The William Penn Foundation is a leading American philanthropy located in Philadelphia. With over $2 billion in assets and a $100+ million annual grant budget, the Foundation is a vital part of the civic life in one of the country’s most important and historically significant regions. The Foundation has charted a vision consistent with its enduring focus on education, the environment and the cultural vitality of Greater Philadelphia.
The Foundation’s core strategies include:
- Increasing the number of low-income children receiving a high-quality education
- Ensuring clean water by protecting the Delaware River watershed
- Fostering a vibrant city through support to arts and culture organizations, arts education programs, and creating great public spaces
The Foundation believes that successful execution of these strategies is critical to the success of the region and seeks candidates who will operate with a sense of urgency, leadership and entrepreneurship in advancing this work.
The overarching aim of the Creative Communities program is to foster a vibrant and creative Philadelphia, by supporting a diverse arts and cultural sector, creating opportunities for educational experiences that increase student access to the arts, and supporting the development of high-quality public spaces as platforms for community and cultural expression and promote increased civic engagement, community building, and connectivity.
Position Summary
The Program Officer will support grantmaking initiatives that advance the following:
- Strategic public space investments that enhance the local quality of life in neighborhoods outside of Center City, especially underserved and under resourced communities, and that promote increased connectivity between communities and reduce community isolation.
- Leveraging the process of developing and programming high quality public spaces to support community building, increased civic engagement, and to reinforce community identity through design innovation, creative placemaking, and historic preservation
- Marshalling civic assets to support the educational mission of local schools by embedding learning opportunities in parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, libraries, and other public spaces and civic assets.
- Utilizing the regional trail network (The Circuit) as an urban amenity to promote increased connectivity between neighborhoods, the region, and to the natural environment.
- Exploring and understanding the relationship between public space/civic asset infrastructure investments (parks, playgrounds, recreation centers, and libraries) and community revitalization, redevelopment, and neighborhood stabilization efforts.
- Supporting public/performance art in community and public spaces as a strategy to animate these places and increase access to cultural experiences in under-served and under-resourced communities.
- Developing research and data collection efforts to effectively evaluate the impact of public space and civic asset investments with respect to facility utilization, perceptions of local “ownership”, stewardship, and the effect on neighboring community development.
In addition, the Program Officer will engage in research projects, evaluation programs, convenings and conferences that position and reinforce WPF as a center of innovative thinking and thought leadership in the development of public spaces and civic assets.
Responsibilities
- Develop specific grants and initiatives and help manage a Great Public Spaces annual grant budget of $18MM, including research, outreach, due diligence, and preparing written recommendations to the Board,
- Provide support with strategic projects and grantmaking across the Foundation, with a particular emphasis on Public Space/Creative Communities.
- Facilitate project planning, coordination, reporting, monitoring and communications necessary to ensure successful completion of the work.
- Participate in team meetings, planning, and goal setting.
- Develop and execute work in all stages of programmatic work.
- Convene stakeholders across a variety of sectors to advance the work of the Creative Communities/Public Space initiatives and support the strategic frame-work of the Foundation.
- Promote and model excellent external relations with grantees and partners.
- Other responsibilities as assigned.
Expected Competencies
- Ability to quickly understand information, analyze data, synthesize findings, and make recommendations with a demonstrated ability to learn and master new issues quickly.
- Excellent organization with attention to detail, demonstrated ability to manage time effectively with multiple projects on different timeframes and priorities, ensuring all deadlines are met while retaining quality and maintaining composure.
- Proven goal orientation with a strong work ethic and personal integrity displaying initiative and ownership. Acumen to handle complex situations and multiple responsibilities, simultaneously balancing long term projects with the urgency of immediate demands on the operations.
- Adapt and be flexible with quickly changing environments. Able to identify new approaches to support a dynamic organization.
- Capable and willing to do work at all levels, including thinking strategically and performing day to day activities.
- Team-oriented with strong interpersonal skills. Demonstrated ability to collaborate with and achieve actionable results through others with the ability to build strong and sustainable relationships and wield influence within all levels of the organization and with external constituents.
- Ability to make decisions wisely based upon available and sometimes limited data.
- Complex problem-solving skills and comprehension of challenging materials and scenarios, allowing for intelligent risk taking.
Essential Functions
- Strong research, analysis, and oral and written presentation skills including the ability to concisely and clearly communicate to a diverse audience of stakeholders and decision makers,
- Prepare and deliver oral and written presentations to large and small audiences with clear messaging.
- Clear and effective writing style is an essential skill requirement.
Education, Training and Experience
- Master’s Degree in Urban Planning or Landscape Architecture preferred; Bachelor’s degree required.
- Certification by the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) or Registration as a Landscape Architect (RLA) preferred.
- A minimum of 5 years of relevant work experience in one or more of the following areas required: Community revitalization, parks and public space planning and design, trail planning and design, community engagement, historic preservation, public space management or public space utilization data collection and analysis.
- Expertise in administration and/or public policy work related to public space development including design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, budgets, understanding of trends and policies, advocacy, and developing partnerships in field.
- Motivated, high-energy, and self-confident individual with strong research and analytical capability and strategic thinking skills who operates with poise, humility, diplomacy and tact.
- Proficiency with MS Office including PowerPoint and graphic representation skills.
Physical Demands/Work Environment
The physical demands and work environment characteristics described are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to walk, bend, sit, talk, lift, or hear. The employee is regularly required to stand, walk and use hands and arms to operate general office equipment (PC, telephone, file cabinets, copier, fax machine and printer). The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to ten (10) pounds. The noise level in the work environment is usually low to moderate.
The William Penn Foundation is an equal opportunity employer and considers applications without regard to race, color, religion, creed, age, gender, marital status or sexual orientation. All who believe they meet the stated qualifications are invited to apply. Nominations and applications may be submitted to wpfjobs@williampennfoundation.org.
