Externship- Manager, Strategy & Special Projects

Externship- Manager, Strategy & Special Projects

About the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP):

Our mission

We partner with low-income and working people to build economic and racial equity. We do this by confronting economic abuse and investing in community wealth. We use an ever-evolving set of legal, economic and advocacy tools to challenge and dismantle unjust systems, building quickly towards a world where all people have what they need to live and thrive. 

Our Organization

The Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP) is a Colorado-based nonprofit. Launched in 2020 as the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project, our organization was formed to keep our neighbors housed during the pandemic. Working with clients, we built a deeply integrative approach to eviction, foreclosure, and homelessness prevention that centers the legal and financial needs of housing-insecure families and uses a variety of tools to keep them housed. 

Our team now serves more than 1,000 people per month, bringing together housing lawyers, economists, data analysts, policy-experts, organizers, and technologists to serve our clients. We have served more than 50,000 low-income Coloradans across 45 counties, distributing over $200 million in emergency assistance. We have also contributed to the passage of major legislation to prevent eviction, stop economic abuse, and make credit and life-saving medication cheaper.  CEDP’s model has been cited as a best practice by White House,
HUD, the
Urban Institute, and in the media.

Building on our work to stop evictions, CEDP has further expanded its integrated services model to include disaster response, predatory towing, debt collection, benefit access & navigation, long-term rental assistance, and homelessness response. Similar to CEDP’s work on rental housing, these efforts offer a continuum of care that includes navigation and advisory services, targeted payments, legal support, and the ability to participate in advocacy. 

More about the role:

We are seeking a Strategy & Special Projects Manager to help shape CEDP's overall strategy and programs. In this role, your focus will be on short-term, high-impact strategy and operations projects with a bias toward building new programs and discovering, sizing, and implementing new revenue opportunities for CEDPdriving organizational efficiency. You will manage, plan, and execute key initiatives that align with the organization's broader mission to build economic and racial justice. Examples of previous projects led by this role: research, design, and implementation of a new pilot program; drafting of a major federal grant application and managing grant progress across teams; supporting advocacy campaigns and creating advocacy materials/research, including data analysis on the impact of rental assistance funds. These projects will leverage analytical and technology skills, as well as interpersonal and presentation skills.

You will be a close collaborator with the leadership team and attend leadership meetings where you will learn first-hand how to build, run, and scale a social impact start-up. You will report directly to the CEO. While you will primarily work with the CEO, you will also work cross-functionally and act as a thought partner to the broader leadership team, collaborating with our CEOs, VP of Program Operations, Chief of Staff, and others on revenue opportunities, operations, and programs. Lastly, both CEDP CEOs are former management consultants. Therefore, they understand how to offer externs the opportunity to achieve maximum impact, and will invest heavily in the extern’s professional development.

Why Us?

• We are a social enterprise with a sustainable business model focused on one of the most important issues in society – keeping people in their homes and maintaining access to affordable housing
• Opportunity for local involvement while making a statewide and even a national impact
• Our co-founders have collaborated for 5 years and are committed to building a company where everyone loves to work
• Unlimited growth potential within the organization
• The opportunity to step into a new organization five years after its founding and play a substantial role in its growth

In this role, you will:

• Business Strategy (40%)
  • Develop and support the launch of new, innovative programs that focus on economic justice, housing, and community wealth-building for low-income and working people
  • Lead end-to-end program design and management, research and data-driven analysis, budgeting resourcing, and implementation for new programs
  • Help manage newly-launched Loan Fund built to extend capital needs for non-profits operating in social services industry, including compiling learnings and creating a scaling plan
  • Work closely with the team to develop and execute on the Loan Fund's roadmap, providing feedback on planning, prioritization, and processes
• Business Development (40%)
  • Drive business development strategies and implementation plans for key strategic projects for CEDP, including conducting market research, sizing, and forecasting and developing recommendations to effectively drive sales efforts
  • Identify, scope, and present new contracts and sales opportunities
  • Develop outreach and sales pipelines and processes 
• Organizational strategy (20%)
  • Collaborate with the executive team on the long-term strategic plan, with a focus on expanding our sustainableourcreating a sustainable funding model
  • Identify new contracts and sales opportunities (e.g., government bids)
  • Support cross-functional team leads in executing high-impact projects and assist with data reporting (set-up, tracking) on key program metrics and outcomes
  • Create drafts of grant applications (includes secondary research and impact assessment) and manage grant progress across teams
  • Identify foundation grants and federal/state money for which we might qualify
  • Improve database of existing CEDP content, streamlining materials used for grant applications and reporting (including reference tools)

• Project Management (20%)
  • Help identify key milestones and deliverables for special projects
  • Track progress against goals and deadlines for special projects
  • Ensure frequent, clear, and consistent communication around project progress and needs amongst key stakeholders

Position requirements:

• 2 years professional experience in strategic / analytics roles
• A background working with diverse communities and a diverse set of stakeholders
• Passion for social impact and mission-oriented work
• A bias towards building and a comfort with strengthening a minimum viable product
• Comfort with ambiguity in a fast-paced, all-hands-on-deck environment
• Outstanding analytical and problem-solving skills and facility with numbers and data
• Strong oral communications skills and the ability to influence leaders through logic, data, and presentation skills
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to manage complex stakeholder environments
• Exceptional analytical ability in Excel and data science skills are a plus
• Proficiency and/or experience with CRMs such as HubSpot or Salesforce is preferred

Additional Details: 

• Candidates must reside in Colorado, ideally within the greater Denver Metro area. The position includes competitive pay, flexible time off, benefits package (including medical, dental, vision), and 401k. 
• A  base salary of $73,000 - $85,000  a year if hybrid or in-person, add - plus a $1,000 per year hybrid employee salary adjustment
• All employees receive a technology stipend of $720 per year
• Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis but must be received by May 2, 2025
• The estimated time to complete the recruitment process will be by May 17, 2025 
• As in-person work is sometimes required, all employees at CEDP & CED Law are expected to maintain current vaccination status in keeping with CDC recommendations.

Salary : $73,000 - $85,000