The Lykins Neighborhood Association (LNA) is hiring a new Executive Director. For the last three years Gregg Lombardi has served as both the Executive Director of the Lykins Neighborhood Association and the Executive Director of Neighborhood Legal Support of Kansas City (NLS).

Now that NLS is starting a Focused Community Development project in a new neighborhood, Lombardi has given notice that he will be stepping down from his responsibilities as LNA Executive Director. According to the neighborhood, this provides a great opportunity for a new Executive Director to devote full-time responsibility to implementing the vision of the neighborhood. NLS will still continue to do legal work in Lykins and Lombardi is happy to be a resource for the new Executive Director – if requested to do so.

The Executive Director serves the residents of an extremely diverse and predominately low-income neighborhood. At the direction of the LNA Board, staff, residents, and other stakeholders, the Executive Director develops and implements the strategic and operational plan for the organization. LNA is a young and nimble non-profit that requires its Executive Director to fill many roles.

The Executive Director job is a full-time position, with a likely salary of between $45,000 and $60,000 per year, DOE, and health insurance. The work is gratifying and the LNA team is great to work with. We encourage bilingual applicants, although being bilingual is not a requirement for the job.

The Executive Director leads, coaches, develops, evaluates, and retains staff and volunteers in implementing LNA’s strategic vision and operational plan, ensuring programmatic excellence. The position also serves as LNA’s Development Director. The Executive Director is the primary fund-raiser and grant-writer for the organization. A collaborating not-for-profit organization — Neighborhood Legal Support of Kansas City (“NLS”), which formerly served as LNA’s fiscal agent and formerly handled all fund-raising for LNA — will provide some assistance and mentoring in this work.

The Executive Director also is responsible for all grant reporting and other communications with funders, serves as LNA’s Chief Financial Officer, reviews and prepares monthly financial data and oversees that data. The position is the primary person responsible for data collection for LNA’s annual audit, when and if an audit is required. The position also negotiates and implements LNA contracts, develops and effectively uses metrics for evaluation of LNA’s success and uses those metrics to regularly evaluate and make changes to the organization to make LNA more effective in accomplishing its mission, facilitates meetings and agendas. The responsibility of orchestrating, staffing and sourcing funding for monthly neighborhood clean-ups also falls to the Executive Director.

Lykins is looking for a new Executive Director to build organizational capacity on an individual level with neighborhood leadership, and to design and oversees door-to-door outreach, the neighborhood calendar, the work of neighborhood liaisons, and the work of the Programming Director and Communications Director. The Executive Director will cultivate and maintain relationships with aligning organizations, specifically in the Historic Northeast neighborhoods of Kansas City.

LNA desires someone with some experience or training in neighborhood governance, at least two years of management experience — preferably in a not-for-profit organization — conflict resolution training and experience; experience with Google Drive, Zoom and Microsoft Office products; strong digital communications skills; a commitment to representation and inclusivity; an understanding of Kansas City’s Historic Northeast neighborhoods; a proven ability to collaborate effectively both with staff and other project partners; excellent problem solving-skills, paired with an excellent ability to recognize opportunities; strong communication skills, including excellent listening and writing skills.

Neighborhood residents have a wide array of strongly held and diverse perspectives on issues that the neighborhood is facing based on their lived experiences. Accordingly, discussions about neighborhood issues can occasionally be intense and deal with sensitive issues. So, the candidate should have the ability to manage intense and strongly felt conversations in good faith and with discretion, a positive attitude and proven ability to persevere and lead in challenging situations, the ability to accept criticism tactfully and to recognize its value, and a great sense of humor.

The neighborhood prefers the new Executive Director be bilingual, particularly in Spanish, have some Diversity and Inclusion Training, some community organizing experience, an understanding of Kansas City governance structure and an understanding of housing policy.

The Lykins Neighborhood is home to many immigrants and refugees from all over the world. As such, centering the voices of those who do not speak English, or who are unfamiliar with neighborhood governance is critical in this work. This organization is serving a population with a median household income below $25,000. As such, taking into account the various economic barriers to participation is critical to this work. It is important to look around the room and say, “Who is not being represented in this space?”

This job requires some evening and weekend availability, some physical ability and willingness to pitch in and get your hands dirty, one to lean into tense conversations and create space for disagreements to be acknowledged in a healthy manner, and the willingness to create space for celebration after hard work pays off.

In addition to the Executive Director position, LNA has one full-time staff member – the Programming Director for the Lykins Community Resource Center. We also have a part-time Program Facilitator who handles bookkeeping for the organization and a part-time Communications Director. You can learn more about us at lykinsneighborhood.com. A copy of the Executive Director job description is attached.

If you know of anyone who is interested in applying, please have them send a resume to Gregg Lombardi at gregg@nls4kc.org.  There is no application deadline, but the neighborhood association encourages people to apply before the end of the day on Wednesday, March 1. The full job description can be viewed here: https://files.constantcontact.com/0fd8e00c701/3205ad82-3560-4efc-ba3b-e72ca599b899.pdf.