The application deadline is November 23, 2025 at 11:59 pm Pacific.
Best Starts for Kids is hiring a Systems & Policy Change Manager to support our Communities of Opportunity investment.
Job Duties
- Establish and maintain collaborative working relationships with a diverse array of key partners.
- Provide technical assistance and resources to grant recipients, community partners, and internal partners.
- Conscientiously communicate to advance funded partner involvement/engagement.
- Apply communication and group dynamic strategies in interactions with groups and individuals.
- Seek input from other organizations, individuals, and the community to develop community driven programs.
- Maintain an understanding of best practices and promising approaches to racial equity, social determinants of health, youth development/engagement, and/or public health. Evaluate information relevant to youth engagement and youth empowerment and/or coalition/partnership community power building
- Create service agreements and contract documents, working with contract/finance staff, including scope of work, budgets, project timelines, workplans, invoices and report forms for funding proposed project outcomes/deliverables.
- Manage service agreements and contracts with community agencies including developing scopes of work, workplans, conducting site visits, and ensuring grantee produces identified deliverables.
- Monitor and track project budgets with the support of fiscal staff and make timely requests for budget changes and contract revisions.
- Draft documents for procurement (e.g. Request for Proposals) and assist with funding review and selection processes.
- Develop recommendations for continuous project quality and process improvement.
- Implement project plans and programs consistent with King County policies.
- Creates work plans, completes reports and achieves deadlines.
- Other duties as assigned.
Experience, Qualifications, Knowledge, Skills
Required:
- Two (2) years of experience managing contracts including expertise with developing, tracking, and adjusting scopes of work, workplans and budgets as well as conducting program site visits.
- Two (2) years of demonstrated experience in at least one of the following
- Providing technical assistance/capacity building to organizations on elevating community perspectives and voices,
- Sharing power with community partners and co-designing projects with community members.
- Deep knowledge of equity and racial and social justice principles and practices and ability to apply this knowledge to all areas of work.
- Two (2) years’ of demonstrated experience in supporting organizations in effectively implementing systems and policy change strategies.
- Strong organizational and project management skills.
- Ability to multitask and work in stressful situations involving changing deadlines and expectations.
- Strong formal writing ability, including ability to write a variety of documents for various audiences.
- Facilitation and negotiation skills.
- Ability to work independently to manage numerous projects and priorities simultaneously on defined timelines.
- Skill in working effectively as a team member to coordinate accomplishment of specific assignments.
Desired:
- Knowledgeable about and experience in providing technical assistance on systems and policy change strategies specific to Communities of Opportunity funded partners or with communities most impacted by inequities in health, housing, economic opportunity and/or community connections.
- Knowledge about public health approaches to impacting inequities by geography and among cultural groups; familiarity with community base building and community power-building approaches.
Best Starts for Kids
Building on the deep knowledge, connections, and skills within King County communities, and backed by what science and research tells us about human development, the Best Starts for Kids King County initiative meets children and families with the right services at the right time. The first Best Starts for Kids levy, approved by King County voters in 2015, reached 490,000 of King County’s youngest children and their families and 40,000 youth and young adults, catalyzing strong starts in a child’s earliest years, and sustaining those gains through to adulthood. In August 2021, King County voters chose to renew the levy with over 62% approval for another six years. The plan for the second Best Starts for Kids levy will maintain current Best Starts for Kids investments in promotion, prevention, and early intervention, while deepening our investments to address critical needs in our community. View the Best Starts for Kids Implementation Plan: 2022 – 2027.
