution in Texas and Louisiana is expected to increase dramatically over the next 15 years, threatening to nullify all the global warming emission reductions achieved in the U.S. power sector over the last two decades. Groups in the region have asked for support in a just transition toward a cleaner, healthier, safer, and more equitable future. Working within a participatory decision-making structure, the program officer will work with co-directors, grantee partners, allied funders, and others to support an ecosystem of grantee partners.  This ecosystem will work to achieve collective goals of reducing harmful pollution and building a healthier and more just society.

The Gulf South Program Officer will support grantee partners by making multi-year general operating and healing justice and holistic security grants; helping to craft compelling stories of collective progress and impact; and connecting grantee partners with other donors and potential supporters. The ideal candidate for this role is an entrepreneurial self-starter and inclusive bridge-builder who approaches new situations with humility and faces challenges with courage and humor.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS

Grant Strategy & Partnerships
– Build trusting relationships with grantee partners, advisory group members, regional stakeholders, and others to co-create grant-making strategies, goals, and objectives consistent with the Hive Fund’s mission, values, and theory of change.
– Serve as the lead facilitator, consensus-builder, researcher, writer, and peer review manager of semi-annual Hive Fund strategy memos and grant docket recommendations.
– Work with consultants, practitioners, and other experts to identify opportunities to provide supplemental Healing Justice and Holistic Security grants.
– Identify potential new Gulf South grantee partners and help grow the number from 11 to approximately 20 over the next two years.
– Collaborate with grantee partners to support the development of grantee-driven ways to track progress and collect data and stories.
– Support grantees as needed with capacity-building, introductions to other funders, and connection to additional resources.
– Facilitate connections and partnerships across the region to support an emerging regional ecosystem. Partner with the Hive Fund’s Atlantic Coast Program Officer to identify and lift up learnings across regions.

Grants Management
– Ensure adherence to the highest standards of integrity in managing internal grant-making procedures, including acquisition and management of appropriate documentation, maintaining detailed grant budgets and tracking, data entry, compliance, and processing of grant reports and renewals.
– Work with Hive Fund leadership and consultants to design new grant-making programs and areas of specialization as needed.

Funder Engagement
– Support Hive Fund’s fundraising by providing timely and accurate data and stories of impact and contributing to grant writing and funder reporting.
– Contribute content to the Learning Lab, an online hub where we share insights, ideas, challenges and learnings from our grantee and funder communities.
– Work closely with funders in the Gulf South Region and across the country to promote the expertise and strategies of grantee partners and the Hive Fund to shift philanthropic practices and increase giving to those on the frontlines.
– Participate and play a leadership role in networks with aligned funders, including regional associations of grant-makers and issue-specific funder tables.

QUALIFICATIONS & CHARACTERISTICS
Core – Ideally, the program officer will have a mix of these core experiences and skills to support their ability to thrive in the role:
– Lived and work experience relevant to climate, gender, and racial justice in the Gulf South, particularly Texas and Louisiana (as well as Mississippi, and/or Alabama), reflected in a clear commitment to the mission of the Hive Fund.
– 7+ years of grant-making, grant-seeking, nonprofit and/or philanthropic experience preferred, ideally within the climate, gender, and racial justice landscapes.
– Familiarity with power-building strategies, policy advocacy, and systems change work.
– Highly collaborative work style with outstanding relationship-building skills, experience contributing to a positive organizational culture, and the ability to operate as a peer and thought partner to the co-directors, grantee partners, funding partners, and external constituents with the highest levels of integrity.
– Outstanding oral and written communications skills, along with strong facilitation skills and experience leading participatory, inclusive, and collective decision-making processes across a diversity of backgrounds and approaches.
– Proven project management abilities to ensure priorities are clearly understood by internal and external stakeholders and that grant-making programs advance on time and on budget.
– Strong emotional intelligence, humility, and commitment to supporting the expertise of grantee partners, community-based leaders, and inclusive and participatory decision-making processes.

Preferred – Preferably, the program officer will also have some of these desired experiences and skills to enhance their thought partnership in the role:
– Ability to develop a long-term vision and understand the role of grant-making in moving it forward. A thinker and a doer who understands the role philanthropy can play in achieving climate, gender, and racial justice.
– Content knowledge in climate, gender, and/or racial justice as a generalist, or an expert in a specific approach (e.g., civic engagement or economic development).
– Ability to learn new areas and approaches quickly and pull in outside expertise as needed.
– Entrepreneurial spirit filled with ingenuity, inventiveness, flexibility, and the ability to help build something innovative from the ground up, both ideating and executing.

WORK ENVIRONMENT, SCHEDULE & TRAVEL

The Gulf South Program Officer will be an employee of the Hive Fund’s fiscal sponsor, the Windward Fund. This is a full-time salaried position with comprehensive benefits. As a distributed organization, our team members currently work remotely embedded in key regions across the U.S. and will mainly work from home or in co-working spaces post-COVID. The Hive Fund will provide necessary office equipment and supplies for remote work and work in co-working spaces. Approximately 25-30% travel, mainly regional, is required to support an intentionally distributed workplace, to build trust and relationships by meeting grantee partners in their communities, and to attend conferences and other learning and networking events. Reasonable accommodations will be made for individuals with disabilities, caregiving responsibilities, and those who reside in rural areas.

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
The Hive Fund’s compensation practices support staff in thriving and are part of living into the just, equitable world we are actively creating. These practices are guided by the Hive Fund’s six core values, especially transparency, equity, and healing & security. The salary range for this position is $125,000 – $165,000, commensurate with qualifications, plus access to professional development resources, and the competitive benefits package provided to all Windward Fund employees including health coverage, retirement benefits, paid sick leave, vacation and holidays.

How To Apply

The Hive Fund is partnering with Walker and Associates Consulting – a Black woman owned and led strategic consultancy. Email a cover letter, resume and a short (1-2 page) writing sample by April 1, 2021 to hivefund@walkeraac.com. We invite you to lift up relevant qualifications not specified in this announcement that might make you ideal for this role in your cover letter. Use the subject line “Gulf South Program Officer.” One combined PDF file is preferred. Candidate review begins immediately. Beginning in April, advancing candidates may be invited to participate in two rounds of interviews with a diverse set of Hive Fund staff and partners. Finalists may also be asked to respond to an advanced assignment related to a real-time challenge that the program officer would face in this role. We hope to have a new program officer joining our team by late spring or early summer.

COMMITMENT TO EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
In alignment with our core values and approach, Hive Fund is an equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse, collaborative, and sustainable work environment. We believe that White supremacy, misogyny, and economic systems that make pollution profitable are intimately intertwined. Addressing the climate crisis at a scale and in the time needed to avert disaster will require transforming the systems of power governing who pollutes, who profits, and whose lives are valued. We therefore recruit and hire with the understanding of systemic oppression and of the lived reality of people with marginalized identities and strongly encourage all to apply, especially Black, Indigenous and People of Color; lesbian, bisexual, queer, trans and gender non-conforming people; intersex people; people with disabilities; and formerly incarcerated people. We do not discriminate based upon race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, sexual identity, age, religion, creed, disability (actual or perceived), medical condition including genetic characteristics, marital status, domestic partnership status, citizenship, military service, height, weight, HIV/AIDS status, or any other characteristic protected by state or federal law or local ordinance.

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