About Builders Vision
Builders Vision is an impact platform that aims to shift markets and minds for good in pursuit of our vision for a humane and healthy planet. We work to help address some of the most difficult environmental and sustainability challenges across three focus areas: oceans, food & agriculture, and energy.
Builders Vision has deployed more than $3 billion across our focus areas and worked alongside nearly 450 partners to drive societal and environmental change. To date, we have helped mitigate, sequester, or avoid over 4 million metric tons of CO2e, generated more than 42,000 jobs, and supported the development of more than 170 sustainable products, technologies, or solutions. While we are seeing progress, we know that we can’t do this alone. The truth is these are trillion-dollar sectors that need a number of markets to scale and multiply significantly if we are to ensure a sustainable and secure future.
Our Builders Vision team includes more than 100 impassioned individuals who activate our platform using three primary approaches to influence stakeholders and drive impact across our focus areas:
- Deploying Capital: We use a versatile set of tools, including grants, direct investments, and fund investments to support non-profit leaders, entrepreneurs, and fund managers. Given Builders Vision’s different capital tools and investment vehicles, we have the flexibility to operate across the capital spectrum. We deploy capital into programs and solutions with a focus on how our efforts will lead to the catalyzation of additional investments into the sectors.
- Supporting Partners: We are committed to helping our partners by providing critical resources including technical assistance, networking, learning opportunities, support with impact measurement and management (IMM), and strategic advice to help enhance their success and outcomes.
- Advocating for Change: We leverage communications and engage with influential audiences to accelerate the solutions we pursue. This includes strategic communications, thought leadership, hosting and attending convenings, and industry-wide initiatives and coalitions.
Our commitment to people and the planet extends to our workplace policies and benefits. In 2023, Builders Vision was named one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies and voted one of Chicago’s Best Places to Work by Crain’s Chicago Business. We are headquartered in the West Loop, one of Chicago’s most thriving and dynamic neighborhoods, and our offices have achieved Gold-level certifications from both the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the International WELL Building Institute. We also offer fun social team events and offsite retreats to help our people feel refreshed and connected to nature, each other, and our mission.
You can read more about our team, programs, and impact here: https://www.buildersvision.com.
About Builders Initiative
As Builders Vision’s philanthropic team, Builders Initiative deploys grants and mission-driven investments to confront today’s most pressing issues. Through different types of grant support, including project-specific grants and general operating grants, our grantmakers partner with organizations of all sizes that are addressing societal and environmental challenges. In concert with our grantmakers, the Builders Initiative Investment Team engages with impact-driven organizations, companies, and fund managers at many stages of their development. Builders Initiative also includes the Builders Initiative Foundation, which has a $1.7B endowment that reached 90% mission-aligned investments in 2022.
Our Commitment to Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) are at the core of our mission to shift markets and minds for good. We know that a humane and healthy planet starts with us. We commit ourselves to learning from others and doing the work to become a more just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive organization, and we will seek to promote those same values in the world around us. We actively seek to recruit, develop, and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool and create an inclusive culture that centers equitable practices and policies. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we welcome people from all experiences, abilities, and perspectives to apply.
About BI’s Agriculture Initiative
The Agriculture Initiative at BI is focused on transforming the agricultural system in the Midwest toward a more diversified crop landscape that supports climate change mitigation and adaptation, water quality, and thriving rural communities.
The Agriculture program works across three pillars: working land, marginal land, and high-grade land. Our grantmaking supports a wide variety of activities that influence markets to support our goals. Our grantees’ work includes policy advocacy, research, coalition building, pilot projects, technical assistance, supply chain and market development and more.
Our team works closely with others across the office including other BI program areas (food, climate, and oceans) and impact investing teams.
Position Summary
Reporting to the Program Officer, Agriculture, the Associate Program Officer (APO) will support the development and management of a diverse portfolio of grantees.
This is an opportunity to work at an early-stage private foundation with a deep commitment to transforming the Midwest agricultural landscape to a system that supports healthy ecosystems and healthy communities. The APO will support strategy building and grantmaking within a lean team.
Key Responsibilities for the Associate Program Officer, Agriculture include:
- Support grantmaking including: seeking and performing due diligence on proposals; developing internal documents; shepherding proposals through the Builders Initiative approval process; and monitoring grantee progress towards objectives.
- Build deep relationships with grantees, funding and industry partners, and colleagues across the office.
- Conduct site visits to ongoing or potential project sites, attend public meetings and represent Builders Initiative at conferences and other events. The APO will be asked to travel as needed.
- Support internal and external communications efforts to build awareness for our programs and partners.
Candidate Profile
A Strategic Thinker and Collaborative Leader
This role requires self-direction and decisiveness combined with flexibility, humble leadership and a capacity to give and receive feedback graciously. The APO will be an individual with superior interpersonal skills, a respectful attitude for the work of grantees and a demonstrated ability to work effectively as part of a team. A strong asset for this role will be the ability to be extremely organized and detail-focused. This leader will bring proven skills in project management, written communication skills and intellectual agility. It will be important for this APO to have the ability to analyze, think critically and understand emerging issues that are directly relevant to programmatic funding areas. This role will allow a critical thinker interested in agriculture to build grantmaking and foundation experience. Prior experience in grantmaking is not mandatory.
Personal Attributes that Support your Success
- You are a caring and conscientious team player who develops strong relationships and loves to collaborate; You adapt your behaviors to work effectively with a range of people and situations
- You bring positive energy to your work and workplace; you care to show up as your authentic self and measure your personal success as the success of those around you
- You are results and detail oriented and take pride in striving for excellence; you design and execute with the “why” and what success looks like in mind; you also understand when “perfect” can be the enemy of “good enough”
- A lifelong learner, you are inquisitive and like to solve problems with bold thinking and innovation; you view “feedback” as an opportunity for growth
- You display flexibility and openness in daily work and encourage others to stay open to change and improvement; You accept and readily adapt to changing priorities, new ideas, strategies and methods.
Qualifications Required for Your Success
- A Bachelor’s degree
- 2-4 years of work experience in agriculture, food, sustainability, or a related field
- A passionate commitment to the goals of Builders Initiative and the ability/willingness to adapt as those goals evolve
- Strong written communication skills with experience in producing both brief and longer written products in a timely fashion for internal and external audiences
- Oral communications skills, with experience in presentations that emphasize conveying complex issues to internal and external audiences
- Exceptional attention to detail and organization, even while managing multiple projects simultaneously, with a demonstrated capacity to meet deadlines
- Demonstrated capacity to work as part of a team, as well as independently
- Intellectual agility and the ability to analyze and think critically
- Unquestionable ethics and personal integrity
- Willing to travel up to 20% of the time
Builders Vision is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building and maintaining a culturally diverse workplace. We encourage women, minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans to apply. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.