MD, National Foundations Partnershisp

About the role

Teach For America partners with leading philanthropic institutions to advance educational opportunity at scale. This role helps shape and sustain the relationships, investments, and narratives that enable TFA to pursue emerging priorities and deepen its impact in communities across the country.

Responsibilities

• Teach For America partners with leading philanthropic institutions to advance educational opportunity at scale. This role helps shape and sustain the relationships, investments, and narratives that enable TFA to pursue emerging priorities and deepen its impact in communities across the country.

• Steward a portfolio of national foundation partners making significant seven-figure investments in Teach For America, with managed revenue typically ranging from $3 million to $8 million.

• Serve as both a strategic relationship lead and a skilled grant manager, engaging directly with sophisticated funders and coordinating complex, multi-level partnerships across the organization.

• Bring creativity and judgment to shaping investment opportunities around emerging priorities, new workstreams, and evolving organizational needs.

• Play a key role in identifying and cultivating new prospects, deepening existing relationships, and expanding partnerships over time—while taking a portfolio-wide view that strengthens cultivation, stewardship, and grant management across accounts.

What You’ll Be Responsible For

• Portfolio Ownership (50%): Develop tailored cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship strategies grounded in funder interests and organizational priorities. Manage multi-tiered relationships, including direct engagement with program officers, senior foundation leaders, and philanthropic advisors; serve as the institutional quarterback for relationships held at the board, executive, and regional level.

• Grant Management (30%): Execute high-quality grant management, including delivering compelling reports, partnership with program and regional colleagues to meet grant expectations, and ensuring fidelity to planned spending. Diligently track pipeline to monitor forecasts and other trends.

• New Donor Acquisition (20%): Pursue and engage new foundations through bespoke cultivation plans. Develop overarching campaigns and narratives that compel new investors in TFA. Attend conferences and cultivation events to raise the profile of TFA in the philanthropic space.

Success Criteria

• You build trusted, strategic relationships with national foundation partners and help them see clear opportunities to invest in Teach For America’s evolving priorities.

• You manage a complex portfolio with strong judgment, clear communication, and disciplined follow-through, ensuring that partners experience TFA as responsive, thoughtful, and results-oriented.

• You generate new opportunities by cultivating prospective funders and shaping compelling narratives that connect their interests to TFA’s national and regional impact.

• You collaborate effectively across teams, bringing together regional, program, finance, and executive colleagues to design strong partnerships and deliver on grant commitments.

• You strengthen the broader foundation fundraising function by sharing insight, improving portfolio practices, and helping colleagues navigate complex funder relationships.

Requirements

• A seasoned fundraising or partnerships leader with 10+ years of experience managing complex institutional relationships, ideally including national foundations and seven-figure portfolios.

• A strategic relationship builder who can earn trust with sophisticated funders, senior leaders, and cross-functional colleagues while moving opportunities from cultivation to commitment.

• A clear and compelling communicator who can translate complex organizational priorities into persuasive donor-facing narratives, proposals, reports, and meeting experiences.

• A systems-minded operator who can manage ambiguity, coordinate across a large and complex organization, and bring disciplined follow-through to customized partnerships.

• An enterprise-minded leader who can see beyond individual accounts, identify portfolio-wide opportunities, and strengthen how teams cultivate, steward, and grow foundation partnerships.

• Experience in education, youth development, workforce development, or another field connected to educational opportunity is strongly preferred.

Skills

• Strategic thinking and relationship building

• Grant management and reporting

• Grant writing and proposal development

• Collaboration and teamwork

• Communication and presentation skills

• Systems thinking and project management

Benefits

Flexible, with strong preference for TFA regions

Pay

The applicable salary range for each U.S.-based role is based on where the employee works and is aligned to one of 3 tiers according to a cost of labor index in that geographic area. Starting pay for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of job-related factors, which may include education, training, experience, location, business needs, or market demands. New hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary between the range minimum and the salary range midpoint depending on qualifications, internal equity, and the budgeted amount for the role. The expected salary ranges for this role are set forth below. These ranges may be modified in the future.

• Tier A: $90,000 - $118,100
• Tier B: $98,000 - $128,700
• Tier C: $106,100 - $139,300

Schedule

Flexible, with strong preference for TFA regions