Director of Community Outreach

The work

• Keep our map of relationships: who we know, where each conversation stands, and what happens next.
• Make first contact the way we work: ask to learn before asking for anything, share what we have, and propose one working conversation rather than a partnership.
• Represent Holon at community meetings, festivals, talks and gatherings, and bring back what people tell us they need.
• Find the artists, makers and growers whose work belongs in the network, and introduce them to the team.
• Bring groups that run workdays to the volunteering directory, and bring them the offers the Director of Programs has ready.
• Look after the working relationships we already have: check in each season, and keep notes that let anyone pick up where you left off.

You decide

• Whom to approach and when, within our partner principles.
• Which events and gatherings to attend.
• How first contact is written and followed up.
• How each relationship's stage and next step are recorded.

You will do well here if

• You know Houston's neighborhoods and civic life, or want to learn them well.
• You listen more than you pitch, and you follow up.
• You have worked in organizing, programs, the arts, education, faith communities, civic life or any public-facing role.
• You can describe Holon in plain words, and say “we are in conversation” until something is agreed.
• Spanish, or another language spoken across Houston, is a plus.

Your first ninety days

1. Read our partner principles, meet the team, and learn the relationships already on record.
2. Sort the map with the Executive Director: who is active, who is waiting on us, and who comes next.
3. Hold first conversations with the groups you and the Executive Director choose, and give us a one-page outreach plan for your year.

What this role does not do

• Sign agreements or promise anything on Holon's behalf; the Executive Director signs, and some agreements need the Board.
• Describe anyone as a partner before an agreement is signed and its first piece of work is done.
• Ask for money; funding conversations stay with the Executive Director, whom you bring in when a relationship turns to funding.
• Promise anyone a garden, a grant or a result.
• Ask volunteers to do work that Holon has promised to pay someone for.
• Keep contacts or notes outside our records.

How we work together

• A thirty-minute check-in with the Executive Director every two weeks for your first ninety days, then once a month.
• One hour a month with the Executive Director and the other director, online, in the evening.
• A few lines each week, in writing, on what moved and what is stuck.
• When the work needs more hands, you invite volunteers for pieces of it. Before your term renews, you train someone who could step in.

What you receive

• A real area of work that you decide within, with the Executive Director behind you.
• Orientation and the training your role needs, at no cost to you.
• Out-of-pocket expenses you agree with us in advance, reimbursed against receipts; driving at the IRS charitable mileage rate.
• A record of the hours you give, letters of reference when you ask, and your name on our team page if you wish.
• A place among the people building what urban conservation in Houston needs to stand on.

What we ask of everyone

• You are 18 or older.
• A conversation, a one-hour working session on a real question from the role, two references and a background check that Holon pays for (with a driving record check if you will drive for Holon), all completed before you begin.
• You agree to our code of conduct, our confidentiality and conflict-of-interest commitments, and a volunteer leadership agreement that sets out what you may decide, which of the work you create belongs to Holon, and how you may keep using it.
• You sign an acknowledgment of the duty to report suspected abuse of a child, because some events include volunteers from age 14.
• This role is unpaid. Holon reimburses approved expenses and does not promise paid work.