Managing Director

The Skoll Foundation•Washington, DC

10d•$181,642 - $290,628•Hybrid

About The Position

The Skoll Foundation is a private grantmaking foundation that seeks to build a sustainable world of peace and prosperity for all by investing in, connecting, and championing social entrepreneurs and other social innovators. Together, we advance bold and equitable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. The Skoll Foundation fosters a mission and values-based approach to the work we do focused on the vision of doing good. The Managing Director reports to the Vice President, Portfolio & Investments and works in close collaboration with peers across Skoll staff to advance knowledge and evidence of scaling impact. The Portfolio and Investments team is responsible for leading Skoll’s investment work in our strategic priority issue areas, as well as for the annual Skoll Awards for Social Innovation and the ongoing investments in social entrepreneurs and other innovators made directly and through funding partners. The goal of the team is to accelerate the progress of social innovators to achieve large-scale and lasting systems change. To achieve this, it identifies where Skoll investments can help drive transformational social change, and facilitates the engagement of Skoll’s network, staff, and resources to that end. Managing Directors are people managers and collaborative advisors to grantees and multiple external partners. Skoll Managing Directors play a principal role in the selection of new grantmaking opportunities each year and develop a healthy, long-term pipeline of potential investments. With a focus on increasing impact, each Managing Director leads a team that manages a broad portfolio of organizations and partners on an ongoing basis, connecting them to other networks, understanding the breadth and depth of their work, and their progress towards large-scale systems change. Looking beyond the initial grant, Managing Directors identify creative opportunities to help advance the work of organizations in their portfolio. They recommend timely, strategic investments by analyzing issues and impact data from Skoll’s broader portfolio. They develop relationships with other funding partners to leverage broader social change using innovative social investment models.

Requirements

A Bachelor’s Degree, or equivalent education and experience.
A minimum of fifteen (15) years of demonstrated success in a nonprofit, for-profit, government, or philanthropy, working on growth, business development or related issues.
Experience working with social entrepreneurs in both the for-profit or nonprofit space is highly valued.
Proven ability to evaluate an investment opportunity, business case development or other due diligence related work.
Knowledge of a wide variety of investment tools, including grants and program-related or mission-related investments, as well as debt and equity as applied in an impact context.
Able to successfully navigate in a fast-paced, outcomes-driven and entrepreneurial environment.
Knowledge and understanding of the resources needed and success factor important for entrepreneurs to succeed and build healthy organizations.
Excellent verbal and written communication skills are imperative.
Agile learner and rapid adapter to software tools including but not limited to Salesforce, Asana, and Microsoft 365, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Must be available for domestic and international travel.
Able to work on-site Tuesday through Thursday in the District of Columbia.

Nice To Haves

An advanced degree
Foreign language proficiency and/or time living and working in an LMIC or outside of one’s community of origin

Responsibilities

Lead initial scoping and ongoing refinement of priority area strategies for the Foundation. Lead a cross-functional team to inform Skoll’s approach, conducting desk research, attending conferences, and holding meetings with partners, peer funders, and other experts to test and shape ongoing strategy development.
Present findings and recommendations on strategic approach to the VP, Portfolio and Investment, Executive Leadership Team, and other stakeholders.
Convert strategic direction into effective implementation and execution across the team and Foundation.
Collaborate with internal and external partners to identify organizations well-aligned with Skoll’s investment strategy.
Conduct due diligence on the Skoll Award for Social Innovation, and other investment opportunities, including interviewing issue experts, working with regional leaders, and conducting site visits to understand the organization’s work through the eyes of their beneficiaries and with the lens of large-scale, sustained change.
Define the highest impact investment tools to use, from grants and direct investment to program-related investments, structured debt, and other investment vehicles. Act as an investment mentor to others on the team.
Manage relationships with Skoll portfolio partners, co-creating a shared set of goals and plan for facilitating the partnership between Awardees and the Foundation.
Assess how the Foundation’s time, talents, and resources can be used to advance portfolio partners’ progress towards transformational social change.
Beyond the initial investment, work with grantees to scale their work by introducing and actively working with other funders.
Coordinate with teams within Skoll to bring awareness to critical global issues and the work of social innovators.
Understands change management sufficiently to lead a complex program and help build culture and skills across the team.
Assist with annual operating budget and forecast processes, procedures, and reporting.
Actively helps to shape the learning agenda, feedback loop and monitoring and evaluation agenda for individual grants and portfolio wide.
Develops milestones and ongoing metrics to ensure Skoll investments are accurately positioned, measured, and communicated across sectors (corporate, government, and philanthropy).
Identify patterns within the portfolio and use those patterns to define opportunities to assist individual organizations.
Document and advance learning among the Investment and Portfolio teams of trends, challenges, and highest impact opportunities for investment.
Develop and implement best practices to understand and further the impact from the portfolio, and regularly communicate results internally and externally.
Lead Foundation relationships independently with a range of world class investment partners, including bilateral and multilateral agencies, private foundations, and other large funder collaboratives.
Represent the work of the Foundation in high profile convenings, forums and other gatherings.
Engage and support the work of our partners at the Skoll World Forum and other Skoll-sponsored events.
Act as a key exemplar of the disciplines that underly our work across the entire investment practice—scoping, sourcing, selecting and funding, managing and partnering, and learning from grants and program-related investments—and our growth as organization, including our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Teach and engage others in the Foundation across those disciplines and develop internal curriculum for raising the level of practice and understanding from the team as a whole.
Lead in such a way as to embody the organization values. Every interaction embodies Skoll values, raises our bar in quality of communication, and magnifies the influence of the Skoll brand.