Vice President, People & Culture

The Organization

In Service to Great Ideas

Community Initiatives is a dedicated fiscal sponsor whose sole purpose is to provide best-in-class infrastructure for nonprofit leaders. We know the right questions to ask to help you develop a sustainable and scalable solution in your community.

At Community Initiatives, we have a broad interpretation of community. Unlike other fiscal sponsors, our projects work on various issues and in diverse geographic areas. They also vary in terms of staff and budget sizes. So, no matter how you define yourselves, be it by identity, geography, or shared experience, you will have a home with us. Community Initiatives’ portfolio of projects range in size and serve a variety of causes, including social justice, the environment, animal rights, education, youth development, capacity building, health & wellness, philanthropy, the arts, and human services.

Our History: In 1996, a group of savvy nonprofit professionals came together under the banner of the San Francisco Foundation with a great idea: to establish a holistic fiscal sponsorship agency defined by efficiency and integrity. As a comprehensive fiscal sponsorship organization, Community Initiatives takes on all legal and fiduciary responsibility for the nonprofit project, its employees, and charitable activities.

For more than 30 years, Community Initiatives has enabled hundreds of projects to achieve greater charitable impact by removing the operational and compliance barriers of running an independent 501(c)(3). We provide comprehensive infrastructure services — financial management, human resources, payroll and benefits, insurance, legal services, grant management, tax compliance, and online fundraising tools, so our partners can focus on their mission, not administration.

By managing the complexity behind the scenes, we free advocates to stay focused, effective, and connected to the communities they serve. This commitment to supporting mission-driven leaders is at the core of our work and reflects our founding purpose: to be in service to great ideas.

Our Mission, and what makes us different: Community Initiatives acts as a thought-partner and provides professional services to nonprofit startups, established initiatives, networks, and collaborations. We sponsor projects for the benefit of communities in service to social change.

Our Vision is to advance the creation of a more vibrant, innovative, and effective nonprofit sector.

Our Values:

• Empowerment: Deepen the capabilities and knowledge of staff, volunteers, and advisory committee members
• Trust: Be reliable, honest and transparent
• Teamwork: Use the wisdom, expertise and skills of teams to operate effectively
• Integrity: Operate ethically and within legal guidelines while managing risk
• Empathy: Walk in the shoes of projects and staff as we deliver services and manage people

Our Team and Board: Our organizational staff brings together decades of expertise in a wide variety of nonprofit fields, leadership, client services, finance, human resources, communications, and legal support. Our Board members are crucial partners in everything we do.

The Opportunity

Position:

Vice President, People & Culture

Location:

Community Initiatives has offices in Oakland and Los Angeles, California. The Vice President will be based in one of these locations with frequent presence across both offices plus necessary business-related travel.

Reporting Relationship:

The Vice President reports to the CEO

Website:

communityinititiaves.org

Position Summary

As Community Initiatives enters a critical new chapter of organizational strengthening, growth, and culture rebuilding, the organization seeks a strategic, values-driven, and operationally rigorous Vice President, People & Culture to lead its people function and help build the cross-functional infrastructure required for a more coordinated, transparent, and high-performing organization. Reporting to the CEO and serving as a key member of the Executive Management Team, the Vice President will serve as the architect of Community Initiatives’ people strategy while also helping to strengthen the systems, processes, standards, governance, and execution discipline that enable effective collaboration across teams.

This is a significant builder role for a leader who can bring structure, clarity, trust, and modern people practices to an organization that has experienced rapid growth, evolving service demands, and inconsistent systems, documentation, workflows, and accountability practices. Community Initiatives’ fiscal sponsorship model creates a uniquely complex operating environment, with responsibility for both internal staff and project employees across a diverse portfolio of approximately 120 fiscally sponsored projects and hundreds of employees nationally. The Vice President will need to understand the people, risk, compliance, service delivery, and operational implications of this model and help design scalable approaches that support both organizational staff and project-facing operations.

The Vice President will provide executive leadership across the full spectrum of Human Resources and People & Culture, including HR strategy, employee experience, performance management, employee and labor relations, total rewards, workforce planning, HR compliance, organizational development, culture, leadership development, HR systems, project employee services strategy, and HR service expectations. This leader will also be responsible for strengthening the operating infrastructure connected to the people function and cross-functional service delivery, including SOPs, documentation standards, administrative workflow standards, escalation pathways, operational metrics, reporting, and continuous improvement of organizational handoffs and coordination.

In close partnership with HR, Finance, Legal, Client Services, Operations, IT/system owners, and project-facing teams, the Vice President will help establish an execution model that improves visibility, prioritization, and accountability across the organization. This will include oversight of PMO and portfolio governance practices, intake and prioritization processes, dependency management, implementation oversight, cross-functional escalation management, and governance reporting, with external advisory support assisting in the initial setup and transition. While functional leaders will remain accountable for how their departments operate, deliver services, manage resources, and make function-specific decisions, the Vice President will help ensure that the organization has the shared infrastructure, standards, and coordination mechanisms needed to execute effectively across functions.

Equally important, the Vice President will be a visible, trusted, and accessible people leader who can help repair trust, strengthen transparency, foster psychological safety, and create a more inclusive and accountable culture. The organization seeks a leader with high emotional intelligence, sound judgment, humility, confidence, strong ethics, and the ability to engage constructively on issues of equity, diversity, belonging, performance, and organizational change. This leader will partner closely with the CEO, Executive Management Team, Board of Directors, managers, staff, and external advisors to build a People & Culture function that is service-oriented, legally compliant, operationally disciplined, and deeply aligned with Community Initiatives’ mission of being in service to great ideas.

Key Responsibilities

The Vice President of People & Culture will lead an enterprise-wide people strategy that advances organizational culture, employee experience, talent effectiveness, engagement, compliance, service delivery, operational coordination, and overall organizational performance.

Partnering closely with the Executive Management Team, Board of Directors, managers, staff, external advisors, and key functional leaders, this leader will translate strategic priorities into equitable, scalable, well-documented, and high-impact people and operating practices that strengthen Community Initiatives’ capacity to deliver exceptional service to nonprofit leaders and its diverse portfolio of fiscally sponsored projects.

*Please see the attached PD for the complete description.