Seattle Community Lead (deadline 5/27)

🌊 You can skip this and access the job posting directly here: https://bit.ly/soapsea26

Soapbox Project creates joyful third places that help us transform our climate anxiety by learning, connecting, and taking action on the climate crisis! We have online and in-person community spaces that heal our isolation and help us come together to heal the ecological crisis. Our vision is that every neighborhood in the world has a place where they can build community resilience. Our flagship in-person space is in Belltown in Seattle, Washington.

We’re the #1 most fun place on the planet for people to put down their worries, build skills and confidence, and meet new friends to build the world we want to live in.

I’m Nivi, Soapbox’s founder, and the one who’s writing this application.

Every geography will be managed by a Community Lead which is currently a part-time role (~20h/week) that makes all the magic happen.

You are the person in charge of running Soapbox Seattle, and this includes:

• Volunteer coordination
• Relationship management
• Project management
• Securing speakers
• Finding funding* and partnerships
• Modeling our community values of courage and joy
• Going to other community events to introduce yourself/Soapbox
• Being awesome

To get a sense of what this role requires, you can go to our Seattle events calendar. EVERYTHING that’s ever happened in Seattle comes to life because of your role. Our incredible community lead is moving on to his next adventure, and we’re looking for someone to fill his big, fabulous shoes.

Our community programming is every Tuesday evening in Belltown. You’ll be the one making it happen along with our team of stellar volunteers.

*This is not a fundraising-dominant role, but we’ll want to make sure you have some basic competence in grantwriting and networking, since you’re the face of Soapbox Seattle

You’ll need to be based in Seattle and able to come to Belltown every Tuesday. (If you are sick or something, it’ll be your job to figure it out with our volunteer team! They are awesome!)

You will also need to be physically able to set up, clean up, etc. You don’t have to be the best lifter-of-weights or bender-over but this job will have some lifting, bending, and physical activity since it is onsite.

• A charismatic relationship-builder without a huge ego. This role is ALL about relationships. You need to be likable and lovable, but YOU get to choose what that looks like. Your job is to build trust and build community… and then keep finding ways to do it better. Also, you must recognize that leadership is about lifting up others and find ways to uplift other community members.

• Good with stress. You must make audacious decisions that help us build our nonprofit in the context of a capitalist society. This will mean a LOT of expectation management, compromise, and values-based leadership. It is your job to infuse joy into the Seattle team culture (especially for volunteers) and model our catchphrase of “living our best lives with our best friends on the best planet.” This isn’t an urgent job and we don’t manufacture unnecessary stress, but it will have a lot of moving parts. For example, maybe a speaker cancels last minute. You need to be cool as a cucumber (or at least pretend to be) as you figure out what happens next.

• In possession of a growth mindset. In this role, you’ll consistently need to be looking for ways to make improvements and following through on them, as well as being open to feedback and new ideas/suggestions from others.

• An excellent project manager. In addition to the fun community stuff, there are a lot of details and a fair bit of admin/reporting to ensure your work can be easily showcased to the greater world. You are someone who doesn’t let things slip through the cracks and you pay attention to the details that matter. Include the phrase fluffy bird somewhere in your application to confirm your detail-orientation.

• Assertive/great at telling people what to do. Your job is to protect the community and to guide people in their journey as a Soapbox Seattle participant, whether that’s as a general event-goer, a food partner, or something else. YOU are responsible for making judgment calls!

• Someone who knows how to set your own boundaries. Community building is hard work. The Soapbox team and board will support you in any way possible, but we’ve gotta know where you’re at. Overcommunicate!

• If you meet the qualifications of this role and are a mid-career community builder, we will start at $48 for the first three months, increasing to $50 after a positive review. This annualizes to about $45,000-49,000. The idea behind our compensation is that you can work a half-time job and get paid a reasonable half-time salary. If you are earlier in your career than we’d like, or less qualified, but you’re willing to learn, you’ll be paid somewhere in the range of $36.17/hr-$47.02/hr (depending on some factors which we can chat more about). Since we care more about outcomes than hours, we can chat about payment on a monthly stipend-basis.

See more at our job description: https://bit.ly/soapsea26