Executive Director

The COOL Cooperative is a New Orleans-based 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping young people with film-industry workforce development. We offer summer camps, in-school classes, after-school programs, and hands-on training in film production.

Job Description: Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Executive Director (ED) will have overall strategic and operational responsibility for COOL’s staff, programs, expansion, and execution of its mission. She or he will initially develop deep knowledge of field, core programs, operations, and business plans before developing and executing their own strategic vision.

Responsibilities

Leadership & Management:

Ensure ongoing local programmatic excellence, rigorous program evaluation, and consistent quality of finance and administration, fundraising, communications, and systems; recommend timelines and resources needed to achieve the strategic goals.

Actively engage and energize COOL Nonprofit volunteers, board members, event committees, alumni, partnering organizations, and funders.

Develop, maintain, and support a strong Board of Directors; serve as ex-officio of each committee; seek and build board involvement with strategic direction for both ongoing local operations as well as for the national rollout.

Lead, coach, develop, recruit, and retain COOL’s team.

Ensure effective systems to track scaling progress, and regularly evaluate program components, so as to measure successes that can be effectively communicated to the board, funders, and other constituents.

Manage COOL’s gear and equipment as well as location and organizational logistics.

Fundraising & Communications:

Expand local, regional and national revenue-generating and fundraising activities to support existing program operations and regional expansion.

Deepen and refine all aspects of communications—from web presence to external relations with the goal of creating a stronger brand.

Use external presence and relationships to garner new opportunities.

Apply for grants sufficient to maintain COOL’s operating budget.

Ultimate responsibility for raising money required to continue excellent operations of the organization.

Qualifications

The ED will be thoroughly committed to COOL’s mission. All candidates should have proven leadership, coaching, and relationship management experience.

Specific requirements include:

Collegiate degree with at least 3 years of senior management experience; track record of effectively leading an outcomes-based organization and staff; ability to point to specific examples of having developed and operationalized strategies that have taken an organization to the next stage of growth.

Strong preference to candidates with a working knowledge of, or experience in, the film industry.

Demonstrated ability to fundraise, manage donations, and grown an organization.

Unwavering commitment to quality programs and data-driven program evaluation.

Excellence in organizational management with the ability to coach staff, manage, and develop high-performance teams, set and achieve strategic objectives, and manage a budget.

Ideally, past success working with a Board of Directors with the ability to cultivate existing board member relationships.

Strong marketing, public relations, and fundraising experience with the ability to engage a wide range of stakeholders and cultures.

Strong written and verbal communication skills; a persuasive and passionate communicator with excellent interpersonal and multidisciplinary project skills.

Ability to work effectively in collaboration with diverse groups of people.

Passion, idealism, integrity, positive attitude, mission-driven, and self-directed.

Please note: We are an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status

More:

COOL is a small-but-growing organization, serving around 120 students with a team size of 3-4. Our annual budget is around $330,000, and the starting salary for this position is expected to be around $85,000 per year.

Interested candidates should submit a résumé and cover letter to Board Chair Marcus Brown AND Board Secretary Jolene Pinder . You may also reach out to Marcus and Jolene with any specific questions about the position.