Children's Funding Coordinator

About the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet

We are seeking a Children’s Funding Coordinator to join our small team leading the charge to increase social-economic mobility in Poughkeepsie. Children’s Cabinets are a collective impact model that reimagines youth development systems through cross-sector collaboration that centers youth and families’ needs across education, economic, health, the built environment, and broader community context. 

The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet was formed in 2020 to address longstanding issues of educational disparities and intergenerational poverty that impact the lives of children, youth, and families in Poughkeepsie.  The City of Poughkeepsie Mayor and the Superintendent of the Poughkeepsie City School District co-chair the Cabinet Leadership Council, leading a first-of-its-kind partnership and social compact between the city government, public school system and key public and private anchor institutions.

In Spring 2024 the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet launched its Cradle to Career Continuum, fully activating Phase I of our 10-year Strategic Plan. We are guided by our Northstar, that by 2033 over 5,000 City of Poughkeepsie young people and their families will be connected annually to transformative cradle-to-career opportunities that place them on pathways to postsecondary completion and socioeconomic mobility. In order to achieve this goal, the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet is working across institutions to understand federal, state and local funding streams and how they can be most effectively leveraged for youth outcomes. We have been working closely with the Children’s Funding Project and created a 2019 Fiscal Map of all resources committed to youth programs in Poughkeepsie and are currently finalizing a cost model for out-of-school time programs.

About the Position:

The Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet is seeking a relationship-oriented, dynamic, self-starter to join our team as a full time Children’s Funding Coordinator to advance sustainable and equitable funding for children and youth. In this role, you will coordinate and align people, data, and money around common goals for children and youth in Poughkeepsie, leverage research, relationship management, and project management skills. This role has an explicit focus on advancing sustainable and equitable funding for children and youth, and will be responsible for helping the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet and community partners answer the following three questions: (1) How much are we (as a community) investing in our priorities for children and youth? (2) What is the true cost of investing in our priorities for children and youth? and (3) How can we fill the gap between current investment and the true cost?

Responsibilities:

• Maintain efficient communication between the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet and local government, school districts, community partners and advocacy organizations, particularly in supporting the Poughkeepsie Promise City Initiative. 
• Guided by the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet established strategic plan, facilitate meetings and decision-making with community partners and local budget holders to make progress towards their strategic public finance goals
• Build and maintain relationships with national, state, and local partners to stay up-to-date on strategic public finance best practices and lessons learned from across the country
• Position the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet as a leader in strategic public finance for children and youth by joining a growing national network of strategic public finance experts who are building local capacity and expertise within their states and communities
• Lead the completion and maintenance of a fiscal map, which will track, map, and analyze public and private funding in children and youth programs and services in Poughkeepsie
• Estimate true costs of designing and implementing child and youth programming, while learning methods such as cost modeling and/or cost estimation
• Identify new and emerging funding sources in collaboration with local and national experts to help fill the gap between current investments in children and youth and the actual cost of achieving state/community goals
• Develop and execute the Poughkeepsie Children’s Cabinet’s capacity-building plan for growing local expertise in strategic finance planning

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in nonprofit management, education, public administration or related and 3-5 years experience in youth & family focused direct-service work or public polic;y
• OR associates degree plus a minimum of 7 years experience in youth & family focused direct-service work or public policy;

Candidates with direct-service experience are strongly encouraged to apply (e.g. teaching, social work, college & career counseling, youth mentoring, childcare, after-school and summer programming, parent & youth advocacy & organizing)

•  Demonstrated experience collecting, tracking, and organizing information using Microsoft Word, Excel, or other software programs with attention to quality and detail in ensuring accuracy of information (e.g. childcare provider collecting and ensuring accuracy and communication of student allergies; after-school program provider using Excel to collect, track, and organize student pick-up information)
• Demonstrated experience analyzing and using data to inform priorities and decision-making (e.g. teacher using student data to make instructional decisions in order to drive student learning goals; summer programming provider using family survey data to inform future program offerings)
• Demonstrated experience effectively coordinating cross-sector collaboration (e.g. social worker overseeing caseloads of families and coordinating relevant services; youth mentor collaborating with teachers, parents, and mentees on building a plan for supporting development and growth)
• Demonstrated experience managing projects to completion (e.g. counselor supporting students in setting and achieving their college/career goals over their academic career; parent organizer supporting parent advocates in the successful launch of a PTA at their community’s school)
• Demonstrates balance of the urgency of our mission and results-orientation with compassion and grace to colleagues and partners.
• Demonstrated comfort working in communities with high concentrations of poverty and success in elevating and highlighting community joy, strengths, and assets. 
• Strong intercultural communication skills, verbal, non-verbal and written, with a demonstrated ability to communicate complex information in a clear and concise manner to multiple audiences.

Experience with or desire to learn:

• Excel, Power BI, Tableau
• Cleaning and summarizing data
• Tagging, coding, organizing, and visualizing data
• Survey design and other techniques for gathering stakeholder input
• Researching budgetary documents and related policy resources
• Group Facilitation Skills 

Additional, preferred qualifications: 

• Bilingual in spoken and written English and Spanish; 
• Experience working with the collective impact model;