Senior Director, Program Operations

ABOUT U.S. ENERGY FOUNDATION

U.S. Energy Foundation’s (EF) mission is to secure a clean and equitable energy future to tackle the climate crisis. We envision a healthy, safe, equitable economy powered by clean energy. We believe a thriving clean energy economy can create sustainable opportunities, spur innovation, and protect our climate—for today and future generations.

 

EF supports education and analysis to promote nonpartisan policy solutions that advance renewable energy and energy efficiency, while opening doors to greater innovation and productivity—growing the economy with dramatically less pollution. For more than 30 years, EF has supported grantees to help educate policymakers and the general public about the benefits of a clean energy economy. Our grantees include business, health, environmental, labor, equity, community, faith, and consumer groups, as well as policy experts, think tanks, universities, and more.

 

We are working daily to create equitable systems that support people to flourish. We aim to bring humility, transparency, respect, and an appreciation for others’ lived experiences to our interactions with colleagues, grantees, and partners.

 

EF’s Fundraising Philosophy

As EF’s primary clients and partners are our funders and grantees, EF commits to acting as a strategic thought leader for our current and prospective funding partners and the field by:

 

1. Collaborating—and co-creating, where feasible and desired—on strategy development, including hosting and/or managing funder collaboratives
2. Highlighting the opportunity for climate philanthropy to maximize benefits to disadvantaged communities and those most impacted by climate change
3. Offering excellent, responsive service by providing proactive, compelling, and timely updates and information

 

EF is headquartered in San Francisco, CA, and our more than 100 staff members are based in locations throughout the Midwest, Northeast, Southeast, and Western regions, where they can best serve our programs, partners, operations, and other functions.

 

EF believes that a diverse workforce makes us a more effective organization and is essential for achieving a clean and equitable energy future. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply.    

 

POSITION SUMMARY

At a time when the country is facing ever-increasing urgency to tackle the climate crisis, EF is operating on the frontlines of this fight. As the organization has scaled to meet the challenge of transitioning to a clean energy economy, the need for effective program operations has emerged as a top priority. EF is seeking a Senior Director, Program Operations (SD)—an experienced operations leader and strong people manager who will play a key leadership role in managing a complex budget and in building internal relationships and systems that foster clarity and inspire confidence in a highly matrixed organization with evolving needs. The SD serves as a leader within EF’s Program team, which, in addition to the Program Operations team, comprises the National Policy team, focused on developing and implementing national strategy; the States and Regions team, which deploys place-based campaigns at the local, state, and regional levels; and the Strategic Communications team. 

 

Using strong organizational, analytical, and communication skills, the SD supports work across the Program team. Reporting to the Senior Vice President, Programs, the SD’s primary responsibilities include overseeing the programmatic grantmaking budget; ensuring systems are in place to establish accuracy and transparency; managing the three-person Program Operations team; ensuring clear lines of communication and streamlined efforts across all areas of program operations; serving as the main liaison with other departments (e.g., Finance, People and Culture, IT, Grants Management, Strategic Partnerships); spearheading projects to improve our grantmaking and increase efficiency in our operations; developing and fine-tuning systems and processes to improve internal collaboration and alignment; and troubleshooting problems in inter-departmental alignment or budgeting. 

 

This is a rare opportunity for someone who is highly organized and thrives in complex environments that allow high-level thought partnership and execution across multiple and varied workstreams—all while working to solve the most profound challenge of our time. 

 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

 

Budget Management. The SD manages the organization’s approximately $200 million programmatic grantmaking budget, including managing allocations across EF’s programs, tracking incoming revenue, and ensuring the organization’s overall fiscal health. This includes the ability to communicate the Program team’s budget and fiscal health to staff and to the Board of Directors, as well as a transition to budget management in Salesforce. The SD leads the annual budget development process, ensuring effective allocation, reconciliation, and implementation of budgets.

 

Impact Tracking and Communications. The SD tracks progress against our institutional and programmatic strategies via our key performance indicators (KPI), which are reported to our funders, staff, and Board of Directors. This includes working with staff and consultants to oversee the development of data collection systems and ways to communicate our progress, as well as oversight of the organization’s Program Dashboard, which provides regular impact updates to our donors.

 

Development Support and Reporting. The SD supports our Strategic Partnerships team by ensuring the Program team accomplishes their components of grant reports and grant deliverables. This includes supporting a Senior Manager in developing and managing content for reporting tools and EF’s Program Dashboard, as well as frequently fielding and responding directly to funder inquiries, including providing Salesforce data about our grantmaking. The SD manages the organizational calendar to communicate and maintain clear deadlines with the Strategic Partnerships team and other relevant colleagues to meet and communicate our deliverables. 

 

Annual Strategic Planning and Meeting Planning. The SD manages EF’s annual planning processes, including overseeing consulting resources and staff time to develop clear systems to track organizational priorities, deadlines, and new opportunities that emerge throughout the year, as well as packaging and communicating this information to EF’s Board of Directors and key internal audiences. The SD also designs and facilitates monthly Program team meetings; a bi-annual, in-person team conference; and other cross-team leadership meetings, as necessary.

 

Cross-Team Collaboration. The SD serves as the lead point of contact between the Program team and other EF operations departments—Finance, Grants, IT, People and Culture, and Strategic Partnerships—ensuring that priorities, decisions, and timelines are clearly communicated and understood. This role translates complex information across technical, operational, and strategic audiences to promote clarity and shared understanding, while anticipating communication gaps and proactively developing processes that strengthen collaboration and accountability across teams. Specifically, the SD supports the Senior Vice President, Programs in managing the daily activities of the Program team and key consultants, a team of approximately 100 people. This includes integrating EF processes, systems, and strategies to streamline this workload and champion best practices. The SD develops and manages a centralized approach to meetings, strategy, and budget development that supports this integration. The SD coordinates with the Strategic Partnerships team to collect information and track progress for strategy evaluation and funder reporting, and with the Grants Management team to develop, manage, and update effective grantmaking processes and tracking, program policies, impact metrics, and best practices to ensure consistency. The SD provides Program team feedback on the grants management system and contributes to decisions about systems updates.

 

Team Management: Supervise a team of three full-time employees and consultants, when needed, to oversee all aspects of Program Operations, supporting team members’ career growth and professional development. Serve as an organizational leader who embodies values of transparency, equity, accountability, and transformational impact. 

 

Special Projects. EF is a dynamic and evolving organization. The SD leads various special projects, though support from consultants and colleagues is regularly available. This role manages delegation of these opportunities, as appropriate. 

 

Organizational Culture and Inclusion. The SD partners with EF’s Programs and Equity team to advance EF’s mission, vision, and values through program strategy, particularly in managing the integration of inclusion into the annual planning process and developing, tracking, and reporting inclusionary metrics.

 

QUALIFICATIONS

The Senior Director, Program Operations brings expertise in operations, with an aptitude for streamlining and improving business processes and systems. The successful candidate is a detail-oriented doer who is skilled at leading a team to deliver on organizational priorities. With an ability and desire to move between strategy and implementation, the ideal candidate will be a seasoned leader who understands how to build effective internal partnerships, foster clarity and transparency cross-functionally, and consistently drive toward greater efficiency. A successful candidate also will bring the humility and emotional intelligence to form trusting relationships that allow for the co-creation of impactful and equitable processes that support organizational strategy and programming.

 

While climate experience is not required, candidates must display a genuine passion for, and belief in, the mission and values of the organization. Those who understand the balance between operational efficiency, mission, and impact are strongly preferred. Experience in similarly sized organizations and with budgets akin to that of EF’s is also highly desirable. 

• Budget and Resource Management. As the primary budget lead for the Program team, the SD will bring significant experience managing complex budgets and designing systems to help budget managers steward resources accurately, thoughtfully, and effectively, including experience with budget forecasting and revenue management. This person will understand how to convey financial information in a manner that goes beyond the numbers and allows the organization to see how the data translates into mission, strategy, and impact. Candidates must be fluent in budget planning tools and relevant technologies and programs; experience with Salesforce is highly preferred. 
• People and Relationship Management. The SD must be a solutions-focused and collaborative leader with proven diplomatic and problem-solving skills in a multi-stakeholder environment. A demonstrated ability to work on cross-cultural teams, including the skills to build collaborative relationships, lead and operate in a team environment, and work cross-functionally to support the development of shared solutions and best practices is essential. Furthermore, candidates should bring a depth of experience supervising and developing talent internally, leading a team to execute on organizational priorities. The SD will need to be self-directed, with sound professional judgment, and have the capacity to work effectively in remote and in-person settings with minimal supervision.
• Process and Project Management. The SD will bring a depth of experience managing multiple complex projects simultaneously to completion in a matrixed organization. This includes identifying and implementing opportunities for increased efficiency and collaboration within and across teams. Leveraging the expertise of those around them and driving toward clarity around roles and responsibilities is key. The SD will understand how to translate the goals and strategies of an organization into actionable plans, which they will then operationalize, in partnership with others. Deep project management experience that entails holding the overall goals of a project, while directing and executing specific tasks and ensuring stakeholders are appropriately engaged along the way, will be integral to success. This includes a demonstrated commitment to contributing meaningfully to a workplace where equity and inclusion are core values in our work.
• Technical Skills. The SD will have the following skills:
  • Advanced skills in Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, preferably in a Mac environment.
  • Fluency in budget management tools to manage complex budgets. 
  • Experience creating documents and managing workflows in collaborative platforms (e.g., Google Drive, Asana, Box). 
  • Experience using cloud-based relational database systems, such as Salesforce.

 

 

SUPERVISION

 

Reports to the Senior Vice President, Programs.

 

COMPENSATION

 

This is a full-time position. The target salary for this position is $243,000 for a candidate based in the metro areas of San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Boston, or Sacramento, and $220,500 for candidates in other areas of the U.S. EF provides a comprehensive benefits package, including competitive salary, medical, dental, vision, disability, and retirement benefits, as well as paid time off.

 

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

 

Ability to travel four to six times a year for two to four business days at a time.

 

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

 

The physical demands described here 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 required to spend extended hours at the computer. This position requires moderate levels of domestic travel.

 

WORK ENVIRONMENT

 

EF is a remote-first work environment. This position may be based in any EF office or may work remotely from anywhere in the U.S.

 

The office environments include some shared workspace, some individual offices, and shared kitchen facilities, with moderate noise levels and a collegial atmosphere. On occasion, there are activities or events after work hours.