National Program Manager, Strategic Recruitment & Partnerships

Advance is seeking a National Program Manager, Strategic Recruitment and Partnerships to join our Native Leadership Institute (NLI) program team. Created by and for Indigenous peoples, NLI is focused on building pathways to leadership at all levels of government and political organizing through our intensive, 5-day leadership training program, campaign staff training program, and supplemental training.

This role will lead the strategic partnership strategy to identify and build a recruitment pipeline for NLI programs, lead interview and selection for NLI training programs, and lead the development of a robust community partnerships program to identify rising Native leaders and push them down the pathway to office. The National Program Manager, Strategic Recruitment and Partnerships works in close partnership with the National Training Manager, who is responsible for event planning, vendor management, and event production of NLI programs, and reports directly to the National Program Director.

To be successful in this role you should have the following experience:

• 3+ years of related experience, preference given to background in civic engagement, political campaigns, organizing and advocacy organizations, or working with elected leaders;
• Strong relational orientation: the success of our work depends on the strength of connection to partners, alumni, staff, and elected leaders;
• Demonstrated experience in conflict resolution, navigating and framing difficult conversations with care, and tactful disagreement;
• Strong project management skills, with the ability and willingness to be flexible and adaptable;
• Systems-minded, strong organizational skills, and the ability to proactively manage the logistics and communications of multiple complex projects at once;
• Ability to develop and cultivate relationships with a variety of stakeholders in a thoughtful, professional, detail-oriented manner;
• Experience in, exposure to, or education related to working within Indigenous cultures;
• Comfort working in highly collaborative teams, managing laterally, up, and working across departments;
• Desire to work collaboratively and transparently with a distributed virtual team;
• Experience and comfort collaborating via Google Workspace.

We hope you bring one or more of these skills:

• Experience in campaigns, advocacy, and/or elections;
• Outreach, recruitment, and/or training program management experience;
• Experience managing high-volume application pipelines;
• Experience with any or all of the following tools: SalesForce, Voter File, EveryAction/NGPVan
• Experience working in a virtual environment and/or in a distributed team operating across multiple time zones is strongly preferred.

STRATEGIC RECRUITMENT (45%)

• Design and implement a community partnership strategy to build the base of community leaders, activists, and Native-led 501(c)3, 501(c)4 local and state organizations who are referring rising Native leaders and advocates to NLI training programs;
• In coordination with the National Training Manager, advise statewide Native-led partner organizations who host NLI programs on recruitment opportunities, build state recruitment tables, and support the development of outreach materials needed for their work;
• Build a database of referral organizations and recruitment partners in focus states, implement a partnership newsletter to keep them up to date with programming, and develop a system to regularly share updates, solicit applications, and build long-term relationships;
• Maintain database of existing and ongoing application flow of NLI applicants, including: application, stage of admission, interviewer, admission decisions, tagging and long-term recordkeeping, and reporting on a weekly basis on progress towards recruitment goals;
• Propose, track, and analyze recruitment experiments in close coordination with the leadership team;
• In partnership with the communications team, identify and propose additional recruitment opportunities, messaging, outreach materials, and experiments;
• Serve as an ambassador for the organization: lead online webinars and livestreams, manage conference strategy, attend and serve on conference panels where necessary, represent the organization to community groups and local organizations.

PARTICIPANT SELECTION (40%)

• Lead and iterate on the admissions process from application to admission decision for NLI training programs, including:
• review applications (300+ per year),
• lead interviews with applicants (100+ per year),
• bring in partners and other staff where necessary to support,
• conduct vetting on applicants,
• make initial admission recommendations,
• lead weekly decision committee,
• and submit decision letters
  
• Analyze and report on the admissions process regularly to the Advance team, partners, advisors, and community.

DUTIES AS ASSIGNED (15%)

$95,000-$105,000 annually