Business Relations Associate

DonorsChoose makes it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. Projects range from art supplies to build the set for a school musical, to books and puzzles that affirm students’ identities, to bird seed for an at-home science project. We proudly serve all US public schools, public charter schools, and Head Start centers, and we combat systemic inequity by driving a majority of donations to schools that have been historically underfunded due to economic and racial inequity.

DonorsChoose has been recognized as a best place to work by GOOD Magazine and the Nonprofit Times, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Our dedicated team works from across the United States bring classroom dreams to life.

Team Overview

The Finance, IT & Procurement team builds relationships and systems to protect the financial integrity of our organization, and ensure the right resource or experience is delivered to teachers without delay. You'll help deliver on the core mission of our organization by leveraging best-in-class fulfillment and customer service practices to ensure that materials get to the right place at the right time. 

Within the Procurement Team, the Business Relations functional area manages relationships with our 20+ technically-integrated vendors; advocates for teacher-focused improvements; and identifies opportunities for improved vendor performance. Our Business Relations colleagues are excellent problem solvers and are at the forefront of collaborating with our Vendor Community to help delight teachers and students with classroom materials.

Primary Responsibilities

The Business Relations Associate role provides critical relationship building support for our team’s responsibility of getting funded materials into classrooms. Our team establishes and builds relationships with vendors to help them fully understand our model and connect to our organization’s mission. We want vendor teams to appreciate the power of each classroom story behind seemingly generic purchase orders, so they can better understand, advocate and champion DonorsChoose priorities within their company. 

We leverage item-level data to give real-time feedback to our 20+ vendors to help streamline processes and gain efficiencies in their performance. We work closely with vendor teams to identify and address resource availability issues and support inventory forecasting.  We share best practices and offer ongoing support to ensure vendor teams have the tools they need to adhere to our unique policies. 

We are looking for friendly, confident teammates to provide exceptional assistance to our vendor roster to support the growing community of public school teachers using our website.  If you are motivated by our mission and get a thrill from helping people, we want to hear from you! 

In this role you will...

• Support and engage our Vendor Community with DonorsChoose requirements and processes
  • Provide frontline, holistic account support to vendor teams by answering questions on everything from vendor requirements to escalated customer service issues, and acting as an information liaison between vendors and DonorsChoose teams
  • Support processes that enable our small but mighty team to collaborate and communicate with 20+ vendors including fielding new vendor inquiry requests, crafting surveys and monitoring responses, and executing scaled email sends
  • Identify, resolve, and escalate sensitive or urgent vendor-related issues as needed to support our Procurement and Customer Support teams
  • Draft effective vendor communication, including vendor newsletters, surveys and curated content for our vendor hub
  • Prepare for and leadindividual vendor calls and meetings by analyzing vendor data trends, collecting feedback from relevant internal teams and creating decks
  • Contribute to teamwide vendor engagement efforts, such as webinars 
  • Collaborate with vendor teams to prepare inventory and product selection for specific Partnerships and DonorsChoose campaigns like #FillEveryShelf
  • Facilitate new vendor onboarding and frontline vendor team training
  • Identify opportunities to improve our procedures, trainings, policies, and tools to support business rules and teacher shopping experience and ensure our vendor records are up to date
  • Execute seasonal projects which help maintain health of team and Vendor Community 
• Connect the Vendor Community to our DonorsChoose mission  
  • Build and manage relationships with vendor teams to help them understand and align with vendor requirements, the DonorsChoose mission, and org priorities
  • Communicate opportunities or vendor initiatives with potential to drive progress toward org goals, especially closing the racial equity gap in education
  • Inform and prepare vendor teams for DonorsChoose model adjustments as we adapt to meet shifting teacher, school, and district needs
  • Assist in data-driven vendor feedback/org reporting to ensure a seamless teacher experience: maintain vendor-centric data dashboards and performance reports; identify teacher resource demand trends and shopping catalog gaps; escalate resource concerns triggered by supply chain constraints
  • Execute vendor processes that support cross team initiatives, priorities, and specialty areas of Business Relations work

Qualifications

The right candidate is motivated by our mission and shares our core values of: relentlessness, user focus, flexibility, ingenuity, teamwork, and transparency.  We seek a team player who is/has:

• Highly organized, very thorough and detail-oriented (nothing gets past you!), and able to coordinate and prioritize multiple activities simultaneously with flexibility and an ability to quickly adapt to a change in project priorities
• A problem-solving, solution-focused philosophy; belief in continuous improvement; and a customer-focused mindset
  • Natural interest in finding root causes and turning those problems into opportunities
  • Comfortable with repetitive tasks and able to shift priorities as needed based on workload trends
  • Strong quantitative and analytical skills
  • Data analysis experience, with an ability to apply a critical thinking lens
• Self-motivated and can successfully incorporate feedback for professional growth
• A solid computer literacy foundation
  • Proficiency with Office/Google Workspace, especially Excel/Sheets
  • Tech savvy, comfort in an online environment, and a willingness to learn new systems
• Strong speaking, writing, interpersonal, and presentation skills
  • Demonstrated ability to collaborate and build strong relationships - account management experience a plus
• Committed to racial equity
  • Excited to play a role in our evolution to more directly address racial inequity in education
•  1-2 years of experience in a relationship building, operational, or data-centric role

Compensation and Benefits

Our compensation philosophy ensures that we are both externally competitive with tech-forward nonprofits of a similar size and internally fair in our pay practices. The following ranges represent the target offer range given the scope and experience expectations for this role. 

• The hiring salary range for this role is $43,000 - $52,000.
• We have a hiring salary range of $49,000 - $58,000 for specific higher cost of labor locations, which include New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Once employees are hired, the salary range for their role increases to ensure that employees are able to receive performance-based raises and grow in their role. 

We are open to a variety of experiences, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced or more senior than this job description as posted. If that’s the case, an updated salary range will be shared with candidates if they move forward in our hiring process.

In addition, we offer full-time staff 25 paid vacation days per year and 11 paid holidays, a rich employer-paid individual and family health plan, a matching 401(k) plan (up to 5% of base salary), annual professional development stipend, and casual and flexible work environment. To learn more about what it is like to work for DonorsChoose, visit our careers page.

Hybrid Workplace and Other Details

In this role, you’ll have the option to work a flexible hybrid schedule in our NYC office, or to work fully remotely from CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, MD, MI, NJ, NY, OR, PA, TX, or WI. 

Candidates who are not in the NYC area should expect to travel to our NYC office on as-needed basis, about 4-6 times per year. All work-related travel expenses will be covered by the organization and proper safety precautions will be taken to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

DonorsChoose is a fully vaccinated workplace and all new employees, regardless of their work location, will be asked to share proof of full vaccination against COVID-19 within two weeks of their hire date or request an exemption from this policy due to a disability or sincerely held religious belief or practice.

To Apply

Please submit your resume online and answer the application questions. A cover letter is optional and may be addressed to, Tanisha Golding, Sr. Associate, Business Relations.

A Final Note

The DonorsChoose team works toward a nation where students in every community have the resources needed for an excellent education. To do this we hire and support a diverse team of the best and the brightest talent available.

We are an organization increasingly representative of the varied races and ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, religious and political beliefs, and abilities that comprise our nation. DonorsChoose focuses on attracting, retaining, and advancing diverse talent because it makes us more effective, high-performing, creative, and resilient.  

If you are passionate about our mission, highly skilled in your field, and looking for a place where you can bring all of yourself to work, we want you.