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Executive Director of Atlantic Street Center, serving and supporting all marginalized people.

Employer
Atlantic Street Center
Location
Seattle, Washington State
Salary
$160,000 - $180,000, commensurate with experience
Closing date
Feb 15, 2021

View more

Focus Areas
Human Services
Job Function
Executive / Senior Management
Position Type
Full Time
Degree Level
Bachelors
Willingness to Travel
up to 25%
Experience Level
Executive

About the Organization

Founded in 1910, Atlantic Street Center is an award-winning human service agency that has provided support to children, youth, and their families for over one hundred and ten years. As one of the region’s oldest nonprofit social service agencies, ASC works to help families and communities raise healthy, successful children and youth through direct services and advocacy for social justice and equity. We provide wrap-around services including education, family support, and behavioral health counseling to the low-income minority populations of King and Pierce Counties.

Atlantic Street Center is committed to serving the African American community, providing services and support for all marginalized people. In 2019, ASC served over 8,106 vulnerable children, youth, adults, and seniors. All our clients are from low to no-income households. 75% of our communities are African American/Black, 16% Latinx, 3% Asian, and 6% from multiple ethnic backgrounds. We provide in-house support in the following languages, Somali, Spanish, Amharic, and Tigrinya; or provide translators that speak other dialects.

ASC operates three sites with a focus on communities in the South and Southwest areas of King County, and North Pierce County. Our sites are located in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle, and in the City of Kent. Our staff reflect the community served.

Programs

Atlantic Street Center has four core program areas.

Behavioral Health:   ASC’s experienced and diverse team of licensed therapists support children, youth, and parents through difficult times; helping them build the skills they need to overcome life’s challenges and to become emotionally healthy and resilient. The behavioral health program uses an evidence-based approach to address mental health issues including depression, anxiety, managing conflict, and a host of other issues. ASC also offers case management services to assist with the financial and housing issues families face. ASC is committed to being community-based, offering virtual services, services at their offices in Seattle and Kent, as well as off-site sessions, including in schools, or in other spaces convenient and comfortable to them (in person services have been extremely limited during the pandemic). Counseling services are available to anyone enrolled in Medicaid or eligible to receive Medicaid funding.

ASC also provides an innovative therapeutic program that uses computer games to help youth learn tools to self-regulate, applying those skills within a gaming environment with therapeutic support.  This program has proven particularly effective for our middle and high school level youth.

Early Learning:  Our Early Learning program offers home visiting programming that honors each parent as their child’s first and best teacher.  ASC is one of the oldest ParentChild+ programs in the state and has expanded to provide support to family childcare providers. ParentChild+ Early Learning Specialists help parents strengthen their parenting skills while their children are very young, visiting them at home (now happening virtually) and bringing them a monthly activity pack that includes books and educational toys that reinforce that month’s lessons.

Youth Development & Education:  From violence at home to gang activity, teen pregnancy to underfunded school systems, there are many obstacles in the path of teens and young adults. They require robust support systems and strong role models to thrive both academically and socially. ASC’s Youth Development & Education (YDE) programs are designed to lift young people between 10 and 24 living in the Seattle area over those hurdles. We offer after-school tutoring, service learning programs to support connection to communities, and a range of leadership, educational, and support groups for youth with specific circumstances and interests. The YDE program is also home to the Teens as Parents Program (TAPP), and Learn and Raise Program, places where pregnant and parenting youth and young adults can find the support and education they need to become capable parents and engaged members of society. In addition, Atlantic Street Center provides supports to children growing up in Kinship Care through our YDE programming.  ASC’s kinship care program, the largest in King County, provides support to caregivers (usually grandparents) who have taken on the care of children whose parents are unable to care for them.

Our YDE staff serve as positive role models and mentors for youth in need. Our programming is diverse and varied, responding to the diverse needs of our youth.

Domestic Violence:  ASC’s domestic violence program provides advocacy, housing support and therapeutic services to assist survivors in navigating systems, accessing resources, increasing independent life skills and strengthening networks necessary to work towards safety and stability.  We serve victims/survivors of gender-based domestic violence, sexual assault, and/or commercial sexual exploitation in Seattle.

Organizational Structure & Position Summary

Atlantic Street Center has a number of organizational strengths, including a long, productive history of high-caliber services contributing to a stronger community, a strong and committed staff, and a healthy financial position with seven months of operating funds in reserve.

The agency is governed by a nine member board, with one third of its members affiliated with the United Methodist Church, one third who live in or are affiliated with the community served, and one third who represent the greater Puget Sound region. The board and staff have embarked on the crucially important journey to become an anti-racist organization, led by an agency-wide committee that includes a member of the board of directors. Activities, work and progress toward the goal of becoming an anti-racist organization include expectations for both the board and the staff.

The organization has a $5.6M annual budget, and 72 employees. While Atlantic Street has a strong current financial position, there are significant challenges ahead for the agency. Ensuring that ASC will not only survive but also thrive during this time of challenge will be the core work of its new leader. The movement for racial justice, the COVID pandemic, the economic downturn, and the transformation of health care will require strong leadership and a clear vision, while also providing a unique opportunity to look at these challenges and create 'out of the box' solutions. 

In preparation for its new leader, the board and leadership staff are taking the time to explore potential scenarios and responses.  Some specific ideas under consideration include underwriting behavioral health and youth development programming through earned revenue strategies, consolidating its Behavioral Health work with like agencies to achieve operational efficiencies and undertaking a new advocacy strategy to shift the funding model toward sustainability for providers.

As the board works through potential scenarios, and embarks on work to become an anti-racist organization, the organization is also streamlining and improving our behavioral health workflows, and reflecting on the needs of our community in the coming years. 

In the past year, because of the pandemic, ASC has pivoted to providing more assistance for basic needs, to reorganizing its holiday programming to keep staff and community safe, and rethinking how to accomplish its work in a virtual world. 

The Executive Director has ten director reports, spanning a wide breadth of organizational functions. The Interim Executive Director is creating recommendations for a more manageable span of control moving forward.

Position Priorities

Atlantic Street Center is seeking a collaborative Executive Director who can effectively lead the organization through several strategic changes over the next few years to sustain its vital services to the community. Key priorities in the Executive Director’s first 18-24 months are:

  • Lead a Strategic Decision-Making Process. Behavioral Health is ASC’s largest program and represents the core of its mission. The significantly lower reimbursement rates under contract for 2021 threaten to become a long-term structural budget deficit for the agency. In addition, several key programs the agency provides to the community have no dedicated revenue source. The new Executive Director will need to determine, in collaboration with the board and staff, a path forward that ideally retains core behavioral health and family support services. This could include developing ASC’s properties into revenue-producing multi-use facilities and advocating at the local and state government levels for greater reimbursement rates and/or subsidy.
  • Strengthen Organizational Teamwork, Communications, and Culture. Building on the agency’s recent efforts to create and sustain a cohesive workplace culture, the new leader will continue to build trust, support effective communication, demonstrate transparent and collaborative decision-making, and embrace equity and social justice principles throughout the agency and its work.
  • Build a strong working relationship with the board and support its continued development into an effective body that is fully engaged in governance roles and responsibilities.
  • Raise the Agency’s visibility in the community, building strong connections with its funders, partners and donors. This includes not only raising public awareness about the agency and its mission, but also creating and sustaining appropriate partnerships to advance that mission. Demonstrating a strong understanding of the communities served and their needs will be an essential component of this community engagement effort.
  • Sharpen focus on the resource development function, and grow its capacity, resulting in increased philanthropic revenues.  Strengthen outreach plans, administrative support for resource development, volunteer management systems and, as needed, contracted development support to sustain a more effective resource development program. Build strong connections with and cultivate financial support from a growing number of institutional and private funders to increase and diversify fundraising. 
  • Continue to improve ASC’s internal systems, policies, communications and processes. The Executive Director should take a holistic approach to analyzing and updating the organization’s infrastructure, including policies and procedures, information management systems, and communication tools to better equip and support staff members in their service to the community and to better support the virtual work that has been required during the pandemic.

 Essential Qualifications

Ideal candidates for this position will be passionate about Atlantic Street’s mission, and understand the agency’s work as walking with participants to success. The successful candidate will have strong leadership, management, communications and relationship building skills, and will have the skills needed to strengthen and support a collaborative board-staff team. ASC seeks an active listener who is accessible and responsive to staff, able to hear different points of view, and who has a caring and empathetic personality. Essential qualifications include:

  • Bachelor’s degree in public or nonprofit management, plus eight years progressively responsible experience in organizational leadership. Educational qualifications may be waived depending on work history.
  • Experience in human services, with a particular understanding of behavioral health, including knowledge of industry trends and familiarity with health care reform in Washington State.
  • Proven ability to inspire teams and teamwork, and the ability to hire and retain effective employees. Working knowledge of HR laws and regulations.
  • Demonstrated leadership skills in inspiring, empowering, motivating and developing current and future staff to achieve strategic organizational goals.
  • Demonstrated commitment to anti-racism and a high level of cultural competency among a diversity of cultures, and a desire to advance diversity, inclusion, equity and access within the organization.  Experience working with the African American community preferred.
  • Excellent written and oral communication skills, and a track record of successful public speaking and community engagement.
  • Experience in leading change among a nonprofit organization’s professional staff and volunteer leadership, and/or an entrepreneurial track record to be able to lead through the changes necessary to fulfill the position’s priorities. 
  • Experience leading strategic planning processes that have resulted in successful change.
  • Strong skills in financial management, with experience managing a large and complex budget.  Experience with federal funding requirements a plus.
  • Proven track record of fundraising, relationship and partnership development.
  • Experience in advocacy and government relations to support organizational priorities and budget.
  • Strength in nonprofit governance and board development.
  • Demonstrated effectiveness in inspiring support and confidence in the process of representing organizational vision, mission, goals and outcomes to a diverse group of stakeholders in a variety of venues.

Job Requirements

  • Willingness to travel locally and nationally.
  • Must be able to pass criminal background check.

Working Conditions

Work is typically performed in an office environment and a variety of settings among diverse stakeholders and audiences. A considerable amount of time will be spent in meetings, at a computer screen for extended periods, at Atlantic Street Center events, and speaking before public audiences. Frequent use of phones and e-mail will be required to communicate with stakeholders. Frequently works outside normal working hours and will need to travel due to work performed with donors and other stakeholders in the community. Occasional travel out of town and out of state may be required.

Compensation:  $160,000 to $180,000 salary commensurate with experience. Benefits include 11 paid holidays, 12 days of sick leave each year (accrued at a rate of 8 hours per month) and twelve days of vacation. Medical Benefits are provided through Kaiser Permanente, Vision Service Plan and Delta Dental Washington. Monthly premiums for employee Medical (Kaiser HMO), Vision and Dental are paid by Atlantic Street Center.  Family members can be enrolled at the employee’s expense.  The agency offers a tax deferred annuity plan.  In addition, a pension plan is provided to full time staff after the first year of service.

 Application Process

To apply, interested candidates should e-mail their cover letter and resume to: execsearchasc@thirdsectorcompany.com

E-mail applications with a cover letter are required. The position is open until filled.

Equal Employment Opportunity and Non-Discrimination

Atlantic Street Center is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer and values diversity and its role in building a more inclusive culture and, ultimately, a more capable organization. ASC embraces diversity and equal opportunity in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.

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