Vice President, Financial Planning and Operations

About The Position
The KIPP Foundation seeks a Vice President, Financial Planning and Operations to lead the Foundation's financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, and to strengthen financial performance across KIPP 's national network of 279 schools. This is an opportunity to shape how a mission-driven national organization plans, invests, and operates, and to help ensure every KIPP region has the financial strength to sustain excellent schools for students.
Reporting to the Chief Financial Officer and serving on the Foundation's senior leadership team, the Vice President leads a team of six, including four direct reports: two Senior Directors of Financial Planning and Support, a Director of Finance Systems and Reporting, and a Director of Finance Operations. You will partner closely with Foundation senior leaders and regional finance leaders to set clear expectations, identify risk early, and direct support where it matters most.
The ideal candidate brings deep nonprofit finance expertise, with education finance experience across more than one state strongly preferred. This leader moves easily between strategy and execution, has built high-performing teams and scalable systems, and believes strong financial stewardship is essential to great outcomes for students.
Responsibilities
Financial Strategy and Sustainability
Own the Foundation's annual operating budget and long-term financial sustainability, leading strategy while staying close to the details, in close partnership with the Chief Financial Officer.
Partner with fundraising and grants teams to project revenue and build multi-year funding strategies that align revenue with investment priorities and organizational commitments.
Build long-term financial models tied to the Foundation's strategic plan, including the impact of growth into new regions, and connect them to the annual budget.
Manage liquidity against a seven-month cash reserve target, producing monthly cash flow forecasts and partnering with the Chief Financial Officer on investment strategy.
Budgeting, Forecasting, and Financial Reporting
Lead the full annual budget cycle, including staffing plans, multi-year projections, and scenario modeling, delivering a Board-approved budget before the fiscal year begins.
Lead the Foundation's forecasting work, including rolling forecasts with functional leaders, and hold budget owners accountable for meeting targets by fund and in total.
Partner with talent and program teams to align staffing and investment decisions with financial targets, and give off-track teams practical recommendations to get back on course.
Lead the Foundation's timely, accurate monthly financial reporting and analysis, giving budget owners, regional leaders, and senior leadership a clear view of budget-to-actuals, key levers, tradeoffs, and long-term implications.
Finance Operations, Systems, and Internal Controls
Oversee core finance operations, including procurement, accounts payable and receivable, payroll, and corporate cards, with clear service standards for timeliness, accuracy, and responsiveness.
Maintain strong internal controls, policy compliance, and audit readiness across all financial processes.
Drive efficiency through process improvement, automation, and system upgrades, including expense management and ERP strategy, with real-time budget-to-actuals reporting as a priority.
Integrate operations, accounting, and planning systems so the Foundation runs on accurate, real-time data and serves as a model for KIPP regions.
Regional Financial Oversight and Advisory Support
Lead financial monitoring across the KIPP network, partnering with regional superintendents and regional CFOs while maintaining clear visibility across all regions.
Monitor regional financial health through quarterly data, budgets, and audits, and lead a tiered support model that matches support to each region's needs.
Set clear standards for regional financial performance, reporting, and internal controls, including requirements for pass-through funding; diagnose challenges, support improvement plans, and focus team capacity on higher-risk regions.
Coach regional CFOs and finance leaders through complex financial challenges, helping them weigh options and build credible plans. Advise with care and sound judgment, recognizing that each KIPP region is independent and governed by their own Boards.
Stay closely aligned with the Chief Financial Officer on regional engagements, raising risks early and keeping guidance to regions consistent with KIPP Foundation positions.
Lead the finance community of practice across regions and advise leadership on network-wide trends and where to invest for long-term sustainability.
Finance Team Leadership
Lead and develop a high-performing Finance team across Financial Planning and Support and Finance Operations, with the clear ownership, systems, and automation a lean team needs to operate effectively.
Ensure alignment across planning, operations, and accounting to deliver accurate and efficient financial management.
Serve on the Finance Leadership Team, helping set the direction of Finance at the KIPP Foundation and building a culture of ownership, collaboration, and excellence.
Skills and Mindsets
Mission and Student Focus: Demonstrates passion and commitment to KIPP ’s mission and possesses the desire and ability to uphold KIPP ’s core values (Focus on Excellent Results, Collective Impact, and Courageous Action)
Self Management: Demonstrated record of setting and achieving ambitious goals for their departments in complex or ambiguous environment; uses data, research, and analysis to set a high bar of excellence for goal setting; effectively distributes and redistributes work among direct reports, teammates, and teams to optimize goal attainments; effectively sets and fosters a culture that enables and celebrates teammates' achievements and goals attainment.
Work Management: Sets a clear vision that ensures alignment of the team's work to organizational goals. Effectively prioritizes and delivers work products that ensure sustainability and scalability of work. Develops and implements agile project plans that ensure cross functional collaboration and resource sharing to ensure achieving organizational goals; creates and ensures systems are in place for knowledge management.
Process Management: Able to build and align goals and project plans with organization priorities; develops and codifies processes that promote coordination, efficiency and efficacy across KF and the Network; prioritizes processes that ensure sustainability and scalability; ensures team is finding efficiencies through process implementation and improvement, resource sharing, or other methods.
Data-Driven Actions and Decisions: Effectively uses data to shape teamwide decisions and the learning agenda or evaluation of a function or significant initiative. Able to generate, implement, and evaluate solutions with a focus on scalability and sustainability.
Communication and Change Management: Effectively articulates case for change to multiple functions, teams, and/or offices through clear and compelling presentations, tailoring communications and engagement approach for different audiences. Effectively translates vision into actionable plans across team stakeholders; champions KF and networkwide change with all stakeholders.
Collaboration: Identifies and leverages opportunities with both internal and external stakeholders to increase impact. Leads successful collaboration across functions and evolves plans to get strong results. Has the interpersonal, diplomatic, relationship building and communication skills to connect and compel teammates across different functions to collaborate effectively toward shared goals.
People Management & Development: Effectively ensures strong professional development and coaching for teammates directly and through layers. Proficient in the mechanics of succession management and perf