Executive Director

Sisters of the Road, a 45 year old Portland institution, is seeking an Executive Director who’s excited to help us refresh our mission alignment. What we’re up to right now: we’re following in the footsteps of our founders by allowing a physical space and the needs of the surrounding houseless community to bloom into intimate, neighborhood-driven engagement. Our new Executive Director will work with our communications team to smoothly enter the new neighborhood, help fundraise for its build-out, and supervise our partners as they build out the space.

Who you are: Excited to help rebuild an organization from the ground up, including hiring a stellar team around you who can fully take ownership of their departments. You’re dedicated to making lives better–and eager to put it away at 5pm. We are committed to interrupting burnout culture in the nonprofit sector! This starts at the top, and we back it up with concrete support.

Title: Executive Director

Full-time, 40 hrs per week, FLSA Exempt

Compensation: $110,000 annual salary. Sisters has a base wage of $29/hour, and our top-paid employee makes no more than twice our lowest-paid, so this is not negotiable.

Reports to the Board of Directors

The Executive Director provides overall leadership and management of Sisters of the Road (“Sisters”). The Executive Director is responsible for the planning, organization, and direction of the agency’s operations and programs according to the mission, strategic plan, and general policies as adopted by the Board of Directors. The Executive Director maintains a strategic plan and ensures Sisters has adequate funding to meet or exceed its program goals and objectives. The Executive Director takes ultimate ownership of all public communications from Sisters, and maintains relationships with community leaders and other relevant parties. The Executive Director reports to and is supervised by the Board of Directors.

Responsibilities:

• Create a strategic plan for the direction of the organization with the Board of Directors, actualize it through advocacy and programs, and keep it up-to-date with any changes in direction.
• Manage annual budget reviews with staff and provide periodic financial forecasts to the Board.
• Identify, recruit, train and develop a talented team of staff who can lead critical programs and manage strategic functions.
• Develop the organizational culture and promote transparency and collaboration throughout the organization, including consulting with staff where appropriate.
• Collaborate with staff at every level to provide and receive constructive feedback on how operations can be improved or streamlined.
• Provide leadership to, appropriately delegates tasks to, and manages the efforts of staff to ensure appropriate support for all departments.
• Ensure our staff and practices adhere to laws and best practices for non-profits.
• Deftly navigate the dynamic political environment of advocacy for houseless neighbors in the Portland area at both the city and neighborhood level.

Qualifications:

• Understanding of finance-related performance standards.
• Experience directly supervising employees/volunteers
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Organization and leadership skills.
• Strategic thinking and analytical skills.
• Demonstrated leadership and management skills.
• Familiarity with restaurant/cafe/coffee shop service a plus.
• Ability to multitask.
• Ability to take initiative.
• Works independently.
• Creative problem-solving skills.
• Comfort with technology. We use Google Workspace to organize our ecosystem, including Drive for file organization as well as Gmail/Docs/Sheets. We also use Slack for internal communication and Trello to organize work product. If you haven’t used any of these products, that’s okay!

Preferred/Recommended Skills/Qualifications:

• Formal education and/or experiential background in non-profit, business, or mutual aid leadership, community/labor organizing, food/housing justice, or another field relevant to Sisters’ mission.
• Experience with progressively increased responsibility in organizational leadership

If your experience is not represented in this list but you believe you might have something to offer in this role, we strongly encourage you to apply!

Sisters of the Road expects all employees to uphold the philosophies of the organization:

• Learn and practice the philosophies of nonviolence, gentle personalism, anti-oppression, systemic change, and dignity
• Demonstrate commitment to racial justice and anti-oppression through fostering understanding and refusing to perpetuate oppression in the space.
• Commit to a community-organizing model and a systemic change approach.
• Build and maintain relationships with customers, staff, volunteers, service partners, neighbors and donors.
• Interrupt violence and provide incident support, as needed.
• Collaborate and share power, including listening and supporting others to create and implement solutions, as well as prioritizing confidentiality. Sisters is radically community-oriented—both externally and internally.
• Adhere to the personnel policies as defined in the personnel handbook.

Work Environment:

This position works in occasionally noisy and busy environments and directly with staff, volunteers, contractors, donors, vendors, and other stakeholders. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines. Sisters of the Road is committed to provide reasonable accommodations.

SUMMARY OF BENEFITS

• Fully paid health insurance with alternative medicine including chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy
• Dental and disability insurance
• Generous vacation leave: 2 wks (Ist year); 3 wks (2nd year) ; 4 wks (3rd and 4th year); 5 wks maximum (5th year and onward)
• Relocation assistance of $5,000, contingent on 2 years of service with us
• Sick leave (12 days/year)
• 31 days paid sabbatical after every three years of consecutive employment
• 10 paid holidays plus a birthday off
• Personal paid (2 days)
• Civil disobedience leave up to 5 days per year
• Bereavement leave up to 5 days
• Paid jury duty leave
• Oregon Family Medical Leave after 6 months
• No payroll deduction for Paid Leave Oregon
• Non-profit Parking Permit when available

To apply, please submit a resume and cover letter via the platform or to employment@sistersoftheroad.org. Feel free to introduce yourself in the cover letter, but please also address the following prompt:

• Select a Sisters philosophy and share why it speaks to you: nonviolence, gentle personalism, anti-oppression, systemic change, and dining with dignity.