Director, Digital Partnerships

THE ORGANIZATION:

Small business owners uplift communities and anchor local economies, while creating opportunities for themselves, their families, their employees, and our neighborhoods. Yet entrepreneurs who are people of color, women, and immigrants often struggle to secure capital and resources, as they are systematically shut out from traditional financing.

Accion Opportunity Fund Community Development is an unparalleled financial support system that provides these small business owners with access to capital, networks, and coaching. We work to build inclusive and accessible options for these determined business owners. For over 25 years we have served a client base that is nearly 90% women, people of color, or immigrants.

In addition to providing resources and loans to small businesses, we also conduct original research, advocate for policy changes, and finance community construction projects in low-income neighborhoods through our New Markets Tax Credit program.

Together, we are building a diverse, vibrant community where opportunity, knowledge, and access to capital are within reach.

For more information about us, visit https://aofund.org/

... SUMMARY:

The Director, Digital Partnerships will have the unique opportunity to participate in a key function of generating growth by managing the day-to-day relationships with AOF partners ranging from corporates, FinTechs, and financial institutions to software companies. All the partnerships have one thing in common: a serious drive to connect small businesses to funding, business advising, and other support services.

This Director will deepen AOF’s relationship with existing and new partners and identify opportunities to increase the volume of small business referrals, collaborating across the organization to ensure success. Excellence in this role requires developing strategies and tactics with partners, establishing new internal processes, and collaborating across teams by driving discussions and sharing insights.

As the largest small business non-profit lender, Accion Opportunity Fund (AOF) provides capital to low-to-moderate income, minority, and women-owned businesses across the United States. The Director, Digital Partnerships will play a key role in our ambitious strategic plan to support 2 million entrepreneurs and lend over $520M in the next 2.5 years, building on pioneering partnerships like LendingClub, American Express, and the LegalZoom & NBA Fast Break for Small Business grant program.

JOB DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage and nurture partnerships to enable our partners’ success, increase top-of-funnel referral volume, strengthen, and expand our relationships.
• Strategic focus on building and maintaining partnerships that drive higher loan dollar small business customers.
• Identify the long-term vision, strategy, and goals for each of your partners, while ensuring seamless day-to-day operations and support.
• Support new business development efforts and the evolution of AOF’s partnerships strategy.
• Keep abreast of the evolving small business ecosystem, working capital lending, and payments landscapes to identify new partnership opportunities.
• Act as the voice of the partner internally and work cross-functionally with product, engineering, marketing, analytics and business intelligence, advocacy, business advising, and operations.
• Collaborate deeply with our partners and internal teams to develop compelling experiences and tightly integrated joint value propositions.
• Forecast and monitor partner performance to meet or exceed performance goals based on partner referrals of small business owners to AOF.
• Implement best practices for account and relationship management.
• Create partner presentations for internal and external monthly and/or quarterly reviews, including with senior leadership.
• Maintain timely and accurate records of interactions with partners, leads, loan opportunities, and loan application forecasts through CRM database (i.e. HubSpot, Salesforce, Notion).

THE PERSON:

Necessary Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Proactive self-starter: Comfortable with autonomy and strong prioritization skills.
• Strategic: Able to analyze and understand trends, analyze, and interpret data, and translate that into a compelling and inspired vision and action plan.
• Results oriented and analytical: Able to identify and understand key business drivers, set significant goals, track progress, and hold self-accountable for results.
• Exceptional communicator and influencer: Able to craft unified messages across different audience types: partners, teams, collaborators, and executives.
• Entrepreneurial: You love working through challenges and have solid project management skills.
• Partner management: Track record of experience negotiating and managing complex partnerships.
• Growth mindset: Ability to handle new challenges, thrive on fast-paced innovation and are comfortable leading change management.
• Team player: Strong interpersonal skills, detail-oriented, and ability to excel in a team-oriented atmosphere.
• Comfortable influencing stakeholders through executive-level presentation creation and delivery
• Small business marketplace lending and relationship building with API lending platforms a big plus.

MUST HAVES:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of account/relationship management, experience handling multiple high-touch relationships at one time with a track record of success in an account management position and the ability to engage, build and drive partnership performance.
• 5+ years of experience in sales/business development roles; experience in small business and product marketing.
• Skilled in Microsoft Office Suite including intermediate to advanced Excel skills.
• A demonstrable track record of working with multiple departments to resolve Partnership issues that require collaborative efforts.

PERKS AND BENEFITS:

Our mission is what motivates us to come to work each day. We know that happy employees are productive employees, which is why we offer a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Competitive salary commensurate with experience.
• An environment that values work-life balance and monthly remote work reimbursements.
• 100% company-funded Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability coverage for employees (Based upon your plan selection). 90% company-funded dependent coverage (Based upon your plan selection) as well as Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Voluntary benefits with payroll deduction for Supplemental Life & AD&D insurance and legal plans.
• Tax deferred & Roth 403(b) Retirement Plan with employer match.
• Paid vacation days (increased with tenure), 12 paid holidays, 1 floating holiday, 10 Get Well days, and paid parental leave.

We are an equal opportunity employer and committed to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion at Accion Opportunity Fund. AOF does not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), national origin, political affiliation, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, genetic information, age, membership in an employee organization, retaliation, parental status, military service, or other non-merit factor.

Salary Range*: $96,629 - $130,662

*Please note that the above salary range is a national range, and compensation is dependent upon the candidate’s experience and skill level.