Business Relations Associate

DonorsChoose makes it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. Projects range from art supplies to build the set for a school musical, to books and puzzles that affirm students’ identities, to bird seed for an at-home science project. We proudly serve all US public schools, public charter schools, and Head Start centers, and we combat systemic inequity by driving a majority of donations to schools that have been historically underfunded due to economic and racial inequity.

DonorsChoose has been recognized as a best place to work by GOOD Magazine and the Nonprofit Times, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Our dedicated team works from across the United States bring classroom dreams to life.

Team Overview

The Finance, IT & Procurement team builds relationships and systems to protect the financial integrity of our organization, and ensure the right resource or experience is delivered to teachers without delay. You'll help deliver on the core mission of our organization by leveraging best-in-class fulfillment and customer service practices to ensure that materials get to the right place at the right time. 

Within the Procurement Team, the Business Relations functional area manages relationships with our 20+ technically-integrated vendors; advocates for teacher-focused improvements; and identifies opportunities for improved vendor performance. Our Business Relations colleagues are excellent problem solvers and are at the forefront of collaborating with our Vendor Community to help delight teachers and students with classroom materials.

Primary Responsibilities

The Business Relations Associate role provides critical relationship building support for our team’s responsibility of getting funded materials into classrooms. Our team establishes and builds relationships with vendors to help them fully understand our model and connect to our organization’s mission. We want vendor teams to appreciate the power of each classroom story behind seemingly generic purchase orders, so they can better understand, advocate and champion DonorsChoose priorities within their company. 

We leverage item-level data to give real-time feedback to our 20+ vendors to help streamline processes and gain efficiencies in their performance. We work closely with vendor teams to identify and address resource availability issues and support inventory forecasting.  We share best practices and offer ongoing support to ensure vendor teams have the tools they need to adhere to our unique policies. 

We are looking for friendly, confident teammates to provide exceptional assistance to our vendor roster to support the growing community of public school teachers using our website.  If you are motivated by our mission and get a thrill from helping people, we want to hear from you! 

In this role you will...

• Support and engage our Vendor Community with DonorsChoose requirements and processes
• Provide frontline, holistic account support to vendor teams by answering questions on everything from vendor requirements to escalated customer service issues, and acting as an information liaison between vendors and DonorsChoose teams
• Support processes that enable our small but mighty team to collaborate and communicate with 20+ vendors including fielding new vendor inquiry requests, crafting surveys and monitoring responses, and executing scaled email sends
• Identify, resolve, and escalate sensitive or urgent vendor-related issues as needed to support our Procurement and Customer Support teams
• Draft effective vendor communication, including vendor newsletters, surveys and curated content for our vendor hub
• Prepare for and lead individual ven