Job openings/Chief Program Officer
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The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring a Chief Program Officer. This is a unique leadership position at a highly creative volunteer-driven organization. This job will be posted for several months, to allow a rich and diverse candidate pool to develop. Please feel free to share this posting widely.
The successful candidate for this role could come from a variety of different backgrounds, such as educational non-profit work, the free culture movement, digital media, product development, etc. Please read below for the detailed job description and instructions for applying.
- Job Title
Chief Program Officer
- Job Purpose
The purpose of this role is to provide leadership to the Wikimedia Foundation program staff, and to support and facilitate the work of the international Wikimedia volunteer community, in collecting, developing and making available free educational resources for people all around the world.
- Reports to
Executive Director
- Job Summary
You will have responsibility for all mission-furthering program work of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is a broad scope, covering all areas of organizational activity except finance and administration, and technology.
The Wikimedia Foundation aims to increase the overall reach of its projects, to broaden participation, and to increase quality. As Chief Program Officer, you will be the person primarily responsible for moving these goals forward. You will also be responsible for media relations and other communications activities, both externally and internally.
The Wikimedia Foundation is an unusual organization, with an extremely small staff supporting and facilitating the work of a global community of tens of thousands of active volunteers. This role requires a high degree of flexibility and creativity, and a collaborative and inventive orientation. The successful candidate will be mission-driven and passionate about the idea of creating free, multilingual educational material for people everywhere in the world. A desire for real-world impact is critical to success.
- Responsibilities
- Develop and implement a strategic plan for the program area, with the goals of increasing reach, broadening participation and increasing quality in Wikipedia and its sister projects;
- Lead the program team, including goals development, coaching, performance assessment, and the identification and filling of skills and capacity gaps;
- Develop and implement scalable mechanisms for encouraging, facilitating and rewarding the work of the Wikimedia volunteers. This will include the development and administration of an experimental small-grant-making process;
- Identify and recruit key institutional partners who can help us reach our goals;
- Work closely with the fundraising team to develop project concepts;
- Oversee the execution of projects including those funded by grants, working closely as required with the program staff, volunteers, technical team and others;
- Participate in the Wikimedia Foundation's strategic planning processes, including program budget development and management.
- Required Qualifications
- A history of leadership experience in increasingly responsible positions, ideally including management of teams of 10+ people;
- Experience developing and implementing strategies and plans, and ideally also overseeing large initiatives;
- Experience hiring and developing staff, coaching, evaluating performance, setting goals and measuring success;
- Experience in the non-profit sector, ideally including experience developing grant proposals;
- Basic technical understanding is a requirement, ideally including experience with online production principles and practices;
- Exceptional verbal and written communication skills and interpersonal skills are a must;
- Experience working with or as part of large volunteer communities is a major plus;
- Understanding of the open source and free culture communities is a major plus;
- Experience with any of the following is a plus: user testing, audience research, events management, marketing, product development;
- International work experience is a major plus, as is the ability to speak languages in addition to English;
- Must be able to work well with people with a very wide diversity of demographic and cultural characteristics;
- Must be capable of achieving results while maintaining an inclusive, collaborative leadership style.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 489 million unique visitors per month, making them the 5th most popular web property worldwide. Available in more than 270 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 21 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants. The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of Wikipedia and its sister projects. It currently employs 138 staff members. Wikimedia is supported by local chapter organizations in 39 countries or regions.
Apply
Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs
wikimedia.org. Please put the position title (Chief Program Officer) in your subject line.
Applications that do not include a cover letter will not be considered.
Please copy and paste the text of your CV into the e-mail, in addition to attaching the file.
Due to the volume of applications we receive, we regret that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
