Food Forward Volunteer Manager
The Volunteer Manager (VM) is responsible for maintaining and improving volunteerism, volunteer capacity, and volunteer culture for all Food Forward programs (including our Backyard Harvesting, Farmers Market Recovery Program plus ongoing community outreach and development events.) The Volunteer Manager plays a key role in managing and maintaining individual volunteer relationships as well as those of Super Volunteers who play a key and ongoing role in Food Forward’s food recovery network. The Volunteer Manager recruits volunteers through our website, social media channels, partnerships and numerous community outreach efforts to develop and sustain Food Forward’s 6000+ strong volunteer network who power an average of 50 food recovery events per month.
In addition, the Volunteer Manager also maintains corporate, faith-based, educational and non-profit volunteer relationships and partnerships to inspire new engagement and long-term retention across these communities. The Volunteer Manager also supports and mentors Food Forward Branches and Chapters with their specific volunteer recruitment and retention needs (i.e. Ventura County and San Gabriel Valley.)
This position also plays a key role in systems, logistics & process development as well as implementation around volunteer engagement for the organization.
Roles and Responsibilities:
-Manage the creation of a singular Food Forward voice across our volunteer-powered organization, through in-person presentations and trainings, webinars, FAQ’s, and other ongoing education to ensure the quality of the volunteer experience, as well as provide the resources and understanding that volunteers are ambassadors of the Food Forward brand
- Create and develop best practices to strategically engage, organize, mobilize and communicate with a volunteer force of 6000+
- Posting, recruiting, training and oversight of all Volunteers for all Food Forward Programs and events
-Manage the online volunteer database and online volunteer interface
- Partner with entire Food Forward team (Staff & Board) to quickly problem solve around program challenges to benefit and enhance Food Forward’s volunteer powered efforts
-Manage a small team of program assistants and interns to effectively complete administrative program tasks
-Broaden Food Forward’s network with other non-profits, NGO’s, faith-based and educational institutions thru proactive outreach around volunteer and service-based engagement
-Manage the roles, relationships, responsibilities, and training of several dozen high-level program volunteers
-Directly field questions with the public and all other inquiries about volunteering and program involvement
-Actively learn new methods and skills to enhance volunteerism and the volunteer culture of Food Forward
-Collect and maintain metrics around volunteer engagement across the organization
-Work as a proactive external ambassador of Food Forward’s mission
Skills and Experience Required:
-3-5 years of professional experience specifically in Volunteer Coordination/Management, especially with large numbers of volunteers at large events.
-Applied building of non-profit organization capacity through volunteerism
-Nurturing long-term service commitments with numerous stakeholders organization-wide
-Ability to proactively manage multiple tasks independently
-Take on leadership role while working comfortably under pressure
-Excellent verbal and written communication skills
-Effective team player
-Significant experience with Macs, Google Docs, MS Office
-Extremely social media savvy (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
-Highly polished public speaking skills and comfort and enthusiasm talking to large groups
-Experience, comfort and passion coordinating, communicating and motivating large groups of people
-Experience in developing and maintain one-to-one long term stakeholder relationships
-Experience developing corporate and/or nonprofit partnerships
-Strong knowledge of Southern California geography
-Spanish/bi-lingual (preferred)
-Valid California drivers license
-Experience managing large databases
-Significant first person volunteer experience
Bachelor’s degree required.
HOW TO APPLY: Please follow directions carefully: email Amir at info@foodforward.org with a letter of interest written in the body of the email and attach a current resume in PDF format. The subject line should read “VOLUNTEER MANAGER-(your name)”. No phone calls please.
























