Position: Managing Director of External Affairs, OneGoal Bay Area
Position Type: Internal-External
FLSA Classification: Exempt
Reports to: Symone Morales – Executive Director, California
Start date: August 2026
Location: Bay Area, California | Please Note: this role is part of the OneGoal team in California and the person in this position will be required to work in-person 1 – 3 times per week on average, must be located within one of the nine Bay counties by the start date, and have the ability to be in-person as needed (in office and at stakeholder engagements).
Application Deadline: June 15, 2026 – Priority Deadline
Salary Range: $144,381 – $159,668 is the hiring salary range for this position (i.e. the range a candidate would be offered to start).
About OneGoal
OneGoal transforms postsecondary advising and support so that every student can define their own future. Together with our partners, we’re building a movement to close the opportunity gap. We work side-by-side with partner schools and districts to build their knowledge and capacity. The result is more effective support for all students. Our unique approach, honed over 15 years, prioritizes strong human relationships. And it’s proven to deliver real student impact: An independent study by the University of Chicago found that OneGoal students are about 40% more likely to earn their postsecondary degrees than students from similar backgrounds. At OneGoal you’ll be immersed in a culture of collaboration, shared purpose, and collective impact.
The Person
As Head of Development, you, alongside the Executive Director, will be responsible for setting the vision and strategy for the Bay Area development team in order to ensure financial sustainability for the region as well as promoting our thought leadership and brand in the market. You’re chiefly responsible for ensuring strong execution of our development strategy, engaging the internal-facing development team and external-facing constituents (board, donor base, potential prospects) to meet and exceed our annual Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) while contributing to a strong internal culture that fosters a high level of understanding and investment in development and outreach work. You will maintain and build upon an increasingly diverse portfolio of foundation, corporate and individual givers that allows OneGoal to meet its ambitious growth goals and impact evermore students across the state of California.
You will do this by:
Setting Strategic Vision and Direction (30%)
- Designing equitable and innovative strategies to influence and motivate new and existing external constituents to invest in our work, at $2M (philanthropic) in this fiscal year and growing steadily over the next few years while effectively tracking progress-to-goal
- Building goals, strategies, and campaigns across foundation, corporate, individual and public funding streams
- Supporting the Executive Director to influence and motivate new and existing external constituents to invest in our work
- Using Bay Area/California landscape data (donor market, postsecondary landscape, education landscape, economic, philanthropic market) to inform vision and direction to meet all development KPIs.
Donor Engagement and Brand Awareness (30%)
- Developing and executing a strong plan to engage prospects and donors, while amplifying the Bay Area/California region’s brand through external events, media, and networking
- Leading development team to excel in the execution of annual external communication plan and regional marketing efforts
- Serving as an ambassador for OneGoal, when needed, in major gift prospect/donor meetings, conferences, or other public-speaking engagements
- Creating the conditions for the development team to partner effectively with other CA regional functions to engage all external stakeholders through in-person, virtual, or written formats, in alignment with priorities for FY27
Portfolio Management and Execution (20%)
- Managing a portfolio of donors by reviewing and analyzing progress to goal, making strategic decisions to inform actions and campaigns, and executing on cultivation plans to drive toward revenue growth
- Collaborating with the Executive Director to set board vision, and engagement strategies and manage communication including monthly board updates and all board meeting materials
- Building and retaining investor pipeline by managing team effectively in the sourcing, prospecting and engagement of donors for FY27 and beyond
- Serving as a key role model for others in your reporting line on best practice actions for portfolio managers, including strong use of Salesforce data and other analytics, expert external communications including tee-ups, meeting preparation documents, impact reports, grant writing and reporting, and strong pitch language and materials
Regional Leadership Team, Functional Team Lead, OneGoal People Manager and Member of OneGoal Community: (20%)
- Effectively builds strong relationships with Bay Area team members and models for all staff what it means to be a culture leader and embody our core values
- Serving with the Executive Director and Deputy Director as a member of the Bay Area Leadership Team (BLT) to inform regional vision, priorities, and expectations for future fiscal years
- Models practices of strong management, achieving results through supportive accountability, and building the capabilities of direct report/ development team members
- Collaborate with BLT and org-wide to identify interdependencies and ensure strong execution of cross-team efforts
The Managing Director of External Affairs is likely to see himself/herself/themselves in the following examples as they are designed to help you determine if this opportunity aligns with your own passion, purpose, skills, and experiences.
You are a strategist, synthesizer and highly organized.
- You like to explore and build innovative approaches and have designed new ways of doing things. You make connections, determine fits, and build plans that are responsive to interlocking and evolving challenges and opportunities.
- Contingency planning and problem-solving excite you, and working to streamline and improve systems gives you energy.
- You enjoy zooming out to see the big picture to craft a data informed strategy and enjoy zooming in to execute, bringing that strategy to life.
- You have systems to keep yourself and others organized and on track to meet deadlines and benchmarks.
You are a leader and collaborator.
- You connect your success to the success of those you work with, and believe in both shared responsibility and mutual accountability.
- You believe that clear expectations and regular, honest feedback are the cornerstones of growth.
- As a manager, you believe in the inherent potential and capacity of people. You seek to empower your team to become leaders and agents of change, to grow and thrive and ultimately to share in building OneGoal New York.
- You are a strong coach and can work with direct reports to build upon their strengths and grow their skills and competencies.
You are a compelling and effective communicator.
- You have tremendous ability to adapt messages to different audiences in order to inspire stakeholders.
- You discern the appropriate mode of communication, depending on the situation and audience, to build champions and convert skeptics.
- You serve as an ambassador for OneGoal California.
You are a coalition builder.
- You cultivate relationships with the understanding that our students are best served when we collaborate to meet all of their needs.
- You are both humble and optimistic about the role OneGoal can play within a partner school, with a commitment to serving more students, better.
- You are driven both by data and experience, recognizing that decision-making and strategy require evidence as well as a drive to dream big.
You value working collaboratively and innovatively.
- You constantly strive to learn from and share learnings with your teammates, no matter your current knowledge or experience.
- You know when and how to engage other key stakeholders that have the insight and positional authority to help you and others overcome obstacles and seize viable beneficial opportunities in a timely way.
- You do not operate as a blind executor of pre-existing practices; instead, you thoughtfully evaluate the OneGoal program and identify ways to elevate our program’s effectiveness.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s Degree (Required)
- 3-5 years development experience (Required)
- Previous management experience (Required)
- Demonstrated experience managing fundraising targets of $2M and above (Highly Preferred)
- Understanding of the Bay Area/California philanthropic and education landscape (Preferred)
- Willingness to travel to external stakeholders across Bay Area/California (Required)
- Lived experience of the Fellows we serve (Preferred)
Our Team
Guided by a clear set of core values and beliefs, you will join an impressive group of more than 200 OneGoal staff across the country who believe in the untapped potential within students. The OneGoal team challenges themselves and others to regularly ask, “Is there a better way?” We believe that in order to create the change we seek, each person we hire brings a remarkable and diverse set of experiences, skills and characteristics that individually and collectively, will contribute to the radical change needed to move us towards a more just nation.
The Tangible Good
OneGoal offers competitive compensation based on the market for nonprofits our size. Our benefits package* includes: over eight weeks of paid time off (or 43 business days), between vacation days, wellness time, and holidays; paid medical or parental leaves should you have need; medical, dental, vision, short-term and long-term disability, and life insurance; as well as a 401(k) with a 3% match.
We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact on behalf of the organization, and take internal and external fairness seriously. OneGoal does not negotiate salary offers; instead each salary offer is determined carefully using external and internal benchmarking. You will have an opportunity to discuss salary in more detail after you begin the hiring process.
*OneGoal reserves the right to change benefits at any time according to business need.
If you require a reasonable accommodation to submit an application or to participate in the application or interview process, please reach out to our Human Assets Team to request an accommodation. Our Human Assets Team can be contacted at 773-321-2630 or HumanAssets@onegoalgraduation.org.
OneGoal does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of actual or perceived sex, race, color, ancestry, citizenship, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, disability (mental or physical), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, pregnancy, breastfeeding or related medical condition, parenthood, genetic characteristic or information, military or veteran status, marital status, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law.