Executive Director/Chief Collaborative Officer

Histories Collaborative of Philadelphia; Philadelphia (Philadelphia County); On-site; USD 75,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Histories Collaborative of Philadelphia seeks its inaugural Executive Director/Chief Collaborative Officer to build an ambitious, mission-driven organization from the ground up, uniting hundreds of institutions to amplify underrepresented histories in Philadelphia.

The ED/CCO will lead strategy, fundraising, convening, advocacy, communications, technology, and administration, reporting to the Board and shaping governance and community partnerships from day one.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record in nonprofit leadership.
• Substantive content credibility with the histories field.
• Proven fundraising success.
• Experience in advocacy, public policy, coalition-building, or community organizing.
• Trusted relationships across Philadelphia's civic, philanthropic, and cultural landscape, or clear evidence of the network-building instincts and connections needed to develop them quickly.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and strong written and oral communication.
• Comfort and capability in startup or entrepreneurial environments.

Responsibilities

• Guide HCP through its transition to independent 501(c)(3) status and establish governance structures with the Board.
• Develop and implement the inaugural strategic plan focused on convenings, advocacy, and capacity-building.
• Serve as chief spokesperson and public representative, increasing credibility and visibility.
• Recruit and orient new Board members to form a diverse, active governance body.
• Design and execute a multi-pronged fundraising strategy with foundations, major donors, and earned revenue.
• Build relationships with Philadelphia's philanthropic community and funders, positioning HCP as a collaborative partner.
• Lead structured convening programs and develop sector maps and shared resource frameworks.
• Develop a public advocacy agenda and engage with City Council, State Legislatures, and media.

Skills

Fundraising

Strategic planning

Nonprofit leadership

Advocacy

Stakeholder relations

Communication

Board governance

Education

Graduate degree in history, public history, nonprofit management, public policy, or related field

Job description

The Histories Collaborative of Philadelphia seeks a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and collaborative leader to serve as its inaugural Executive Director/Chief Collaborative Officer. This is an extraordinary opportunity for a mission-driven professional to build an organization from the ground up, one that will represent hundreds of institutions, amplify underrepresented histories, and help define how one of America's most historically significant cities tells its stories in the decades ahead.

The Executive Director will report to the Board of Directors and will work in close partnership with Board members, who will serve as active contributors to HCP's work in this early stage. The ED/CCO will be responsible for every dimension of organizational life: strategy, fundraising, stakeholder relations, communications, convening design, advocacy, technology, and administration.

Key Responsibilities

Organizational Leadership and Strategy

• Guide HCP through its transition to independent 501(c)(3) status, including completing legal filings, establishing financial systems, and formalizing governance structures in partnership with the Board.
• Develop and implement HCP's inaugural strategic plan in collaboration with the Board, with a near-term focus on convenings, advocacy, and foundational capacity-building.
• Serve as the organization's chief spokesperson and public representative, building HCP's credibility and visibility across the histories sector and the broader Philadelphia civic community.
• In partnership with the Board, recruit and orient new Board members to build the diverse, active governance body that HCP's startup stage requires, and design the working structure that makes Board service genuinely consequential. Under HCP's non-giving governance model, directors contribute network access, sectoral expertise, advocacy voice, and philanthropic introductions rather than personal capital. The ED is responsible for tying those contributions to specific fundraising, advocacy, and sector-relationship goals, and for making Board service worth directors' time so that the Board yields substantively engaged members rather than a partially attentive roster.

Fundraising and Financial Sustainability

• Design and execute a multi-pronged fundraising strategy, with a focus on foundation grants, individual major donors, and earned revenue from events, training, and consulting services.
• Cultivate and steward relationships with Philadelphia's philanthropic community, including the William Penn Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts and its affiliates, the Knight Foundation, the Connelly Foundation, and other major funders, positioning HCP as a credible, collaborative partner and not a competitor to the many organizations the sector already supports.
• Raise operating and program capital in ways that member organizations experience as additive to the field rather than extractive from it. Managing this perception, and the underlying reality behind it, is among the ED's most consequential responsibilities and represents the single sharpest risk to HCP's legitimacy.
• Develop grant proposals, reports, and donor communications that compellingly articulate HCP's unique value proposition.
• Manage the organization's budget with transparency and discipline, in close coordination with Board financial oversight.
• Explore collaborative fundraising models with partner organizations to unlock funding that individual organizations cannot access alone.

Convening and Sector Engagement

• Design and implement a structured, tiered convening program including quarterly sector-wide gatherings, thematic working groups, neighborhood-based roundtables, and an annual Histories Summit aligned with Philadelphia Histories Month each April.
• Ensure convenings are purposeful, inclusive, and accessible to organizations of all sizes, from major institutions to small volunteer-run community archives, and design processes that resist capture by the largest organizations while actively cultivating participation from the smallest.
• Build and maintain a current, comprehensive mapping of the Philadelphia histories sector as a foundation for HCP's convening and advocacy work.
• Develop tools and frameworks, such as partnership rubrics and shared resource guides, to support equitable, sustainable collaboration across the sector.

Advocacy and Public Affairs

• Develop and steward a shared advocacy agenda for Philadelphia's histories sector, built through genuine consultation with diverse stakeholders.
• Serve as the sector's public representative in op-eds, City Council and State Legislative testimony, panels, and press, articulating why Philadelphia's histories sector is civic infrastructure worth supporting and investing in.
• Actively represent the sector in the Philadelphia Cultural Plan process, the 2026 Semiquincentennial, and other civic and cultural planning efforts.
• Build productive working relationships with Philadelphia City Council, the Mayor's Office, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and relevant city and state agencies to advocate for public investment in history and cultural heritage.
• Amplify underrepresented histories and ensure that BIPOC-led organizations, immigrant communities, and neighborhood-based institutions are central, not marginal, to HCP's advocacy agenda.
• Monitor federal and state policy developments affecting the histories sector and mobilize the field to respond when needed.

Communications and Narrative

• Develop HCP's public voice and communications strategy, including digital presence, media relationships, and sector-facing communications, with the messaging discipline and brand stewardship needed to shape how HCP is discussed in press, in philanthropic conversations, and within the histories sector itself.
• Lead campaigns such as Philadelphia Histories Month social media activations to raise public awareness of the sector.
• Serve as a media spokesperson and thought leader on issues affecting Philadelphia's histories community.

Technology, Digital Infrastructure, and AI

• Lead HCP's internal technology decisions across finance, communications, constituent relationship management, and collaboration platforms.
• Support the sector in identifying, evaluating, and where appropriate developing shared digital infrastructure that individual member organizations could not sustain alone, including in the areas of collections access, discovery, audience engagement, and interpretive work.
• Approach artificial intelligence with informed curiosity rather than evangelism or reflexive caution, helping the sector navigate genuine opportunities (transcription, translation, accessibility, discovery, and community-facing interpretation) alongside genuine risks (bias in historical datasets, misattribution, and pressure on practitioner labor).

Qualifications

• Demonstrated track record in nonprofit leadership.
• Substantive content credibility with the histories field.
• Proven fundraising success, .
• Experience in advocacy, public policy, coalition-building, or community organizing.
• Trusted relationships across Philadelphia's civic, philanthropic, and cultural landscape, or clear evidence of the network-building instincts and connections needed to develop them quickly.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills.
• Strong written and oral communication skills.
• Comfort and capability in startup or entrepreneurial environments.
• A convener's temperament that finds genuine satisfaction in enabling other organizations' work rather than accumulating personal or institutional profile.
• Working literacy in current technology and artificial intelligence tools.
• A genuine commitment to equity, inclusion, and the amplification of historically marginalized voices.
• Capacity to function effectively as a solo or near-solo professional, with Board support.

Preferred

• Existing relationships within Philadelphia's histories, cultural heritage, arts, or civic sectors.
• Experience with historical storytelling, public history, or cultural heritage work at scale.
• Experience navigating the intersection of cultural policy, public funding, and municipal or state government.
• Prior experience leading a coalition, association, or sector-wide intermediary organization.
• Graduate degree in history, public history, nonprofit management, public policy, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

Leadership Profile

HCP's first Executive Director will be a builder and a connector, someone energized by the challenge of creating something new and by the importance of what Philadelphia's histories represent for a city, a nation, and a contested cultural moment. The ideal candidate brings:

• A convener's disposition.
• A network mindset.
• Entrepreneurial drive.
• Strategic clarity.
• A public advocacy voice.
• Cultural humility.
• Philadelphia pride.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience, reflective of HCP's startup budget stage and Philadelphia's nonprofit market. Salary expected to be in the $75,000 to $90,000 range. Further details will be shared with candidates in the screening process.

HCP is committed to building an organization that reflects the geographic, cultural, and demographic diversity of the histories sector it serves. Candidates from communities historically underrepresented in cultural leadership are strongly encouraged to apply.