Community Engagement Coordinator

About the Opportunity

826 Boston seeks a creative team member with strong organizational skills to serve as the Community Engagement Coordinator. We are seeking a candidate with a strong command of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles and approaches, who can build on the current strengths of the Volunteer Management Team, including robust training and support that center diversity, equity, and inclusion, collaborative partnerships with universities, and a culture of gratitude and appreciation.

The coordinator will also support the Volunteer Management Team in cultivating and stewarding the individual volunteers that foster learning spaces that are student-centered, strengths-based, and promote inclusivity for the identities, experiences, and voices of LGBTQ+, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and neurodiverse students.

Mission: 

826 Boston is a nonprofit writing, tutoring, and publishing organization where students in grades K-12 and beyond can share their stories, amplify their voices, and develop as leaders in school and in life.

Responsibilities: 

Volunteer and Community Engagement

• Support the Volunteer Program Manager in cultivating and stewarding a volunteer corps of 750+ individuals on an annual basis
• Build, cultivate, and manage strong relationships to maintain pipelines with university partners and community organizations that fuel Service Learning opportunities and Writing Workshops support
• Collaborate with program team members to develop and lead community-based recruitment events
• Oversee volunteer onboarding for all individuals, including leading two to four volunteer training sessions a month, coordinating pre- and post-training communication, recruiting individuals to attend training sessions via online postings, events tabling, etc., and ensuring individuals complete their first volunteer shift
• Support the Volunteer Management Team in partnering with program teams to develop specialized training to meet the needs of students and interests of the volunteer corps
• Plan and execute volunteer appreciation events
• Support outreach efforts including university partner visits, community fairs, etc., which occasionally occur on nights and weekends

Systems Coordination and Data Collection

• Support in conducting CORI background checks and processing paperwork for volunteer
  Manage volunteer communications systems, including email, volunteer opportunity calendar and sign up tools
• Coordinate the administration and analysis of volunteer surveys, including training feedback, volunteer experience, and 826 National surveys
• Maintain volunteer records, track participation, and produce reports in the volunteer database, SalesForce
• Collaborate with Volunteer Program Manager to track progress toward annual programming goals and report to the team on a biannual basis
• Conduct regular check-ins with program teams to identify and address volunteer needs in After-School Tutoring, Evening Tutoring, and Writing Workshop Programs

Additional responsibilities

• Support organization-wide summer programming
• Provide occasional support to programming as a tutor or staff coverage
• Hire, train, and supervise 1-2 interns per semester

Qualifications: 

The ideal candidate is a team player with a steadfast commitment to improving the quality of K-12 education, including adopting antiracist/anti-oppressive approaches, with a desire to work in a collaborative and inclusive culture and a passion for youth empowerment through writing and publishing.

826 Boston recognizes that impostor syndrome and the confidence gap might prevent some applicants from applying. Few candidates will have all of the relevant experience listed below, but 826 Boston is committed to assessing candidates with transferable skills and a willingness to be trained for this role.

Skills and experiences: 

• 2+ years of experience working in a K-12 school, education, or youth development nonprofit
• Experience with volunteer management and/or with direct volunteering preferred but not required
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering community, building a strong sense of team, and embracing values of diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Ability to give and receive feedback with humility, regulation, and tact
• Knowledge of and fluency with social and racial justice, intersectionality, BIPoC and LGBTQIA+ history, and historic/current systems of oppression
• Ability to incorporate anti-racist and anti-oppressive practices into analysis, planning, and programming
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Office and Google Apps
• Proficiency in Spanish, Cape Verdean or Haitian Creole, or Somali preferred but not required
• Experience with SalesForce or comparable database preferred but not required

Compensation

The salary for this full time position is $45,150 a year. Benefits include generous paid time off (including vacation, sick leave, holidays, and a two-week winter break); flexible schedule, including the option to work remotely 2-3 days a week; health and dental insurance (826 Boston covers 80% of premiums); parental leave; and more.

This is an exempt, full-time, position that reports to the Volunteer Program Manager. The ideal start date for this position is August 1st, 2023. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.

826 Boston Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement 

At 826 Boston, we honor and actively work toward diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) across our organization. We are committed to centering the voices of the students who we serve, to creating inclusive spaces, and to incorporating feedback from our community into our decision-making processes. Our DEI lens is always evolving through the courageous conversations in which we participate and the relationships that we build through our work and service. We strengthen our cultural competency through experience, training, and feedback, which informs the development of all new organizational practices and goals and the evaluation of all existing procedures.

826 Boston is dedicated to providing a platform for student advocacy through writing and publishing opportunities. In our work and mission, we are committed to dismantling white supremacy culture by recognizing that we are complicit in systems of racism and oppression. We will work to hold ourselves accountable in addressing these harmful structures and behaviors.

About Us

826 Boston is part of a national network of youth writing centers, co-founded by the award-winning author Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, that were named in GOOD Magazine’s “30 Places We Want to Work.” Since opening in 2007, 826 Boston has delivered its free youth writing and tutoring programs to more than 29,000 students and has been recognized by The Boston Globe as one of the best places in the city to volunteer. 826 Boston’s youth writers have published their work in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and in numerous award-winning 826 Boston books, including A Place for Me in the World, which was hailed as a “triumph of middle school education” by The Boston Globe. In 2013, the 826 National network garnered the prestigious American Literacy Prize awarded by the Library of Congress.