Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation

Lord Mayor's Charitable Foundation is Australia's largest community foundation, established in 1923. The Foundation is committed to creating positive social change and supports charitable organisations delivering innovative and effective programs.

Whilst our strategy is under review, we expect to continue focusing on key Impact Areas that relate to some of Greater Melbourne’s most pressing challenges. These include Inclusive, Sustainable Economy & Jobs, Healthy & Climate Resilient Communities, and Homelessness & Affordable Housing. Across these Impact Areas we will consider and reconsider how we best balance the immediate challenges within our community, how we add the most value in terms of shifting the needle on more systemic change and how we best apply all our energy, skills, and available resources to this endeavour.

Position Overview

The General Manager, Programs and Social Impact is a new senior leadership role that oversees the strategic, innovative, and operational aspects of ensuring our program delivery and support is effective, efficient and collectively maximises impact within our community. It will play a key role in terms of ensuring Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is at the forefront of inspiring and evolving philanthropy so that it not only addresses current societal challenges but works towards longer term transformative change.

This role is responsible for leading a team of program managers and grant administrators and the role the team plays in the delivery of our new strategy. It will also be a key member of a newly formed Senior/Executive Leadership Team with a broader responsibility for ensuring the Foundation is collectively successful and impactful towards shared, mutually reinforcing goals and objectives.

Working closely with the CEO and Leadership Team, the role will have a strong focus on program and initiative accountability and demonstrating effectiveness and continuous learning. It will help to ensure that Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation is continuously maximising the collective impact of all our philanthropic activities, utilising a range of philanthropy tools beyond grant making.

The role will ensure a forward-looking/futures orientation to our work and support the realisation of a heightened ambition to be one of the most progressive and impactful foundations addressing some of Greater Melbourne’s biggest challenges.

Responsibilities

Leadership and Management

• Lead, motivate and develop a high functioning, efficient, effective and empowered team, ensuring alignment with the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation strategy, values and behaviours and strong communications and information sharing across the Foundation.
• Set team direction and prioritisation and support team effectiveness through coaching and professional development, workplan development, feedback and performance management.
• Work closely with the CEO and broader team on strategic planning and strategy implementation, organisational workplan alignment, organisational change management and the maintenance of a positive culture and employee value proposition.
• Represent the Foundation as required at key events, networks and forums, drawing on formed organisational positions on key issues and policies which impact our work.
• Pro-active, informed and constructive engagement in the Senior/Executive Leadership Team and a willingness to constructively challenge the status quo.
• Contribute to the overall purpose, outcomes and organisational performance of the Foundation, ensuring all teams engage and support the requirements of other teams as required to meet shared organisational goals.
• Work with the CEO on the management and development of key strategic Initiatives that fall outside of the current program Impact Areas of Inclusive, Sustainable Economy & Jobs, Healthy & Climate Resilient Communities, and Homelessness & Affordable Housing. (Delegated responsibility).

Strategic Relationships and Stakeholder Engagement (including Donors)

• Updating and keeping the CEO, Board and Senior Leadership Team informed of key initiatives, outcomes, risks and opportunities relating to programs and impact Initiatives.
• With the team, develop, maintain and nurture key relationships between Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation and key community partners, service providers, government, private sector businesses, philanthropic organisations and other strategic partners.
• With the team, align stakeholders around principles, purpose, and practice to create environments for creativity, coordination, collaboration, and accelerated impact. This may include networks and coalitions that draw on a range of perspectives, cultures, backgrounds and lived experience.
• Support and be an ambassador for the Foundation’s positive reputation within the community and among key stakeholders.
• Seek out opportunities to convene and collaborate with existing and new partners to explore ways to accelerate for-purpose impact, including through supporting the success of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation For Purpose Impact Accelerator Hub.

Operations

• Day to day management of the Foundation’s programs, directly managing three program managers and a Grants Administrator utilising a collaborative and empowering approach which brings out the best of subject matter specialists.
• Set and oversee workplans and team-based plans and milestones, deliverables and reporting.
• Lead evaluation, learning, outcome and impact metrics and reporting (both quantitative and qualitative), utilising appropriate data analysis, esearch and insights to inform Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation Impact Areas.
• Work closely with the Development and Communications teams, support revenue growth, business development and donor and stakeholder communications. This will include:
• Strong articulation of value proposition for donors
• Identification of projects, initiatives and cases for support for direct engagement with major donors
• Support the Foundation’s donor engagement, donor journeys and donor education and influencing initiatives
• Coordinate program and impact Initiative inputs into external reports as required e.g. Annual Report.
• Ensure program and grants systems, processes and workflows are fit for purpose, streamlined and robust, including through the appropriate utilisation of IT.
• Ensure cross-cutting issues and strategic lenses (gender, climate, First Nations, voice of lived experience etc) are embedded in process and practice.
• Develop a dashboard of key metrics that help to demonstrate progress against key performance indicators and measures of success.
• Provide overall financial stewardship and budget management (in line with delegations) for the operations of programs and grants.
• Other duties as directed by the CEO.

Key Knowledge, Experience and Style

• Leadership style that fosters a positive solution focused and professional and empowered culture - a ‘can do’ attitude.
• Creative and insightful thinking - Strong ability to conceive, design, test, establish and scale effective and/or innovative programs in the For-Purpose sector.
• Best practice evaluation and social and/or environmental impact reporting skills (underpinned by excellent analytical, research and evaluation knowledge).
• Excellent ability to distil and communicate complex issues to enable knowledge sharing and stakeholder engagement.
• Ability to proactively build and maintain networks and relationships across sectors.
• Highly collaborative in a team-based environment.
• Ability to motivate a team and sustain collaborations to deliver to deadlines and changing priorities.
• A passion for social impact, social justice and with a forward-looking orientation.
• Strong sense of personal and team-based accountability.
• Self-awareness and ability to role model the values and behaviours expected in the Foundation.

Selection Criteria

• Relevant tertiary qualifications related to community development, social impact, and/or project management. Depth of experience / extensive operational or lived experience will also be considered in lieu of formal qualifications.

• Deep understanding of systems change, social innovation and the role of the For-Purpose sector and demonstrated ability to successfully translate complex, big picture ideas into on the ground programs or projects.
• Proven experience in philanthropy, grant making, strategic thinking, systems change, and social innovation.
• Specialist knowledge of social and/or environmental impact reporting
• Admired track record in stakeholder engagement and advocacy to diverse stakeholders (including government).
• Insight into how Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation may enhance the role it plays in more effective philanthropy.
• At least 10 years senior management / executive experience in a leading for-purpose environment and demonstrable success in a team leadership role.
• Strong governance reporting capabilities, robust oversight of risk management and good financial stewardship.
• IT proficiency
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills and credibility and experience in public presentations and organisational representation.

A position description is attached.