Product Manager, CommunitySuite at Foundant + smartsimple

, , United States -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

10 Mar, 26

Salary

0.0

Posted On

10 Dec, 25

Experience

5 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

Product Management, Market Analysis, Strategic Planning, Stakeholder Management, Pricing Strategy, Go-to-Market Strategy, Competitive Analysis, Customer Engagement, Cross-Functional Collaboration, Data Analysis, Communication Skills, Public Speaking, Thought Leadership, Philanthropic Technology, B2B SaaS, Business Growth

Industry

Software Development

Description

Position Overview We are seeking a strategic Product Manager to own the vision, strategy, and long-term roadmap for CommunitySuite. In this role, you will define where the product is headed over the next 12-24 months, conduct market analysis to identify opportunities, and ensure that CommunitySuite maintains its competitive position in the philanthropic technology landscape. You will be responsible for understanding market dynamics, competitive threats, customer needs at a strategic level, and translating these insights into a compelling product strategy that drives business growth. As the Product Manager for CommunitySuite, you will set the strategic direction while working closely with a Product Owner who handles current quarter execution and daily development team coordination. You will define what features should be built and why, conduct pricing analysis, lead go-to-market initiatives, represent the product at conferences and webinars, and serve as the internal and external voice of CommunitySuite. This role requires someone who can think strategically about market positioning, communicate effectively with executives and customers alike, and drive cross-functional alignment around a unified product vision. Working with the Product Owner This Product Manager role works in close partnership with the CommunitySuite Product Owner, with clearly defined but complementary responsibilities. You own the long-term product roadmap and strategy, conducting market analysis, competitive research, and strategic planning for releases beyond the current quarter. The Product Owner, in contrast, owns the execution of the current quarter's work, managing the development backlog, writing user stories, and ensuring that planned features are properly delivered. While you focus on what should be built over the next 12-24 months and why it matters to the market, the Product Owner ensures that what's being built this quarter is built correctly and meets user expectations. The Product Owner will be actively involved in and consulted on your roadmap planning, providing critical input based on client feedback, technical learnings, and implementation realities. This partnership ensures both strategic vision and tactical excellence, with you setting direction and the Product Owner translating that direction into executed features. What You’ll Do Product Strategy and Roadmap Ownership: You will own the 12-24 month product roadmap for CommunitySuite, defining the strategic direction and priorities that will drive market differentiation and business growth. This includes conducting market analysis to identify opportunities, evaluating competitive positioning, analyzing customer feedback patterns to identify strategic themes, and making decisions about which capabilities to invest in and when. You will maintain a roadmap that balances customer needs, market opportunities, technical capabilities, and business objectives, communicating this roadmap clearly to internal stakeholders and customers. Strategic Feature Definition and Acceptance Criteria: You will define features at a strategic level, articulating what capabilities CommunitySuite needs to compete effectively and why they matter to customers. This includes writing product requirement documents, creating business cases for major initiatives, defining acceptance criteria that describe what success looks like for each feature, and ensuring that proposed solutions address real market needs. You own the definition of what the feature should do and what constitutes done, while the Product Owner translates your feature definitions and acceptance criteria into detailed user stories for development teams. Market and Competitive Intelligence: You will maintain deep knowledge of the philanthropic technology market, tracking competitive movements, identifying emerging trends, understanding buyer preferences, and recognizing threats and opportunities. This includes conducting competitive analysis, analyzing win/loss data, monitoring industry developments, engaging with industry analysts and consultants, and synthesizing market intelligence into actionable insights. Your market understanding informs roadmap decisions and positioning strategies. Go-to-Market Strategy, Execution, and Messaging: You will serve as a core member of go-to-market teams and act as the voice of the product, leading initiatives for major CommunitySuite releases and features. This includes creating feature briefs that articulate capabilities, benefits, and target audiences; developing positioning and messaging frameworks that Sales and Marketing can leverage for their content; defining pricing strategies for new capabilities; creating sales enablement materials including pitch decks, competitive battle cards, and objection handling guides; coordinating launch plans and internal communications; and supporting the sales team in key deals and customer presentations. You ensure that customer-facing teams understand the value proposition and can effectively communicate it to prospects and customers. Pricing Strategy and Analysis: You will own pricing strategy for CommunitySuite and its various modules, add-ons, and packaging options. This includes conducting pricing research and competitive analysis, analyzing customer willingness to pay across different segments, developing packaging strategies that align features with customer needs, working with Finance on revenue modeling, and making recommendations to leadership on pricing changes. You ensure that pricing reflects market value, supports business growth objectives, and maintains competitive positioning. External Communication and Thought Leadership: You will serve as a public face of CommunitySuite, presenting at industry conferences, leading customer webinars, participating in user group meetings, and engaging with the philanthropic community. This includes developing presentation content, articulating product vision to external audiences, gathering customer feedback in group settings, building relationships with industry influencers, and representing Foundant's perspective on philanthropic technology trends. Your external presence builds credibility and strengthens market positioning. Strategic Customer Engagement: You will engage with customers at a strategic level to understand their evolving needs and validate roadmap direction. This includes participating in executive business reviews with key accounts, conducting strategic discovery sessions with prospects, facilitating customer advisory board meetings, and analyzing customer feedback to identify patterns and themes. Your customer engagement focuses on understanding strategic priorities and organizational challenges rather than tactical feature feedback, which is handled by the Product Owner. Internal Communication and Alignment: You will ensure that internal stakeholders understand the CommunitySuite strategy and roadmap, facilitating alignment across the organization. This includes presenting to executive leadership, communicating roadmap updates to Sales and Customer Success, collaborating with Marketing on positioning, working with Finance on business planning, and ensuring that all teams understand priorities and rationale. You translate strategic vision into terms that resonate with different audiences. Quarterly Planning and Prioritization: You will lead quarterly planning sessions to define objectives for upcoming quarters, working with the Product Owner and development teams to translate strategic roadmap items into executable quarterly plans. You make final decisions on what gets prioritized each quarter based on strategic value, market timing, customer needs, and resource availability. You set the direction and objectives while the Product Owner owns the detailed execution and backlog management. Cross-Portfolio Collaboration: You will coordinate with Product Managers and Product Owners across Foundant's product portfolio to identify integration opportunities, ensure consistent user experiences, and align on platform strategy. This includes participating in cross-product planning sessions, identifying opportunities for shared capabilities, ensuring CommunitySuite integrates effectively with other Foundant products, and contributing to overall platform vision and strategy. Business Metrics and Performance Analysis: You will define success metrics for CommunitySuite and track performance against business objectives. This includes monitoring key product metrics, analyzing feature adoption and usage patterns, measuring the impact of new releases on customer satisfaction and retention, conducting ROI analysis for major initiatives, and reporting on product performance to leadership. You use data to inform strategic decisions and demonstrate the business value of product investments. What You’ll Need The ideal candidate will bring five to eight years of product management experience, with a proven track record of owning product strategy and roadmaps in B2B SaaS environments. You should have demonstrated success bringing products to market, including experience with positioning, messaging, pricing, and go-to-market execution. Strong strategic thinking skills are essential, with the ability to analyze markets, identify opportunities, and make decisions that balance customer needs with business objectives. You must excel at stakeholder management, with experience presenting to executives, engaging with customers at strategic levels, and building consensus across cross-functional teams. Experience in the nonprofit, philanthropic, or social impact sector is highly valuable, as is domain knowledge of grant management, foundation operations, or community impact work. You should be comfortable with data analysis and able to use metrics to inform decisions and measure success. Strong written and verbal communication skills are critical, as this role requires creating compelling content for diverse audiences including executives, sales teams, and customers. We are looking for a strategic thinker who can see around corners and anticipate where the market is heading. You should be customer-focused but not customer-led, able to synthesize feedback into strategic direction rather than building feature lists. You have strong business acumen and understand how product decisions impact revenue, retention, and competitive positioning. You are an effective communicator who can articulate vision compellingly and adapt your message for different audiences. The successful candidate will be comfortable with ambiguity and able to make strategic decisions with imperfect information. You should be collaborative by nature, recognizing that great products require partnership between Product Management, Product Owners, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success. You understand that your role is to set direction and enable others to execute, not to control every detail. Experience with platform strategy, API products, or ecosystem thinking is a plus. Comfort with public speaking and thought leadership is important given the external visibility of this role. A passion for social good and the mission of philanthropic organizations will help you connect authentically with customers. Why You’ll Love Working at SmartSimple + Foundant + GivingData At the heart of everything we do is a commitment to innovation and making a positive impact. Whether you’re working on projects that empower not-for-profits, community foundations, or corporations, your contributions will help drive real-world change. We offer competitive salary and benefits, including tuition, and lifestyle reimbursements, and bespoke mindfulness and fitness initiatives. With our Flexible PTO policy, you’ll have the freedom to manage your time in a way that supports your personal well-being and professional success. We’re committed to your professional and personal development. With our merger, you'll have the chance to collaborate across teams, giving you exposure to diverse ideas, expertise, and projects that span multiple industries. As part of a larger organization, you’ll have even more opportunities to grow your career. Whether it’s exploring new roles, leadership opportunities, or shifting to a different department, we support internal mobility to help you achieve your career goals You’ll enjoy autonomy and responsibility, empowering you to approach your work creatively and independently, fostering innovation and independent thought. Employee recognition is a core part of our culture. When you do a great job, we make sure everyone knows about it! SmartSimple, Foundant & GivingData are equal opportunity employers, committed to building a diverse workforce that represents the communities we serve. We welcome and encourage applications from all qualified candidates, and will consider all applicants without regard to race, color, citizenship, religion, sex, marital/family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, Indigenous status, age, disability, or individuals who may require accommodation. SmartSimple, Foundant & GivingData are also committed to providing accommodations throughout the interview and employment process. Accommodations are available upon request for candidates participating in all aspects of the selection process. If you have accessibility requirements during the recruitment process and require accommodation, please contact hr@smartsimple.com.

Responsibilities

The Product Manager will own the vision, strategy, and long-term roadmap for CommunitySuite, conducting market analysis and defining product features. They will also lead go-to-market initiatives and represent the product externally.