Chief Executive Officer

About Community Action: Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties (CAPRW) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to investing in people experiencing poverty to build generational prosperity. Serving Ramsey and Washington counties, CAPRW provides comprehensive programs and services through Head Start and Early Head Start, Energy Assistance and Energy Conservation, and Financial Opportunities. With approximately 350 employees across 14 sites and an annual operating budget of approximately $45 million, CAPRW works alongside individuals, families, and communities to expand access to opportunities and create lasting impact.

Learn More About This Opportunity:
Click here to view our CEO Recruitment Profile for more information about CAPRW, the leadership opportunity, key priorities, and what success will look like for our next CEO.

Job summary:
The Chief Executive Officer leads Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties in fulfilling its mission to invest in people experiencing poverty to build generational prosperity. Accountable to the Board of Directors, the CEO leads the agency's programs, people, finances, partnerships, and public voice. The CEO is responsible for implementing the current board approved strategic plan, using community input and measurable results to guide decisions. This leader earns trust through honest communication, visible presence, fair and consistent decisions, effective delegation, and follow through.

Essential Functions:
Strategic plan and community accountability:

• Own agency wide implementation of the current board-approved strategic plan. Translate its goals and actions into annual priorities with named executive owners, milestones, measures, resource needs, and decision points. Ensure successive plans build on community input and lessons from implementation.
• Advance the current plan's intended family, agency, and community results. Connect program and agency measures to outcomes, evaluate progress with participant input, and adjust course when results or community needs call for it.
• Lead the cross-agency strategies called for in the current plan, including staff communication and development, partnerships, recruitment and retention, strategic budgeting, fundraising, and service integration as applicable. Remove barriers between departments and hold leaders jointly accountable for shared work.
• Use the most recent community strengths and needs assessment, participant feedback, program data, and ongoing community engagement to shape service design, funding choices, and each new strategic planning cycle. Address needs identified by communities, including barriers to stable housing, employment, transportation, child care, and culturally and linguistically responsive services.
• Apply Results Oriented Management and Accountability (ROMA) principles and Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) organizational standards with qualified staff. Provide the board with a clear strategy scorecard at least quarterly, including progress, spending, participant experience, risks, corrective action, and decisions requiring board direction.

Culture and executive leadership:

• Build and maintain a stable, cohesive senior leadership team. Set clear decision authority and performance expectations; delegate operational authority to capable leaders while retaining accountability for agency-wide results.
• Build and maintain trust with staff, leaders, and the board by naming difficult realities promptly, explaining decisions and constraints, inviting dissent and input, and following through on commitments. Be accessible to staff and participants across programs and locations.
• Lead organizational change with empathy, steadiness, and decisiveness. Address conflict directly and fairly; prevent retaliation, favoritism, and gossip; support a safe route for staff to raise concerns and ensure concerns receive appropriate independent review.
• Promote a workplace that respects personal wellbeing, cultural identity, and lived experience. Strengthen supervisory practice, staff development, equitable recruitment and retention, labor management relationships, and succession planning.
• Model CAPRW's values: self-determination and inherent power of people; accountability and transparency; humility and compassion; and changing systems to heal communities.

Financial stewardship and organizational operations

• With the CFO and senior team, develop budgets that visibly support strategic priorities, maintain sound internal controls, safeguard restricted and unrestricted funds, monitor cash flow and reserves, and give the board timely, understandable financial and risk reporting.
• Oversee grant stewardship and compliance, including federal and state requirements and program regulations and obligations, through qualified program and finance leaders. Escalate material compliance, financial, safety, and reputational risks promptly.
• Make evidence-informed resource decisions amid funding volatility. Assess the sustainability and impact of current services and proposed pilots before committing funds; identify savings without compromising participant experience or core program quality.
• Ensure reliable systems for service quality, data, facilities, safety, human resources, and incident response. Clarify ownership and workflows across programs and shared services.

Fund development and external leadership

• Lead a board-supported development strategy that grows flexible and unrestricted revenue through individual, foundation, and corporate relationships while protecting the integrity of public funding and grant obligations.
• Serve as a credible ambassador and advocate with participants, community organizations, tribal and culturally specific partners, funders, elected officials, and public agencies. Build reciprocal partnerships that improve access and reflect community expertise.
• Advocate for CAPRW's programs and the communities it serves at the state and federal levels by building relationships with policymakers, educating public officials about community needs and program outcomes, and advancing funding and policy priorities that strengthen Community Action and its essential services.
• Champion a consistent CAPRW voice across programs and channels. Support communications staff in telling accurate, dignified, consent-based stories of participant experience and agency impact that strengthen recognition, partnerships, advocacy, and fundraising.
• Keep the agency rooted in the history and purpose of Community Action. Center participant voice and meaningful representation in planning, partnership development, and public decisions.

Board partnership and governance

• Provide the full board with timely, candid information on strategic progress, finances, operations, organizational climate, material risks, and emerging issues. Make board reports useful for decisions rather than relying on reassurance or selective disclosure.
• Partner with the board chair to support agendas, orientation, committee work, and meaningful participation by public, private, and consumer sector members. Respect the board's governance role and implement its adopted policies and decisions.
• Participate in an onboarding and performance review process with the full board, including agreed strategic and cultural measures, regular check ins, and a confidential pathway for concerns that does not depend on the CEO.

Safety : Responsible for conducting all duties in a safe manner.
Qualifications:
Required Experience:

• Experience with Community Action, Head Start and Early Head Start, CSBG, Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Department of Energy Weatherization Program regulations, or other Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guided programs.
• Significant senior leadership experience in a complex nonprofit, public service, education, or comparable mission-driven organization, including executive supervision, organizational change, and responsibility for substantial budgets.
• Demonstrated ability to execute a strategic plan through budgets, accountable leaders, meaningful measures, and regular reporting; build trust across a varied workforce; and make sound decisions under pressure.
• Experience with grant compliance, board governance, labor relations, and fund development or a demonstrated ability to lead experienced specialists in these areas.
• Ability to communicate clearly with staff, participants, board members, funders, and the public, and to partner respectfully with communities affected by poverty.
• Bachelor's or advanced degree in a relevant field is required.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience diversifying revenue and advancing culturally responsive service access and cross program integration.
• Demonstrated success developing and executing fundraising strategies, cultivating donor and funder relationships, and increasing unrestricted or flexible revenue from individual, foundation, and corporate sources.
• Certified Community Action Professional credential is welcome, or equivalent professional and community rooted experience.

Physical Requirements: Normal office physical exertion required. Requires sitting, standing, bending and reaching with manual dexterity sufficient to operate standard office machines such as computers, printers, telephone and other office equipment.

Environmental Requirements : The Chief Executive Officer usually works in an office environment, but the mission of the organization may sometimes take the CEO to non-standard workplaces. The CEO works a standard workweek, but additionally will often work evenings, weekends, and additional hours to accommodate activities such as Board meetings and representing the Agency at public events. Must have access to reliable transportation to be used for business related matters, and have a current operator's license and appropriate liability insurance. Must be able to travel for training, meetings, and conferences.
First year expectations:

• Establish trust through a listening and action process with staff, participants, board members, community partners, and union representatives; share what was learned and the decisions that follow.
• Agree with the board on an annual strategic implementation plan, a budget aligned to it, and a quarterly scorecard with baselines and accountable owners.
• Strengthen the senior team's decision process and cross department coordination; identify and resolve the most consequential operational and service access barriers.
• Present a fund development and partnership plan that addresses reliance on restricted public funding and shows how the agency will communicate its impact.

This description summarizes the role and may be updated by the Board of Directors as agency needs evolve.

Remote work eligibility: This position may be performed from a remote location up to 20% of the normal work schedule with prior approval from the Board of Directors.
Benefits:

Department: Executive


Anticipated Hiring Salary Range: $150,000 - $200,000 Annually


Locations: CAPRW Main Office - 450 Syndicate St. N. Saint Paul, MN 55104


Schedule: M-F, 40 Hours/Week, Full Time, Exempt


8:00am-4:30pm


Posting Dates: 10/5/2026 - 10/26/2026

Benefits: Community Action offers excellent benefits including generous 23 days paid time off (PTO) for new employees, 14 paid holidays plus two personal days, health, dental, vision & life insurance, health savings accounts (HSA), flexible saving accounts (FSA), retirement, employee discount programs and so much more!


Background Checks: Community Action conducts criminal background checks at the time of hire. Not all backgrounds are a barrier to employment.


Community Action Partnership of Ramsey and Washington Counties is an Equal Opportunity (EEO) Employer. We recruit, select, hire, place, transfer, promote, demote, layoff, discipline, terminate, recall, compensate, and train without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, gender identity, sex, sexual orientation, familial status, disability, veteran status, status with regard to public assistance, membership or activity in a local human rights commission, or any other basis protected by applicable laws, directives, and regulations of federal, state, and local governing bodies or agencies. We will provide reasonable accommodation to applicants and employees with disabilities whenever possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws.For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.