idealist.org

Summary

Environment America is a federation of 28 state-based, citizen-funded environmental advocacy organizations. Our professional staff in 28 states and Washington, D.C. combine independent research, practical ideas and tough-minded advocacy to overcome the opposition of powerful special interests and win real results for the environment. The role of the development department is to work with state Environment Groups to build our organizational resources and political power to more effectively create social change.


Job Description:
The Executive Assistant works closely with the Executive Director, regional directors, national back up staff, development director and state directors to set annual goals, track organizational and program development across the country and coordinate communication, information sharing and trainings throughout the organization and the larger movement.

Responsibilities include:

Scheduling and Coordinating Meetings, Trainings, Conference Calls and other Communication:
The Executive assistant is responsible for ensuring top notch, clear and efficient communication among the Environment America leadership team and between the leadership team and the state and federal staff. S/he helps to schedule the time and priorities of the executive director, brings together senior sets up regular conference calls, meetings and retreats among various staff, and generally keeps the organizational ‘train’ on the tracks and on time.

The Executive Assistant is also responsible for planning, organizing, and preparing materials for trainings, retreats, conferences, staff meetings, conference calls and national meetings throughout the year.


Building the Organization -- Moving us toward a presence in all 50 states; strong state and federal infrastructure.
The Executive Assistant is responsible for assuring that each state organization has developed a meaningful three year, annual, trimester and monthly plan and is making and reporting regular progress towards its goals and meeting the expectations of our organizational development model. The Executive assistant collects, analyzes, and communicates the progress in each state and on each aspect of organizational development.


Raising, Tracking, Budgeting and Spending of Income:
The executive assistant works with key national staff to develop budgets and grant spending plans for every aspect of the organization. In addition to doing some of her/his own fundraising, the executive assistant is responsible for ensuring that each state group and each program area is aggressively fundraising and meeting all of its goals and deadlines for grants, major donor, and other income sources.

The executive assistant is also involved in writing grants, setting up fundraising meetings, keeping funders and donors updated on our progress and writing final reports for grant deliverables. S/he also helps facilitate communication, planning and decision making among the state organizations, the citizen outreach and grants staff and the development director.

The executive assistant is responsible for tracking spending for numerous program and organizational budgets.

Developing our Program – Ensuring clean air, clean water and open spaces (etc)
The Executive Assistant is responsible for ensuring that each state organization has developed compelling and winnable programs and campaigns and that each campaign and program is appropriately packaged for the public and other key audiences. S/he is also responsible for tracking and communicating our program progress – including communicating to internal audiences, updating our website, writing articles for our newsletters and other external communications tools. In addition, the Executive Assistant is responsible for scheduling and coordinating regional program retreats, conference calls, and other opportunities for staff to discuss regional and state-level strategies and opportunities with our senior backup staff.

The Executive Assistant also helps facilitate the development of and implementation of Environment America’s national and coordinated state campaigns through regular calls with national staff, website updates, working with the internet team and field staff and appropriate others.

To ensure the quality and consistency of our program implementation, we conduct a series of coordinated training sessions for our staff. The Executive Assistant is responsible for scheduling, coordinating and providing backup at all of these trainings.

Recruitment – Building the staff
The Executive Assistant is involved in recruiting graduating seniors for entry level jobs with the organization as well as for helping to schedule interviews with senior staff candidates.

Salary and Benefits:
Salary will be commensurate with the amount of an applicant's relevant experience, and is consistent with community organizer salaries (i.e. a candidate with 5 years of experience may be offered $30,000-35,000). Benefits are available, as are training and opportunities for advancement.

Location(s)
Boston, MA or Washington, D.C.

We are looking for a motivated and committed organizer to fill this role, ideally with at least one to two years of relevant experience. S/he must be detail oriented, good with numbers and computers, a competent writer and an articulate spokesperson. The ideal executive assistant would care deeply about the issues we’re working on but would be equally passionate about building a strong and enduring institution to help us achieve our program goals. Not a glory seeker, we need somebody in this role who is glad to be behind the scenes, but able and willing to take command, solve problems, hold people accountable, motivate staff and volunteers at all levels of the organization. The executive assistant must be able to multi-task, have grace under pressure and at least a decent sense of humor.

Send a compelling cover letter and resume to Hiring Director Jeff Sprague at careers@environmentamerica.org. Please specify which position you are applying for in the subject line of the e-mail, and be sure to mention where you saw our job advertised.

Environment America is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, age, handicap, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or veteran status.