Director, Program-Related Investments

About Weingart Foundation

The Weingart Foundation is a private grantmaking foundation established in 1951 by Ben and Stella Weingart. Over seven decades, the Foundation has distributed more than $1 billion in grants and loans to thousands of organizations across Southern California. The organization operates with a mission to advance racial, social, and economic justice for all communities in the region, focusing on building community power across three interconnected domains: people, economic development, and narrative change. This integrated approach aims to create a collective vision of multiracial thriving for all residents of Southern California. The Foundation operates across five Southern California counties: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ventura. With a staff of 23 professionals and a 9-member Board of Directors, the Foundation maintains a commitment to equity in all its policies and practices. The organization employs a comprehensive “One Foundation” approach that draws on multiple tools to advance its mission, including grantmaking, impact investing and flexible capital deployment, strategic communications, and community convening and organizing work. The Foundation’s grantmaking strategy emphasizes multi-year Unrestricted Operating Support to the vast majority of its partners, reflecting the trust and respect it places in community organizations. Core to the Foundation’s investment philosophy is a commitment to mission-aligned capital deployment. The Foundation makes both program-related investments and mission-related investments while maintaining strict exclusions on investments in firearms, tobacco, private prisons, and activities that harm communities or the environment. The organization places particular emphasis on strengthening organizations focused on providing critical services and building power in communities of color. The Foundation’s core values—racial justice, courage, dignity, innovation, curiosity, partnership, respect, and trust—guide all operational and strategic decisions.

About this Role

The Weingart Foundation seeks a Director, Program-Related Investments who combines rigorous financial and investment expertise with a genuine commitment to racial, social, and economic justice. This senior leadership position is designed for a professional excited by the challenge of deploying creative capital in service of community-led change and who understands the intersection of finance and social impact. The Director, Program-Related Investments serves as a senior member of the Foundation’s finance and investment function with primary responsibility for managing the Foundation’s $45 million Program-Related Investment (PRI) portfolio. The position involves sourcing and closing approximately three to five new investments annually. This is a rigorous investment role requiring the Director to lead strategy development, manage the deal pipeline, and oversee underwriting, structuring, and portfolio monitoring, working with external advisers who provide back-office support. What makes this role distinctive is its organizational placement within the Foundation’s structure. The Director functions as a structural participant in Weingart’s Strategy and Impact team, serving not as a programs generalist but as a dedicated finance and investment voice. In this capacity, the Director helps Program Directors identify where flexible capital can complement grantmaking efforts, surfaces PRI-eligible opportunities through collaborative field work, and sources deals with people who have deep community relationships. A key frontier of this role involves helping sharpen Weingart’s thinking about what an economic-justice lens on capital deployment concretely means: who is excluded from capital and why, what terms actually build community wealth rather than merely avoid harm, and how to structure deals that interrupt rather than reproduce exclusion. For the right candidate, this represents a rare leadership opportunity at the frontier of foundation practice, where financial rigor, deep roots in Southern California communities, and strategic creativity converge. Beyond the PRI portfolio, the Director partners with the Chief Financial and Investment Officer to advance Weingart’s “One Foundation” approach, contributing to its goal of deploying capital coherently across grantmaking, PRIs, and mission-aligned endowment investments. The Director attends all Investment Committee meetings, leading presentation of PRI recommendations and portfolio updates, addressing Committee questions, and contributing programmatic and community perspective across the broader agenda.

Responsibilities

• Lead PRI strategy by proactively developing, refining, and advancing the Foundation’s PRI strategy in collaboration with the Chief Financial and Investment Officer, Foundation leadership, and the Investment Committee, bringing strategic recommendations to leadership and the IC
• Track emerging trends and innovations in community development finance and mission-aligned investing, and translate them into actionable strategic options for the Foundation
• Build and maintain a robust PRI pipeline through proactive outreach, field relationships, and close collaboration with Program Directors
• Serve as a structural participant in Strategy and Impact team strategy discussions, bringing an investment perspective to community work and helping Directors identify where flexible capital can complement grantmaking
• Surface PRI-eligible opportunities encountered in the field and jointly develop the pipeline with team members
• Build Program Directors’ fluency in recognizing and evaluating flexible capital opportunities, deepening the team’s collective capacity to see and act on them over time
• Develop investment recommendations on prospective PRIs, directing diligence on project and operational feasibility, financial modeling, risk assessment, repayment analysis, and governance and management evaluation
• Conduct underwriting and deal structuring with the support of the Foundation’s external advisers
• Structure creative, mission-aligned financial transactions that serve both the Foundation’s goals and its partners’ best interests
• Present recommendations to leadership and the Investment Committee, leading the Committee through questions and follow-up
• Manage the closing process for approved investments, working with external advisers and legal counsel to finalize loan documents, reporting requirements, disbursement schedules, and other closing conditions
• Ensure deals close on terms that are financially sound, fair to all parties, and that reflect the Foundation’s commitment to community partners alongside its own fiduciary responsibilities
• Serve as the primary point of contact on PRI matters for active investees, in coordination with colleagues where the broader relationship is shared
• Engage each partner as a resource and thought partner over the life of the investment, proactively checking in rather than only responding to requests
• Connect organizations to other capital, technical assistance, or relationships that can support their work
• Oversee the active PRI portfolio with support from external advisers, reviewing financial and narrative reports and evaluating amendment and modification requests
• Monitor repayment schedules and flag risks or opportunities to leadership
• Manage the closeout process for completed investments
• Ensure accurate accounting and reporting for the PRI portfolio in conjunction with the Controller
• Develop impact reports for the PRI portfolio in close collaboration with the Foundation’s Impact and Learning function
• Support leadership in contextualizing Weingart’s approach to program-related investing and communicating its outcomes to internal and external audiences
• Partner with the Chief Financial and Investment Officer to advance the One Foundation approach to capital deployment, identifying opportunities where Weingart’s tools—grants, PRIs, and mission-aligned endowment investments—can work in concert to advance shared goals
• Serve as a standing investment resource for the Strategy and Impact team, working alongside Program Directors to identify, evaluate, and develop PRI opportunities that emerge from community relationships and field work
• Represent the Foundation in the community development finance and mission-aligned investing field, participating in peer convenings and serving on discussion panels
• Maintain relationships with CDFIs, community lenders, and other field actors that inform the Foundation’s strategy and pipeline
• Manage external advisers supporting PRI operations
• Perform special assignments and duties as needed

Requirements

• Genuine commitment to racial, social, and economic justice and to the communities the Foundation serves
• Alignment with core values of racial justice, courage, dignity, innovation, curiosity, partnership, respect, and trust
• Demonstrated interest in the intersection of finance and community impact
• Significant experience in investment analysis, underwriting, or structured finance
• Demonstrated record of negotiating and closing complex transactions including recoverable grants, guarantees, subordinate debt, blended capital stacks, or special-purpose-entity structures
• Direct negotiation experience with institutional co-lenders and legal counsel
• Strong financial analysis and modeling skills with the ability to assess organizational and project feasibility
• Ability to structure transactions, evaluate repayment risk, and produce analysis that holds up to rigorous scrutiny
• Experience structuring and underwriting creative, impact-oriented financial transactions such as loans, guarantees, recoverable grants, or other flexible capital instruments
• Comfort being directly involved in closing a transaction, working through final negotiation points, documentation details, amendments, covenants, and closing conditions alongside counsel
• Ability to develop independent recommendations and contribute effectively in strategic and governance contexts
• Judgment to engage colleagues and leadership when doing so maintains alignment, surfaces important considerations, or advances a culture of transparency and collaboration
• Proficiency with standard financial and office software
• Proactive and self-directed working style, comfortable developing strategic recommendations and bringing them forward
• Collaborative approach across functions, genuinely interested in working alongside Program Directors as a thought partner
• Rigorous and mission-committed in equal measure, unwilling to sacrifice analytical quality for mission alignment or vice versa
• Curious, open to innovation, and committed to ongoing learning in an evolving field
• Demonstrated experience working effectively with people from diverse backgrounds
• Strong commitment to an inclusive environment that places high value on equity
• Understanding of and sensitivity to the communities the Foundation serves
• Preferred: Deep familiarity with Los Angeles and broader Southern California, including its communities and the local community development finance landscape
• Preferred: Knowledge of community development finance and the evolving landscape of mission-aligned investing, including trends, innovations, key actors, and the regulatory and tax environment affecting PRIs
• Preferred: Direct experience in CDFI lending, impact investing, or mission-aligned investment management, including PRI or investment roles at peer foundations
• Preferred: Experience monitoring an active loan or investment portfolio after closing, reviewing financial and narrative reports, evaluating amendment or modification requests, and managing distressed-asset or workout situations
• Preferred: Experience presenting to a governing board or investment committee
• Preferred: Strong written and oral communication skills, including the ability to translate complex financial analysis into clear, accessible recommendations for non-finance audiences
• Preferred: Ability to manage multiple transactions and workstreams simultaneously with strong attention to detail and follow-through
• Preferred: MBA, CFA, or equivalent graduate or professional credential in finance, economics, business, or a related field
• Preferred: Lived knowledge of the communities the Foundation serves, in addition to demonstrated financial and underwriting capability

Benefits

• Generous benefits package
• Salary range of $184,000 to $276,000 depending on experience
• Published salary ranges demonstrating commitment to internal equity and transparency in pay
• Full-time exempt position
• Hybrid work arrangement with flexibility to work in the field, in-office minimum two days per week, and from home