Manager, National Rainbow College Fund

At San Diego Foundation, we value our diverse and experienced staff who are committed to our mission of improving the quality of life within all of San Diego’s communities. We strive to be an employer of choice, offering a competitive compensation package, and a professional and vibrant work environment for those who have a passion for our mission that is carried out every day by providing leadership for effective philanthropy and promoting community solutions.

PURPOSE OF PROGRAM AND POSITION

The San Diego Foundation, a non-profit, public charity founded in 1975 and based in San Diego County, is one of the largest providers of scholarships and grants in southern California. While there are national scholarship funders for minority populations, there is not a dedicated nationwide funder for both out and closeted LGBTQ+ students. The LGBTQ+ community is facing legislation proposed at local and state levels throughout the county to diminish hard-fought-for rights. With constantly rising costs to attend any institution of higher learning, LGBTQ+ youth need dedicated financial resources to be able to transform their life trajectories.

The National Rainbow College Fund is a new scholarship for LGBTQ+ students offered state-wide with the ultimate goal of scaling to a national level. This would be a first-in-the-nation funder of scholarships for LGBTQ+ students who are in undergraduate or professional education programs.

San Diego Foundation is seeking an experienced, mission driven Manager, National Rainbow College Fund to join the Scholarships Team, who will be a vital contributor to the Foundation in creating, implementing and scaling a new scholarship fund for LGBTQ+ students state-wide.  Successfully accomplishing this will include both serving as an expert and state resource for current trends and issues concerning LGBTQ+ youth in higher education as well as building and stewarding relationships with NRCF donors and volunteers to grow the program. This is a hybrid role with weekly onsite requirements at our San Diego Headquarter Office in Liberty Station. 

EXPECTED RESULTS:

1. Create and manage a strategy to build, maintain and scale program.
2. Develop and implement outreach strategies to secure qualified pool of from across California.
3. Identify relationships with donors, corporations, and foundations in support of the scholarship.
4. Manage, assess and develop effective operational systems for the program.
5. Build and implement an online application process that maximizes staff efficiency and increases donor, volunteer and student accessibility and completed submissions.
6. Manage and implement the grant administration process that ensures that recipients receive their awards in a timely manner.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Lead and execute a full-service program for the Rainbow College Fund, including online application development, community outreach, program marketing, budget management, selection design, volunteer management and scholarship administration.
• Represent The San Diego Foundation with volunteers, community stakeholders, and media, in support of program goals that position SDF as a community leader in granting scholarships.
• Monitor program expenditures.
• Establish clear metrics for assessing performance. Conduct midterm and year-end evaluations.
• Become highly proficient with, and maintain current knowledge of the scholarship platform, including effectively testing the application and systems prior to launch. Track system issues and work with vendor to correct.
• Support an efficient and effective selection process for all scholarship funds to include qualifying applications, narrowing high-volume pools, facilitating the online review process, collecting finalist information, and verifying awards.
• Serve as primary manager of the outreach contact database, which includes researching and updating contact information and processing scholarship applications in the database.
• Serve as a liaison between schools and students in disbursing student payments, trouble-shooting all payment issues, and adhering to all foundation/school guidelines.
• Manage correspondence with student applicants, including e-mail blasts to applicants and tracking required paperwork from recipients and addressing potential forfeitures.
• Process scholarship grants in the database while working with the finance department to ensure proper approval of scholarship payments. Become highly proficient with, and maintain current knowledge of, Raiser’s Edge, Financial Edge, and GE, and the capabilities of each.  
• Support SDF’s community leadership efforts by:
• Ensuring complex projects are managed efficiently, supporting communication and coordination.
• Identifying and supporting a