Manager, Philanthropic Insights & Enablement

About Us

Climate Lead empowers philanthropic leaders everywhere to take immediate and far-reaching climate action. Climate Lead equips new climate philanthropists with the information and insights they need to drive transformative solutions by serving as an impartial guide. We cut through the complexity by curating roadmaps in partnership with a diverse network of experts to help philanthropists make a bold impact on climate from day one. 

 

Summary

This dual-impact role is essential for advancing the Philanthropy Team’s strategic goals and enabling excellence for our advising practice as Climate Lead scales. Reporting to the Vice President, Philanthropic Advising, the Manager, Philanthropic Insights & Enablement serves as a strategic partner, dividing time between two critical functions: enablement & advising excellence for the Philanthropy Team and strategic support for the donor portfolio managed by the VP, Philanthropic Advising.

This role will significantly unlock the capacity of the team of advising relationship managers, including the VP, enabling excellence in high-level strategic engagement for philanthropists. The incumbent will create, design, and track best practices and successful philanthropic strategies (identifying "what works"), leading the development of advising workflows, knowledge-sharing practices and tools, and ensuring relationship managers are equipped with the resources necessary to focus deeply on donor-facing work. 

This position is key to translating vision and ideas into effective tools to support and enable advisors toward curation of individualized strategies for the unique needs of philanthropists.

Additionally, this role will support the VP, Philanthropic Advising, ensuring comprehensive readiness for internal and external donor engagements. This includes managing meeting flow, preparing in-depth donor dossiers, drafting high-stakes correspondence, and meticulously tracking progress across the VP’s portfolio of key prospects and ambassadors. 

 

Managerial Responsibilities

This role does not have any managerial responsibilities. 

 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Enablement & Insights: Playbooks, Best Practices, Systems & Strategy(60%)

• Own and maintain what works by capturing successful strategies for moving donors forward on the donor journey. 
• Synthesize knowledge from internal successes, donor journeys, and cross-team insights to enable curated work individualized to each donor.  Improve team workflows, templates, and tools to support relationship managers across donor-facing work. 
• Create and manage the team’s knowledge hub by curating, organizing, and championing tools, resources, and best practices, and ensuring project managers and relationship managers know what is available and how to use it effectively.
• Own, maintain, and evolve the team’s full toolkit. Updating what works, and proactively identifying gaps to drive innovation as needs shift.
• Continuously experiment, test, and recommend innovative methods for donor engagement advising, working in close partnership with relationship managers and project managers to introduce forward-looking ideas.
• Collaborate with relationship managers to identify where project management, systems, and knowledge tools can reduce friction and increase focus on donor engagement.
• Support cross-functional collaboration by both sharing and seeking content from the Global Climate Strategies and Communications teams.  
• Lead the dissemination of internal learning tools and act as an advocate, supporting fluency across the Philanthropy Team.
• Support onboarding and training efforts by equipping relationship managers with guides, templates, and curated learning resources. 

 

Donor Deliverables & Strategic Donor Support for VP, Philanthropic Advising 40% 

• Serve as a strategic partner to the VP by anticipating needs, identifying potential roadblocks, and implementing effective, timely solutions.
• Drive the workflow for the VP's donor portfolio. Responsibilities include preparing comprehensive donor dossiers and pre-meeting briefs, drafting critical donor communications and materials, and ensuring meticulous tracking and progress on key prospects. 
• Draft and oversee the creation of high-impact, customized content for key donors and Ambassadors within the VP’s portfolio, collaborating with internal content experts and the Communications team as necessary. 
• Develop and finalize high-quality presentations, reports, and external or internal materials to support the VP’s presentations and key donor and potential donor communications. 
• Proactively manage internal and external meeting logistics and preparation for the VP, Philanthropic Advising. This includes scheduling and compiling essential briefing materials.

 

Success Criteria 

• Advising Excellence: Improves tools, systems and processes that directly enable relationship managers, and increases effectiveness for the project manager partners. 
• Playbook Leadership: Develops, owns, and continuously evolves the strategy playbook; actively integrates team insights and aligns tools with practice.
• Collaboration and Advocacy: Partners with the team by proactively identifying (and championing the adoption of) the highest-leverage tools and processes to bring structure and clarity to complex workflows as well as scale team impact. 
• Learning Culture: Champions a constructive, team-based culture of learning and knowledge-sharing; ensures climate and donor content are integrated into team growth. 
• Execution & Follow-Through: Manages projects and priorities with precision; consistently meets deadlines to help drive results.

 

Required Experience

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• 5+ years of experience in project management, nonprofit strategy, operations, or knowledge management, ideally in a philanthropic or mission-driven setting. 
• Demonstrated ability to streamline processes, create tools and systems, and improve shared use of same.
• Experience driving knowledge transfer and operational standardization by developing and maintaining robust resources, best practice guides, and scalable training programs tailored for team members.
• Skilled with project management and collaboration tools (e.g., Asana, Google Workspace). 
• Familiarity with Salesforce (or similar CRM) is a strong plus. 
• Interest in climate action and belief in the power of philanthropy to drive systemic change. 
• Demonstrated ability to foster a positive, team-oriented, and learning-focused environment through constructive, courageous communication and the ability to navigate healthy conflict.
• Mastery of persuasive communication, crafting tailored, high-impact documentation and proposals that effectively engage and inform varied audiences, from technical teams to executive stakeholders.

Salary range: $143,000-$159,000

 

Work Environment

Climate Lead is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. This position operates in a hybrid environment and is based in our San Francisco, CA, office. Staff in the San Francisco Bay Area currently work in the office Tuesday through Thursday each week and typically work from home the other days. 

 

At Climate Lead, we value diversity and always treat all employees and job applicants based on merit, qualifications, competence, and talent. We do not discriminate on the basis of or traits historically associated with race, color, religion, religious creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, sexual orientation, veteran and/or military status), domestic violence victim status, political affiliation, and any other status protected by state or federal law.