Systems Coordinator

The mission of First Children’s Finance (FCF) is to grow the supply and business sustainability of excellent child care. Founded in 1991, FCF provides business and financial assistance to business owners and leaders in the field of Early Care and Education (ECE). To achieve our goals, FCF works on three levels: Individual Business Level, Community Level and Systems Level. FCF is a national nonprofit organization headquartered in Minneapolis that provides business development programs and/or financing to ECE providers in multiple states, with state offices in four: Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, and Vermont. For more information, see the First Children’s website at: http://www.firstchildrensfinance.org.

Job Summary:

FCF’s National Systems team is seeking a Systems Coordinator to support our growing work with systems leaders, including our rapidly expanding work with states and Tribes. This position is a remote work opportunity with the expectation of travel to meet with clients and partners.

FCF is seeking a highly-skilled systems thinker, a generalist with a passion for learning, acquiring, and developing new skills to address the business side of child care. The Systems Coordinator will assist with the development, implementation, and evaluation of the national programs and services created and provided by FCF. This work includes supporting cities, counties, states, Tribes, and other entities as they seek to address the business side of child care through analyzing policies, practices, funding streams, and trends. The work of this role is also to support the development, implementation, and evaluation of the ECE Business Collaboratory, an initiative of FCF that aligns and improves systems to strengthen the child care business ecosystem. The Systems Coordinator works with the FCF National Systems Team to represent, promote, and ensure the effectiveness of FCF’s national initiatives including coordinating research, supporting outreach, contributing to program design and program implementation, managing technical assistance, facilitating evaluation, and engaging in other areas as needed.

The Systems Coordinator will work with clients throughout the United States and Tribal communities and Native Nations who share the same geography as the United States, requiring some travel and work occasionally on evenings and weekends.

Essential Functions:

• Conduct, coordinate, and promote the ECE Business Collaboratory supporting teams to align and leverage existing resources and assist systems to address each system’s child care business needs, including but not limited to:
  • Conducting research and outreach to better understand the unique aspects of each child care businesses ecosystem, child care markets, and policies which shape those ecosystems and markets.
  • Coordinating in-person and virtual convening logistics for teams and their partners to advance their pre-work, action plan, and implementation ideas which result from their participation in the ECE Business Collaboratory.
  • Conducting data collection and running analysis on child care supply/demand gaps; writing memos, producing materials, and giving presentations for internal and external audiences to disseminate this research.
  • Supporting the partnerships and collaboration with other national, government agencies, and funders which emerge from the ECE Business Collaboratory to ensure that outreach and consultation is relevant, timely, and impactful.
  • Assisting with fund development initiatives, such as grant writing and reporting.
  • Overseeing electronic platforms to ensure a responsive, supportive, and engaging ECE Business Collaboratory experience for all participants.
  • Developing engaging activities and resources to support teams as they seek to create state-level strategic financing plans and supporting the implementation of these plans through technical assistance and consultation.
• Collaborate with the Director of National Initiatives to develop, implement, manage, and evaluate relevant and responsive projects to address the business side of child care for entities such as cities, counties, states, Tribes, advocacy groups, coalitions, and more. This work includes:
  • Supporting the development of new projects and clients through writing proposals, building, and maintaining strong relationships with ECE leaders in both the public and private sectors, industry leaders, and allied organizations.
  • Modeling costs for ECE systems and conducting quantitative analysis of the cost of child care.
  • Conducting analysis on policies, programs, funding streams, and practices to assess the child care business landscape.
  • Providing training, consultative, and technical assistance support to systems-change efforts in the ECE field.
  • Helping develop and manage national communication strategies to build national awareness of FCF National programs and impact regarding strategies and systems that support child care businesses on a systems-level.
  • Overseeing some aspects day-to-day project management including facilitating meetings, scheduling, creating, and implementing project plans, and ensuring deliverables are produced on time.
  • Creating and disseminating promotional materials and opportunities that effectively communicate FCF National’s mission and impact to engage potential and current partners.
• Supervise the work of Child Care Systems Analyst.
• Represent FCF’s reputation as a national leader on the business side of early care and education.
• Support FCF’s relationships with a diversity of stakeholders.
• Accurately enter and manage time reports and client/partner/funder data.
• Assist with grant-writing, proposal-writing, prospect research and project management.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or higher with at least 3 years of experience.
• Performing detailed work under changing deadlines and on multiple concurrent projects.
• Maintaining confidentiality of sensitive business data and information.

Knowledge, Skills and Ability:

• Working knowledge of politics, policies, and funding streams at the local, state, federal, and Tribal level.
• Ability to understand, analyze, and explain both historical and current public policy trends, ideas, and proposals.
• Written communications; including MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
• Research skills, both document review and in-person data collection.
• Strong skills in consulting with government agencies, tribal governments, small businesses, nonprofits and/or schools.
• Abilities to visualize, observe, interpret, think strategically, plan, implement, problem-solve.
• Ability to work collaboratively with diverse staff, customers, partners and stakeholders and to work effectively as part of a team.

Desired Attributes

• Creative and collaborative
• A team player, partner, and networker
• Energetic, enthusiastic, with a can-do attitude
• A systems thinker, able to maintain a big-picture focus while attending to detail
• Open to learning and accepting constructive feedback
• Organized, self-starter, multi-tasker

Work Conditions:

• Must be able to work on the computer for extended periods of time.
• Must be able to travel locally for meetings when needed.

Location:

• Applicants may live anywhere. This is a remote-work position with some required travel to meet with clients when necessary. All employees are expected to report to the FCF National office in Minneapolis, MN for occasional meetings.

Additional Notes:

This job description represents the major functions of the position but is not intended to be all-inclusive. The incumbent is also responsible for taking direction from FCF representatives in completing projects or performing duties deemed necessary for the program and FCF success.

Benefits:

Benefits include medical, dental, vision, life, disability insurance, holidays, paid time off, and paid family medical leave. Allowable travel costs are reimbursed.

Flexible work environment.

First Children’s Finance honors candidates’ time and effort in job-seeking by providing transparency regarding compensation. Creating transparency regarding salary information reduces the gender pay gap, and eliminates salary negotiation, which rarely benefits people of color or women. It is a value of our organization to support equitable hiring practices.

First Children’s Finance is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.

To apply click on the link:  First Children’s Finance – Systems Coordinator Position