About U.S. Digital Response

U.S. Digital Response (USDR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps governments and organizations respond quickly and efficiently to support the critical needs of the public.

Leveraging an amazing internal team along with a network of pro-bono technical expertise and modern, resilient technology, USDR addresses and uncovers solutions for common, systemic challenges that public servants are facing, leaving them better equipped to deliver services and support to millions of people nationwide.

We operate with humility and deep respect for our partners and believe that modern and resilient technology applied in the public interest can deliver people-centered services at the speed of need.

Since March 2020, USDR's projects have impacted 42M+ people in 37 U.S. states and territories. We've built deep partnerships with over 250 government and nonprofit partners, strong expertise across more than 330 projects, and repeatable processes to solve some of the most pressing challenges in order to help government meet the critical needs of people today, while building digital resilience to stand up to the crises of tomorrow.

Learn more about our last year in our annual impact report, 2022 USDR In Review. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/18lgxWSxuSNJ-mkpttBUxrc-gabQJ_wWc/view)

About the Grants Program

With the advent of funding bills like CARES, ARPA, and IIJA, an unprecedented amount of money is flooding through the government grant ecosystem. Many governments are struggling to keep up with the influx. This means that money is being left on the table, and communities aren't receiving as much help as they could.

A lack of useful technology is the main bottleneck to help these governments scale their operations. USDR's Grants Program is building tools to address commonly shared problem areas, such as grants discovery and reporting. These tools are in use across 20+ state and local governments, and we are working on building new features every day in collaboration with volunteers and frequent meetings with our government partners.

About The Role

USDR is seeking a Program Manager to help devise, maintain, and optimize the processes that drive product delivery within the Grant program. We are looking for someone who is excited to champion our volunteer and government partner experiences as they foster existing processes and build new ones to enable the product to scale.

You will be responsible for managing and participating in the day-to-day operations of product development – maintaining and improving on existing systems, tools, and resources to enable the team to effectively track timelines, manage volunteers, deliver features, and onboard our government customers. This role will report to the Grants Program Lead and directly collaborate across USDR's various shared services teams to implement systems that feed back into the greater USDR ecosystem.

One of the exceptional aspects of this role is the opportunity to also work directly with USDR volunteers, helping them leverage their experience and interests to contribute to meaningful projects. People who work with our volunteers universally agree they are surprised and delighted by their skills, passion, and dedication.

You might be a good fit for this role if you're a project or program manager with software product delivery experience who has managed a team, has worked with volunteers, and/or is passionate about helping teams operate like well-oiled machines.

This is a termed role for one-year, salaried, with competitive pay and benefits.

You are excited about this opportunity because you will work on...

Software Development Life Cycle Operations (30%)

• Oversee existing processes and create new ones as needed for end-to-end feature delivery, from user research all the way to QA, marketing and documentation, in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders.
• Create and manage development and release timelines, and track the status of work against it.
• Anticipates issues and blockers to stated timelines proactively and work with the rest of the team to resolve them.
• Facilitate day-to-day communication and collaboration among all team members – staff volunteers, and government partners.
• Run our agile ceremonies
• Work with the Operations Team to automate as many currently manual steps as possible.

Volunteer Experience and Operations (30%)

• Foster an inclusive, supportive, and collaborative volunteer team culture across all functions to promote high levels of engagement and retention
• Streamline and maintain onboarding processes and documentation for our volunteers
• Track volunteer status, capacity, and performance metrics alongside product, eng, and design leads
• Gather agendas for and host our weekly all-volunteer standups.
• Forecast any volunteer-related roadblocks to team goals
• Run retrospectives for our volunteers and translate insights into solutions. Share findings across the team, USDR, and the wider ecosystem.
• Work with the Operations Team to automate as many currently manual steps as possible.

Government Experience and Operations (30%)

• Streamline partner onboarding processes and documentation
• Gather agendas for and host our regular partner feedback meetings.
• Set up and run our day-to-day user support operations, including supporting partner training and onboarding, as well as fielding day-to-day questions.
  • We will be hiring a dedicated customer success person in about 3-6 months, at which point the day-to-day of this work will be handed off to them.
• Facilitate the Government and Marketing teams' interactions with our government partners.
• Work with the Operations Team to automate as many currently manual steps as possible.

Owning and Maintaining Overall Documentation and Communication Systems (10%)

• Provide direction on how best to structure our overall documentation and communication systems, such as teams' Slack channels, email lists, and team Wiki.
• Ensure documentation is kept up to date by delegating out documentation tasks, tracking them, keeping stakeholders informed, and contributing where necessary.

We're excited about you because you have/are…

• 4-6 years of experience project managing an Agile team of 10+ people via a tool such as Github projects, JIRA, Trello, or similar.
• Passionate about and experienced in crafting excellent team experiences.
• The ability to manage complex projects and multi-task as needed. A default to action approach with strict attention to detail.
• A knack for hearing amorphous needs and translating those needs into concrete next steps.
• Driven by a service-based mindset to your approach. Delivering on needs, while also improving on experiences.
• Familiarity with modern remote collaboration tools and quick to acclimate to new tools and workflows.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, including comfort with presenting work to executives and external groups. Strong interpersonal, networking, and rapport-building skills with volunteers, the executive team, team leads, and community partners.
• Sound judgment, demonstrated ability in providing high integrity leadership, and capable of making smart decisions in the face of ambiguity and imperfect information.
• Sensitivity towards equity concerns and a desire to work toward creating an organizational culture and internal processes that reflect anti-oppression values.
• Principled, thoughtful, experienced, and can effortlessly role model the values in our Volunteer Oath.
• Or any combination of education, experience, and measurable performance that demonstrates the capability to perform the duties of the position.

Skills and experience are necessary, but we hire on value alignment first, so if you feel you would be a good fit with us, still consider applying. We will be prioritizing applications submitted by Friday, April 7, 2023.

What you'll get:

• A competitive salary, consistent with similar roles in other tech non-profits in major U.S. metropolitan cities. The annual salary range for this role is $150,000 - $170,000 depending on experience.
• Full health, dental and vision benefits (USDR pays 100% of the cost for our employees and 80% of the cost for their dependents).
• 401K with a matching contribution of up to 3 percent of your pay with $1 for each dollar you contribute and for more than 3 percent and up to 5 percent of your pay with $0.50 for each dollar you contribute.
• An equipment reimbursement for the purchase of a computer and peripheral devices of up to $2,000 along with a Work from Home allowance of $100 each month to support employees as they navigate working from home.
• A discretionary budget of $500 per year per employee for learning and development along with an organization-wide L&D budget to support individuals and teams with work-related learning and development expenses
• A supportive community where everyone can thrive and find a balance between working hard to make a difference and taking care of themselves. This means that we are committed to a fully remote work environment (for US-based employees) along with flexible schedules and time off policies that work with your life.

Equal Employment Opportunity

U.S. Digital Response is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer fully dedicated to achieving a diverse staff. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation), disability status, protected veteran status, political party affiliation, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We encourage and welcome all interested potential applicants, regardless of background or prior experience volunteering with U.S. Digital Response, to apply.