Business Development Lead

This posting is for an existing vacancy:

Help Build a Canada Without Homelessness

Homelessness in Canada is not inevitable and the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH) exists to prove it. We operate as a social enterprise offering advisory, training, consulting, and fractional support to communities across the country. We’re lean, data-informed, and move with urgency.

The Opportunity

This is a builder role in an evolving organization. Reporting to the Chief Operating Officer (COO), the Business Development Lead owns CAEH’s impact-driven revenue function - translating our expertise in ending homelessness into services that communities and partners want to engage with and return to.

This role is ideal for someone who thinks like a founder, builds relationships like a trusted advisor, and has the operational discipline to design and own the internal infrastructure that keeps a social enterprise running.

If that sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.

What You’ll Do:

Build and Grow Our Partnership Portfolio

• Own CAEH’s social enterprise partnership strategy — identifying, developing, and securing service agreements with communities, governments, and sector partners.
• Lead proposal development and scoping for fee-for-service engagements, working alongside other leaders to identify mission impact opportunities.
• Build and maintain the systems, processes, and tools — including CRM and portfolio tracking, with support from the data team, to manage a growing and predictable earned revenue function.
  
  Shape the Service Offerings
• Own and evolve CAEH’s service pathways, ensuring offerings are clearly differentiated and matched to community needs and CAEH objectives.
• Define value propositions, pricing models, and delivery structures aligned with community needs and willingness to pay.
• Apply lean methodology (build-test-learn) to validate offerings before scaling, treating early engagements as learning opportunities and translating insights into repeatable, high-quality services.
• Partner with department leaders to ensure services are grounded in CAEH’s proven approaches and consistently delivered to a high standard.
• Analyze market trends, community demand, and policy shifts to identify new growth opportunities.

Revenue Model Design and Performance

• Contribute to CAEH’s outcomes and goals, with discipline around effort-to-impact ratios and the sustainability of service delivery.
• Partner with the Director of Finance on forecasting, financial planning, and performance reporting; continuously assess how offerings are landing and adjust based on community uptake and outcomes.
• Build and maintain the systems, processes, and tools needed to run an effective and growing revenue function.
• As the social enterprise grows, take on direct oversight of business development operations and build out a team.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Delivery Integration

• Work across departments to ensure alignment between what CAEH offers and what it delivers.
• Collaborate with CAEH teams to ensure offerings are grounded in real community needs and proven practices.
• Partner with Communications to support go-to-market strategies, messaging, and positioning.
• Build organizational capacity around partnership development, community engagement, and social enterprise best practices across CAEH teams.

Continuous Improvement & Learning

• Apply lean startup methodology (built-test-learn sprints) to validate service offerings before scaling, treating early engagements as experiments, not commitments.
• Participate in CAEH’s cross-functional pods to design, test, and iterate on service and revenue models.

What Success Looks Like

• Communities are realizing progress in reducing homelessness.
• Earned revenue commitments are met, with a healthy and growing portfolio of community and government partnerships.
• Service offerings are well-packaged, clearly positioned, and gaining traction with the communities and governments we exist to serve.
• Early engagements generate validated learnings that strengthen CAEH’s offerings and deepen our understanding of community needs.
• Teams across CAEH are aligned on what we offer and confident in delivering it.
• A foundation is in place — systems, processes, and growing team — to scale our impact sustainably.
• A positive organizational culture committed to learning and continuous improvement.

What You Bring

We recognize that strong candidates may not meet every qualification listed below. If you are excited about the role and believe you could contribute meaningfully, we encourage you to apply.

We’re Looking For Someone Who Has:

• 5 years + leading business development and growth in a social enterprise consulting, or scaling organization, with a track record of meeting revenue commitments.
• Experience with lean or agile methodology, community or customer discovery, and validating service-market fit in a consulting or advisory context.
• Ability to manage the full partnership development cycle — from identifying opportunities and building value propositions through to securing agreements and structuring delivery.
• Strong cross-functional collaborator who can build alignment across teams and bring the right people along without formal authority.
• Comfort with financial planning, pricing strategy, and sustainability discipline in a mission-driven, social enterprise context.
• Clear, direct communicator who builds trust quickly, navigates ambiguity with confidence, and keeps moving in a fast-paced environment.
• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience with a focus on business, social innovation, social entrepreneurship, or related fields.

Required Skills/Knowledge

Skills and Knowledge:

• Passion for ending homelessness, a belief it’s possible, and a sense of urgency to get there.
• Passion and deep understanding of the CAEH mission and values.
• Proven track record of meeting or exceeding sales targets and building sustainable revenue pipelines.
• Experience leading, coaching, or managing sales or business development staff, with the ability to build team capacity and accountability.
• Experience with lean startup or agile methodology; including build-test-cycles and minimum viable product development.
• Experience conducting customer discovery and validating product-market fit in a services or consulting context.
• Ability to influence and work cross-functionally across departments.
• Ability to ideate and contribute to productization, including crafting value proposition, pricing strategy, positioning, placement.
• Ability to contribute to financial planning, including impact of social enterprise portfolio on financial goals.
• Ability to design offerings that connect back to CAEH’s mission and that resonate with CAEH’s various audiences.
• Ability to operate in ambiguity and navigate change.

Great to Have - Not Required

• Experience in the housing, homelessness, public sector, or community systems space.
• Familiarity with government procurement processes or policy-driven partnership models.
• Experience facilitating, coaching, or delivering advisory or training services.
• Bilingual in English and French.
• Lived experience of homelessness or housing precarity is welcomed.
• Experience applying DEI, decolonizing, or anti-oppression frameworks.

How You’ll Work

Work remotely from your home office. This position could travel up to eight to ten (8-10) times per year for meetings. Travel may be more frequent with up to 25% of time spent travelling, especially in the first year.

Working at CAEH

We are building a culture grounded in trust, learning, collaboration, accountability, and impact.

CAEH is a remote-first organization with team members across Canada. We value flexibility, autonomy, continuous improvement, and supporting people to do their best work.

What We Offer

• Competitive total compensation
• Comprehensive health benefits
• Retirement savings support
• Five weeks vacation plus paid winter closure
• Flexible remote work arrangements
• Professional development support
• Opportunities for growth and learning
• Meaningful work with national impact
• A collaborative and mission-driven team culture

Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility

CAEH is committed to building an inclusive, equitable, and accessible workplace.

We strongly encourage applications from people with lived expertise of homelessness and from individuals who identify as Indigenous, Black, racialized, disabled, 2SLGBTQIA+, or members of historically marginalized communities.

We recognize that experience, leadership, and potential can take many forms. If your background does not align perfectly with every qualification, we still encourage you to apply.

Accommodation is available throughout the recruitment process upon request to hr@caeh.ca.

Additional Information

Travel Expectations: Travel 8-10 times per year for team meetings. Travel may be more frequent with up to 25% of time spent travelling, especially in the first year.
Background Checks Required: Yes, criminal record check and vulnerable sector check.

How to Apply

Please submit:

• Your resume
• A short cover letter or written introduction sharing your interest in the role

The application includes equity & diversity self-identification questions. These questions help us understand who is applying to our organization. Responses are voluntary, confidential, and will not influence hiring decisions. The information is used only for aggregate reporting and equity program planning.