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Managing Director :: Job Description

Next River is seeking an operationally-minded collaborator to come on board as our first Managing Director. This person will take Next River forward in its continued evolution and support the execution of the next five years of our strategic plan and beyond. The Managing Director will work closely with and report to the Executive Director, and supervise a small, growing team. 

We are eager to bring on someone with lots of organizational management experience, who loves to build systems, manage finances, and nurture a growing team. We are looking for someone who brings a distinct mix of skills. They are equally at home in a budget-to-actual spreadsheet as they are around the table guiding a debrief during a team huddle. 

As we are envisioning it, the Managing Director role consists of three core universes of work: 

• Strategic Execution 

• The Managing Director guides the team’s execution of strategic goals and deliverables, providing high-level program management. 

• This person collaboratively designs and manages the implementation of our organizational strategy. They create, hold, and improve the operational container for the organization. 

• Ideally, they are someone with a deep knowledge of organizational best practices so that we are not reinventing the wheel on any of the day-to-day operations of running an organization, but also gets that some models and formats need to be adjusted to better suit our needs and values.

• Finances

• The right person for this role will be eager to know Next River's finances inside and out. 

• With support from our top-notch accountant, they will have their finger on the pulse of our fundraising process and know what it means for our programming and staffing plans as money comes in. 

• While our Executive Director will remain “the face” of our fundraising work, the Managing Director will play a key role in interfacing between our organizational budgets and programming to determine how fundraising opportunities get managed. 

• This person will also manage our growing fiscal sponsorship program, which currently consists of four values-aligned projects. 

• People + Processes 

• We want a people person in this role; someone who is holding the organizational culture and supporting the accountability and development of our team with care. 

• The person in this role will be responsible for tracking and growing the capacities of the Next River team, bringing on new roles and contractors, and reshaping roles to align with strategic priorities. 

• They hold the overall design and implementation of how Next River lives out its values as an organization in its employment practices. The person in this position recognizes the larger political, social, and cultural context in which we are doing our work and is able to be strategic about our particular role. 

• Alongside planning for team retreats, they will manage employee and contractor relationships and paperwork—from vacation time to contracts. 

The details

• This is a full-time position.

• While the position is remote, we have a strong preference for someone located in or around the Bay Area to make in-person meetings easeful. 

• Salary is $175-200K depending on experience, plus benefits.

We’re looking for someone who has

• A passion for social justice work and a deep understanding of and fluency in intersectionality about race, gender, and class. You are committed to ending oppression and helping us get free.

• An appreciation for the emergent nature of this kind of long-term, iterative work, and motivation to wrangle and create order within the ambiguity.

• A high level of skill in creating smoothly running systems. You recognize organizing/organization as an act of service.

• Practiced emotional intelligence. You know yourself well—your strengths and areas of growth, what you need and what your boundaries are, and what you can and can’t do. You ask for help when you need it. You are good at getting to know others so you can work with them effectively and build a strong team.

• An ability to hold the big picture and also execute on the details.  Someone who can translate that big-picture thinking into pragmatic workflows and project plans. 

• Excellent communication skills and can be both kind and direct.  

• A skillful manager. 

• Good presentation, editing, and writing skills. 

• A willingness to take on challenges and learn new subject matter.

• A comfort level with online tools and applications. You’re not a software engineer, but you like new tools and techniques and can evaluate what might work well for our team.

• The ability to foster a thoughtful, joyful, accountable, healthy work environment.

• 8+ years of experience in organizational management is ideal.

• An understanding and enthusiasm for abolition, anarchy, socialism, mutual aid, and/or cooperatives would be a plus, but is not required.


We strongly encourage people who identify as Black, Indigenous, queer, transgender, and/or have lived experience of being low-income, unhoused, incarcerated, and/or doing sex work to apply. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply, knowing decisions concerning the employment relationship will be made without regard to age, race, ethnicity, color, religion, disability, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, and marital status.

We do not anticipate that candidates will have every skill listed here. We encourage you to apply if this role seems like a fit for you regardless of your specific experience.

If you are interested in this role, let us know by filling out this application form. If you have additional questions about the role or the process, please reach out jobs@nextriver.org.  If we decide to interview you, you will be paid $50 for your time beyond the initial screening interview.

We’ll be looking at applications on a rolling basis but will prioritize applications submitted by January 31st and plan to make an offer in March 2025 at the latest. We’re looking for someone who can start ASAP, but are most interested in finding the right fit for the role.