Community Organizer Jobs in Silver Spring, MD (NOW HIRING)

Community Manager [Regional Organizer]
 

Reports to: Director of Communities
 

Job Summary
 

Community Managers (CMs) are the primary community builders and coaches of Thread -- they
plant themselves in a community of 200+ volunteers and young people, and then apply
community organizing and antiracist principles to facilitate everyone’s strong relationships and
positive personal, professional, and academic outcomes. CMs work through the Thread
Community Model, coaching, mobilizing, and empowering volunteers and youth to access the
programming, resources, and other tools they need in order to thrive. Key outcomes include
volunteer/student engagement, retention, and satisfaction, as well as high school graduation
and post-secondary credential completion.
The Thread model is built upon Community Managers coaching up to 12 volunteer leaders,
called GrandParents. Each GrandParent supports and coaches other volunteer leaders called
Heads of Family who each support a Thread Family consisting of Family Member volunteers
and Thread young people. Through the Thread model, volunteers work together and with their
designated coaches to connect with their young people, their families, and fellow volunteers to
deploy the Thread Engagement Process of connecting, setting goals, identifying and removing
barriers, and achieving goals. The intended objective for all volunteers is to build the skills
necessary to bridge and bond across lines of difference. This includes a deeper understanding
of one’s bias, active listening, and how to overcome barriers.
 

A Community Manager’s work incorporates both high-level strategic thinking while not losing
sight of critical details about their community.. They are responsible for monitoring the needs
and goals of hundreds of people, designing and implementing strategies to support them and
leveraging community events, activities, resources and opportunities that facilitate connection,
barrier removal and goal attainment. At the same time, CMs are responsible for modeling
Thread’s core competencies in order to cultivate a culture within their community that makes
each person feel seen and known. Community Managers are responsible for supporting the
learning and growth of volunteers within their community by modeling and actively practicing
Thread core competencies to guide volunteers through their personal growth journey as needed
- at the center of which is a racial equity journey. They do this by pairing strong project
management, data, and organizing skills with a magnetic personality that can both energize and
support people, even in the toughest moments.

Key Responsibilities

Coaching and Community Building

-Build positive, long-term relationships with Thread volunteers, especially GrandParents
-Relentlessly facilitate and encourage relationships between Volunteers and Young
People, that elevate the power of young people, as the foundation for achieving
exemplary outcomes
-Facilitate connections between volunteer and young people’s Parents/Guardians
-Inform, educate, and foster growth of individuals at all stages of a racial equity journey
-Use effective storytelling and facilitation to drive group and individual outcomes
-Provide on-going coaching and development of a Community Engagement Specialist
where applicable. A Community Engagement Specialist is a full time staff member that is
hired to support up to 32 Thread young people during their first and/or second year in
Thread. These young people are paired with a CES, rather than a family in their initial
year(s) of Thread to build a strong and sticky foundation with the Thread community
-Cultivate and retain high-performing GrandParents and Heads of Family
 

Volunteer Recruitment, Engagement and Mobilization

-Ensure the engagement and growth of young people and their Family Member
volunteers by coaching and mobilizing GrandParent and Head of Family volunteer
leaders
-Drive attendance to Thread programming, leveraging those spaces to model behavior,
coach, and work towards key outcomes
-Assist volunteers in removing barriers, including connecting with resources when
needed
-In coordination with Volunteer Recruitment Managers, Community Managers will work to
create visibility and deepen partnerships with Recruitment Hubs (local universities,
hospitals, corporations, faith based and neighborhood organizations) to recruit and place
volunteers through a Place Based strategy
-Assist with recruiting prospective volunteers to ensure volunteer and volunteer
leadership roles are filled
-Develop current volunteers to become volunteer leaders (Heads of Family and
“GrandParents")

Personal Performance and Project Management

-Build, implement, monitor, and adjust engagement strategy for volunteers and young
people to ensure positive outcomes, utilizing quantitative and qualitative data and
metrics

-Set mobilization targets and drive attendance to Thread programming accordingly
-Ensure community compliance with budget, policies, etc.
-Collaborate with and leverage Thread’s other functional teams to effectively support
volunteers and students
-Develop, manage, and assist with additional programs and projects as needed to
achieve team goals
-Other duties as assigned

Qualifications/Skills

Required:

-Bachelor’s Degree and/or 3-5 years of demonstrated success in community organizing,
coaching, and mobilizing people to take action
-At least 2 years of demonstrated success in project and program management, including
building and developing a team of people towards common goals as well as data input,
monitoring, and evaluation
-Demonstrated commitment to and experience with equity and inclusion through an
intersectional lens, including experience navigating and/or coaching others through a
racial equity journey
-Consistent access to a vehicle, as well as willingness to occasionally work evenings and
weekends as needed
-Highly responsive, adaptive communications style; ability to inspire one-on-one and in
groups of all sizes
-Ability to clearly communicate and live out Thread’s core values & core competencies.
-Recognition of the ways that race and other identities (historically and presently)
intersect and play out in the workplace.

Preferred:

-Familiarity with Baltimore human services landscape, including City Public School
System, neighborhoods, and/or organizations and resources
-Prior experience working in a youth-serving and/or nonprofit environment
-Prior experience working with mobile app-based data input and with Salesforce
-Fluency in a second language, especially Spanish