Volunteer Director

About Us:

At Food Literacy Center, we inspire kids to eat their vegetables. Food Literacy Center came to life in July 2011 to fill a critical gap: we engage volunteers and staff to help kids improve their knowledge, attitude, and behavior towards healthy food. Partnering with SCUSD and community partners, we teach food literacy education to K-6th graders in low-income schools, using fun, approachable lessons teaching kids to cook, about nutrition, and how to improve their health.

 We believe food literacy matters. Learn more about us at www.foodliteracycenter.org.

About this peachy position:

The Volunteer Director will provide leadership and strategic oversight for all aspects of Food Literacy Center’s volunteer program. This role will be responsible for ensuring a robust corps of volunteers to help deliver food literacy lessons to students in Sacramento’s Title I schools and meet the needs of the nonprofit’s mission. The Volunteer Director will report to the Deputy Director, collaborate with staff across the organization to ensure volunteers are effectively integrated into all areas of Food Literacy Center’s work. This role will manage the staff responsible for coordinating volunteers. 

Here’s what you’ll do as the Volunteer Director:

Double the number of active volunteers in our organization by 2027:

• Audit, improve, and expand our existing volunteer recruitment and retention strategy to meet organizational goals and grant deliverables. Enhance our policies, procedures, and best practices for volunteer engagement and management.
• Develop and maintain relationships with partner organizations that are a source of volunteers for our program.
• Identify and utilize online platforms and technology to recruit and coordinate volunteers.
• Oversee volunteer orientation, training, coordination, and communication processes.
• Ensure compliance with all human resource policies and procedures.
• Ensure compliance with school district policies and legal requirements concerning volunteers in schools, including those pertaining to criminal background checks, to minimize liability and ensure a safe and positive environment for students.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Create and maintain a strong network of volunteers:

• Execute effective recruitment and retention activities to build and maintain a corps of committed volunteers.
• Leverage existing volunteers to recruit more volunteers. 
• Plan volunteer recognition events.
• Improve the volunteer experience, recognize, and celebrate our volunteers and community partners.
• Create and disseminate regular communications about upcoming volunteer opportunities, coordinating with marketing staff on newsletters and social media content.
• Train staff on volunteer best practices, including communication and coordination practices, to maximize both the volunteer’s experience with Food Literacy Center and the benefit to our programs and students.
• Meet–and exceed–volunteer goals for programs, events, farm maintenance, and other mission-related volunteer needs. 
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Tracking and evaluation:

• Maintain accurate volunteer records and hours in the organization’s database.
• Measure program impact through data and story collection to be shared internally with leadership and externally with funders and other community stakeholders.
• Continuously evaluate and improve volunteer program effectiveness.

You’ll exhibit these competencies:

Achievement-orientation: 

• Demonstrate an ability to meet and exceed goals and expectations. Live up to the high standard the community expects of our nonprofit, showing attention to detail. Identify problems and seek to solve them quickly. Strategize ideas for program improvement and communicate ideas effectively with the supervisor. 

Problem Solving & Decision-Making:

• Demonstrate a strong ability to recognize problems, solve them quickly, and appropriately message changes. Make decisions that consider all stakeholders, and act accordingly.
• Display comfort with ambiguity but have a strong bias for structure and results. Display flexibility, resilience and perseverance when faced with obstacles and competing deadlines with limited resources. Show sound and thoughtful decision-making ability. 

Project Management: 

• Demonstrate a strong ability to balance multiple competing priorities daily. Demonstrate an ability to prioritize, and take action accordingly. 

Innovative Thinking:

• Demonstrate an ability to create processes and systems to streamline internal operations.

• Demonstrate a high level of comfort with ambiguity, and an ability to create order. Demonstrate an aptitude for framing problems as opportunities, and always push to further streamline. 

Positive Attitude: 

• Exude a positive outlook and attitude, especially during stressful or difficult times. Help maintain the joyfulness of the Food Literacy Center culture. 

All about you!

You’ll be successful in this position if you:

• Have a deep commitment to the mission of Food Literacy Center
• Have 5+ years experience recruiting and managing volunteers
• Have experience successfully supervising staff
• Have outstanding communications and public speaking skills and an aptitude for problem solving
• Are highly motivated, able to self-manage, flexible, able to multitask, and maintain the confidentiality of sensitive information
• Have an understanding or familiarity with local food, food systems, and nutrition 
• Have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Ready to apply? Great! Check out the next steps below. 

Please submit a resume and thoughtful cover letter outlining the unique value you will bring to our organization to [email protected], subject: Volunteer Director - Last Name. This position will remain open until filled.