Strategic Partnerships Manager

at Down Ballot Climate Partners, LLC

About Us

Down Ballot Climate Partners, LLC (DBCP) is a new political startup focused on the premise that in order to reach our climate goals, we must start electing pro-clean energy build candidates at the local level. We advise donors to invest in local elections with outsized clean energy and environmental justice impacts.

America needs to build a lot of clean energy all over the country. This is the Deployment Decade. We help political donors make smart investments that deliver new clean energy and bring local economic development to rural communities across our country.

Position Summary & Scope of Work

We need help scaling our project for 2023/2024 and beyond. Our team has extensive experience and a successful track record with fundraising but we need help to successfully manage all aspects of our major donor strategy to rapidly scale DBCP. We're looking for a committed strategic partnerships professional who’s eager to raise funds for a pro-climate, pro-clean build political startup and in the process, expand their networks within the political and climate donor space. This role reports to Co-Founder and Senior Advisor, Eric Heitz and will work closely with Co-Founder & CEO, Matt Ewing.

Responsibilities

• Manage and further refine donor engagement strategies and prioritization systems. This includes creating workstreams for Matt and Eric that align with the overall strategy, and ensuring that all efforts are focused on engaging with donors effectively.
• Manage the donor management systems by learning, iterating and improving upon the current systems in place (e.g. Airtable and Asana). This involves keeping donor data up-to-date, tracking donor interactions, and generating reports on donor activity.
• Researching potential prospects. Attend key donor and prospect meetings, take notes, and draft customized follow-up notes to ensure continued engagement.
• Support with drafting segmented donor communications. Refine & update marketing materials such as short memos, slide decks, and splash pages.
• Collaborating with Matt and Eric to refine and evolve the organization's donor strategy, with a focus on reaching existing climate donors and new entrants to climate political giving. This includes identifying new opportunities for engagement and developing strategies to improve donor retention and acquisition.

Qualifications & Evaluation Criteria

• Experience in nonprofit & political fundraising
• Successful track record managing donor (or investor or client) engagement cycles and experience leading a team’s prioritization
• Tech savvy: comfortable managing workflows with online tools & resources that can power our work; always eager to try & learn better ways to manage the fundraising work
• Excellent communications skills, great attention to details, ability to listen actively and build generative relationships
• Results-driven leader who’s motivated about the impact that is possible through these fundraising efforts
• Startup-mindset: ability to work with ambiguity, motivated to learn and get things done, and always find ways to improve current systems.
• A belief that clean energy deployment is critical for a just and sustainable future and that local governments (across the political spectrum) have an important role to play in that transition..

Our Team

DBCP is an early-stage startup with a fully remote and distributed team. This position would be the 5th staff member. Our founding team is comprised of Matt Ewing, Co-Founder & CEO (former Managing Director at Swing Left), Eric Heitz, Co-Founder & Sr Advisor (former CEO at the Energy Foundation), Cliff Walker, Sr Political Advisor (former Deputy ED at the Texas Democratic Party), Samantha Russo, Chief of Staff (former Ops & Programs Manager at Techstars & AWS for Startups), and Katrina Smith, Elections Analyst (former Researcher at the Biden White House), and a group of specialist consultants that work very closely with us. Together, we bring decades of experience in politics, climate philanthropy, and private sector cleantech.

Work Environment & Compensation

This is a flexible opportunity; we envision this starting as a project-focused consulting position, with the option to transition to a permanent full-time job. We would consider starting full time with the right candidate. This is a remote role with an annual salary of $120k to $150k per year, depending on experience. Other compensation for the role includes generous PTO policy (4 weeks minimum) and health, vision & dental insurance. Individual must be eligible to work in the U.S.

We are also open to considering working with a consultant who has other projects, but do envision this requiring a meaningful amount of time.

We encourage all interested folks to apply–even if you don’t meet every qualification criteria. We are an organization that deeply cares and understands the importance of diverse voices, and we strongly encourage applications from individuals in historically marginalized and underrepresented communities.

How to Apply:

If you’re interested, we encourage you to apply by filling out this short application.

Our interview process will look like:

• Application
• Initial screening video interview: 30min
• Accessible at-home exercise: 2-3hrs
• Two additional video interviews: 1hr & 30min
• Reference checks
• Decision notification

We’re looking for someone to start as asap, but this position is open until filled, with an initial plan to make an offer by June 2023. We’ll be looking at applications on a rolling basis with priority review given to earlier applications.

For any questions, feel free to reach out to team@climatepartners.us

Down Ballot Climate Partners, LLC does not discriminate on the basis of class, race, color, sex, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, political ideology, age, creed, religion, ancestry, national origin, or the presence of any sensory, mental or physical disability.