Program Associate – Social Innovation Lab

At United Way, we believe in the power of unity to create lasting change. We’re committed to strengthening education, income and health – the building blocks of opportunity – in our community. And for 100 years, North Texans who share this passion have joined with us to LIVE UNITED. Our movement of community change agents and hand-raisers is growing, and we’re looking for a skilled Project Manager to build on this momentum.

The Social Innovation Lab at United Way of Metropolitan Dallas supports entrepreneurs and nonprofits working on complex challenges in education, income, and health. Our programs succeed when execution is strong, consistent, and thoughtful.

The Program Associate coordinates and supports project execution of the Social Innovation Lab’s programs by providing coordination, logistics, tracking, and follow-through across the Accelerator, Incubator, and Innovation Studio. This is an execution-focused role designed to increase reliability, reduce operational drag, and support program managers in delivering high-quality experiences for fellows, mentors, partners, and alumni.

• Mission-Focused: Create real social change that leads to improving lives in our community through support and participation in United Way of Metropolitan Dallas events.
• Relationship-Oriented: Communicate effectively to develop, grow and sustain productive relationships. Knows how to capture and record relevant information and how to interpret and utilize the information to forge partnerships, collaborate, cultivate, grow, sustain, and strengthen internal and external relationships.
• Results-Driven: Dedicated to shared and measurable goals; creating, resourcing, scaling, and leveraging strategies and innovations for broad impact.
• Stewardship: Our actions, behaviors, and decisions on behalf of our partners, volunteers and donors must be transparent, meet the highest ethical standards, and align with organizational goals.
• Culture of Collaboration, Inclusion, and Engagement: Committed to participating in cross-functional organization activities that contribute to UWMD’s goal of building and sustaining a high-performance organization and advancing a culture of collaboration and inclusiveness across the organization.

• Program Execution & Cohort Support: Responsible for coordinating and supporting the execution of innovation cohorts (2–3 per year), to include fellow and mentor recruitment, logistics, documentation, and communications.
• Responsible for coordination and overall support of 6–8 stand-alone events annually, including Lab workshops, cohort kick offs and alumni events.
• Planning and execution of signature events Demo Day, the Pitch and the annual Social Innovation Showcase.
• Outreach, scheduling, and logistics for speakers and facilitators for Accelerator sessions.

• Manage end-to-end events planning to include logistics, venue coordination, participant tracking, and catering.
• Day-of Operational point person for events.
• Manage post-event follow-ups – ensuring documentation materials are completed.

• Work in collaboration with Marketing to on inputs to the Social Innovation Lab newsletter and invitations to Social Innovation Lab events.
• Oversee the Social Innovation Lab online portal to ensure posting of current information, resources and relevant articles.
• Manage and ensure communications such as, but not limited to reminders, instructions, and follow-ups are timely and accurate.

• Document and maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for repeatable processes such as applications, vetting, mentor orientation, and annual metrics reporting.
• Improve templates and workflows to ensure consistency in documentation and streamlined processes.

• Maintain master Lab calendar, CRM records, and shared documentation.
• Oversee alumni tracker, prospect and project pipelines, and program rosters.
• Manage progress reporting from fellows and former participants, flag low engagement.
• Maintain current program one-pagers and…