Program & Partnership Coordinator

About Our Organization:

At Youth Guidance, we believe that no matter what challenges a young person faces, they are more likely to succeed when they have caring adults in their lives. Our highly-trained staff guides kids to overcome the life and academic challenges facing Chicago’s youth. We meet kids where they are — physically and emotionally — to help them focus on their education, make positive choices, and remain on the right path toward life success.

Founded in 1924, and still relevant today, Youth Guidance is a leading provider of outcomes-driven programs and capacity-building initiatives, directly serving more than 13,000 youth in Kansas City, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Chicago.

Position Summary:  This position oversees planning, development, coordination, implementation, evaluation, and financial management of all summer program activities, staff, and the outcomes sought for BAM & WOW program operations in YG Dallas. The coordinator cultivates new relationships, communities, workforce, post-secondary, and program partnerships. The coordinator supervises and provides administrative leadership by assessing needs, making assignments, and managing programs at multiple sites where the program operates. This position works collaboratively with the Youth Guidance Dallas Executive Director to implement improvements, strengthen the program, and advance strategic priorities.

Essential Duties/Responsibilities:

• Maintains focus on the achievement of key program outcomes including goals for student performance, retention, and satisfaction ensuring all programs are on track for desired metrics
• Assists in the coordination of school-based data collection and program evaluation initiatives.
• Assumes assigned responsibilities that support Dallas and the overall function of the agency including but not limited to activities such as public relations, community advocacy, public speaking, etc.
• Evaluation of program metrics, quality, and implementation fidelity.
• Maintains accurate records and prepares needed narrative and programmatic reports.
• Manages projects from initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closing.
• Develops and share new strategies drawn from performance data with stakeholders.
• Cultivates and manages the external partnership strategy with workforce and postsecondary partners throughout the Dallas metro area, including identifying and securing an internship, job, and other work experience opportunities for BAM/WOW participants.
• Builds internal capacity and develops the process for identifying and connecting scholars to employment, internship, and postsecondary opportunities.
• Leads the project management of all workforce-related and post-secondary opportunities as well as other special projects, as needed.
• Develops, proposes, and implements strategies that build internal staff knowledge on workforce and postsecondary topics and processes for connecting their youth to opportunities.
• Organize and assist at special events including career exploration days and college tours for scholars across multiple sites.
• Identifies and plans summer programming in collaboration with YG Dallas Leadership Team.
• Track services and outcomes of youth and partner engagement activities and complete reports for internal and external stakeholders.
• Leads Youth Guidance’s Summer Scholar Training Academy.

Budgeting and Fundraising

• Collaborates with Finance to plan and manage regional program budget; monitors spending to ensure expenditures are aligned with budget scope and addresses issues that impact program goals.
• In partnership with the Director of Development, develops, negotiates, and manages contracts to meet all terms and deliverables, as needed.
• Supports Executive Director and Director of Development in meeting with potential funders to secure public and private grants as needed.
• Manages grant/contract deliverables for active awards and meets reporting deadlines.

Client/Stakeholder Management

• Serves as a liaison and communicates with school personnel, social service agencies, community groups, government agencies, and public officials regarding program goals and objectives.
• Understands the political landscape and manages relationships between government agencies, public partners, Youth Guidance departments/programs, and outside vendors to ensure clear communication.
• In collaboration with Marketing/Communications, responds to media inquiries and effectively communicates program goals and achievements.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Collaborates with HR to recruit and retain talented program staff
• Recommends hiring of new Youth Specialists, employee transfers (school to school), promotions,
• In partnership with Program Supervisor, this position will support any/all disciplinary actions, terminations, and overall performance management of BAM/WOW Youth Specialists during the Summer Programming.
• Designs and integrates professional development opportunities for program staff, working closely with direct reports and other managers to develop professional development plans.
• Identify and implement strategies to ensure staff reaches program goals and objectives through the interpretation, study of data, use of management plans, and other mechanisms.
• Provides training and technical assistance to program and school staff, as needed.
• Other duties as assigned by Executive Director.

Minimum Qualifications

Education/Experience/Training

• Bachelor’s Degree in public/non-profit administration, business, social work, human services, or a related area from an accredited university program.
• Minimum of five years experience in the education, human service, youth development, criminal justice, or social service field.
• Two years experience supervising staff.
• Experience in program management and administration including experience managing budgets and contracts.

Core Competencies

• Communication: Uses effective written and oral communication with internal staff, teams, and community served; demonstrates empathy and listening.
• Client orientation: Recognizes needs of diverse stakeholders and approaches relationships with a service orientation, to ultimately maximize impact.
• Equity mindset: Understands and is committed to goals of equity; consistently brings an equity mindset to the organization’s work and workplace.
• Growth mindset: Views growth as important for personal and professional development; seeks out opportunities to expand skills, even if a change is required; demonstrates curiosity and eagerness to learn.
• Ownership and quality of work: Effectively manages own work, and work of teams when relevant, ensuring delivery of high-quality work.
• Supervisory skills: Effectively manages and develops others.

Skills/Abilities

• Strong analytical skills and demonstration of strong interpersonal skills that excel in cultural sensitivity, respect for differences, and effectively motivate others.
• Flexible and adaptable; open to change, learning, and improvement. Willing and prepared to handle difficult situations and unforeseen tasks timely.
• Ability to develop and maintain positive/effective working relationships with internal and external stakeholders including but not limited to YG Dallas programs.
• Proficient in the use of Microsoft Office Products (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint)

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 to stand for sustained periods of time, frequently talk, hear, use hands and fingers to feel, handle and operate objects or controls, and occasionally stand, bend, stoop, kneel and crouch
• The employee is to have close visual acuity to perform an activity such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures, transcribing, and viewing a computer terminal.
• The employee may occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform essential functions.

• The duties performed are primarily in an office setting and working with the public, so COVID-19 vaccination is required.
• May work occasional evenings, and weekends for community events and local travel as needed.

What Youth Guidance offers:

We offer a robust package for eligible candidates including:

• Hiring Range of $55,000.00 - $65,000.00
• A hiring bonus of $250 for part-time and $750 for full-time
• A retention bonus of $250 after 90 days of continuous service.
• A competitive benefit package. Even though healthcare costs have gone up, we have not passed along those increases to our staff.
• If you are pursuing your social services licensure, we can help you by providing licensure test study support. Licensing test reimbursement. Assistance in attaining licensure supervision hours.

DEI Statement

At Youth Guidance, we understand that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) are fundamental to realizing our vision of bright and successful futures for all young people. We celebrate the diversity of youth and recognize them as empowered leaders, problem-solvers, and experts of their own experiences. At the same time, we acknowledge that many systems and institutions meant to support youth are inequitable and unjust.

As such, we are committed to advancing DE&I through our words and our actions, both internally and externally, by:

• Strengthening cultural competence as well as policies, practices, and organizational structures that foster belonging and leverage the unique backgrounds and talents of staff.
• Offering youth-centered programs that are accessible and responsive to people from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, abilities, sexual identity, gender identity, expression, language, and cultural and religious beliefs and practices.
• Influencing systems that youth, their families, and communities are impacted by, such as schools, organizational networks, governmental bodies, researchers, and the funding community, to apply approaches that embrace DEI in addressing the needs and supporting the aspirations of young people.