Founding Board Member For Survivor-Led Nonprofit: Partnerships & Strategic Relationships

About Women’s Survivors Network

Women’s Survivors Network is a survivor-led nonprofit building a trusted ecosystem of support, resources, education, and leadership pathways for women affected by abuse.

WSN supports survivors across the longer journey of understanding abuse, escaping harm, stabilizing, healing, rebuilding, and eventually leading. Our work is trauma-informed, survivor-centered, culturally responsive, systems-aware, and grounded in dignity, agency, clarity, and care.

As a founding-stage organization, WSN is not only developing programs. We are also building the governance systems, partnerships, culture, and organizational foundation that future survivors and leaders will inherit.

Position Summary

WSN is seeking a thoughtful, relationship-centered board member with experience building mission-aligned partnerships across nonprofit, community, education, healthcare, legal, philanthropic, government, corporate, academic, advocacy, or survivor-serving sectors.

The Founding Working Board Member – Partnerships & Strategic Relationships helps WSN thoughtfully identify, assess, and develop relationships that can strengthen survivor support, expand access to trusted resources, and advance WSN's long-term mission.

This is not traditional business development or transactional networking. The role contributes through a governance and advisory lens, helping the Board consider partnership alignment, survivor safety, ethical risk, organizational capacity, reputation, power dynamics, and long-term ecosystem impact.

Because WSN is a survivor-led organization, successful partnerships require more than strong relationship-building skills. Board members are expected to understand how abuse, trauma, coercive control, and systemic barriers shape survivors' experiences and influence whether partnerships truly serve survivors' needs. This understanding may come through lived experience, professional work, advocacy, research, volunteer service, or other sustained engagement. Applicants are never expected to disclose personal experiences of abuse.

At WSN, partnerships are not simply about expanding our network. They are about thoughtfully building an ecosystem of relationships that survivors can trust.

A Shared Expectation for All WSN Board Members

At WSN, professional expertise alone is not sufficient for board service.

We seek board members who combine their professional skills with a meaningful understanding of abuse—whether familial, relational, workplace, institutional, or other forms of abuse—and a commitment to survivor-centered learning.

This understanding may be rooted in lived experience, professional work, advocacy, research, education, volunteer service, or sustained community engagement. Some board members arrive with deep subject-matter expertise. Others arrive with lived experience and continue building their understanding through shared learning. Both perspectives strengthen WSN's governance.

Applicants are never expected to disclose personal experiences of abuse.

Core Responsibilities

Partnership Strategy and Governance

• Bring a strategic partnership lens into board and committee discussions.
• Help WSN define what safe, ethical, and mission-aligned partnership looks like.
• Contribute to partnership frameworks, evaluation criteria, risk considerations, and decision-making practices.
• Help distinguish among different partnership types, levels of proximity, responsibilities, and approval needs.
• Support board-level thinking about how partnerships affect survivor trust, organizational integrity, reputation, and long-term sustainability.

Ecosystem Mapping and Opportunity Identification

• Help identify organizations, institutions, coalitions, networks, and community groups aligned with WSN’s mission.
• Support thoughtful ecosystem mapping across relevant sectors.
• Identify gaps in WSN’s emerging network of resources and relationships.
• Help recognize opportunities for collaborative education, resource exchange, referrals, research, advocacy, training, or program support.
• Make warm introductions when appropriate and mutually agreed upon.

Partnership Evaluation and Discernment

• Help assess opportunities for values alignment, survivor safety, ethical considerations, organizational capacity, reputational risk, and sustainability.
• Encourage careful review of power dynamics, incentives, accountability practices, and possible unintended consequences.
• Help identify concerns such as performative alignment, urgency without clarity, extractive practices, or reputation management without meaningful accountability.
• Support the board in slowing down when an opportunity requires deeper review.
• Help ensure that partnership enthusiasm does not override survivor safety or organizational boundaries.

Relationship Stewardship

• Participate in selected introductory or relationship-building conversations when helpful.
• Support thoughtful follow-up, continuity, and clarity in emerging relationships.
• Help WSN communicate its mission, values, boundaries, and partnership expectations clearly.
• Encourage mutuality, transparency, respect, and realistic expectations.
• Help identify when a relationship should be strengthened, paused, redirected, or ended.

Programs & Partnerships Committee Participation

• Participate actively in the Programs & Partnerships Committee.
• Contribute partnership insight to program development, Pilot Zero learning, survivor-centered design, ecosystem planning, and external positioning.
• Collaborate with members holding program, survivor experience, legal systems, immigration systems, and other relevant governance lenses.
• Help the committee identify where partnerships could strengthen survivor access without creating unsafe dependency, mission drift, overextension, or confusion.
• Support committee work while maintaining the boundary between governance, Executive Director responsibilities, and day-to-day relationship management.

Bring a Survivor-Centered Lens to Partnerships

• Evaluate partnerships through the lived realities of survivors.
• Consider how power, access, language, institutional history, and organizational culture may affect survivor trust.
• Help ensure partnerships strengthen—not unintentionally complicate—survivors' ability to access support.
• Encourage decisions that prioritize dignity, safety, agency, and long-term trust over organizational visibility or rapid growth.

Ideal Background

Strong candidates may bring experience in one or more of the following:

• nonprofit partnerships,
• community engagement,
• coalition building,
• strategic alliances,
• philanthropy,
• healthcare,
• behavioral health,
• higher education,
• legal services,
• domestic violence or survivor-serving systems,
• government or public-sector partnerships,
• advocacy,
• corporate social responsibility,
• mission-driven business development,
• community organizing,
• network development,
• cross-sector collaboration.

Prior nonprofit board experience is helpful but not required.

Strong candidates will also demonstrate a meaningful understanding of abuse and survivor experiences.

This understanding may come through lived experience, advocacy, professional practice, research, community leadership, education, volunteer service, or sustained engagement with survivor-serving organizations.

Applicants are never expected to disclose personal experiences of abuse.

The ideal candidate recognizes that building partnerships for a survivor-led organization requires understanding not only organizations, but also the realities survivors navigate across healthcare, legal systems, housing, employment, education, immigration, family systems, and community life.

Values and Leadership Fit

WSN is especially interested in someone who:

• Builds relationships through trust rather than urgency.
• Understands that partnership is a responsibility, not simply an opportunity.
• Values survivor safety and mission integrity over visibility or rapid expansion.
• Thinks in systems and can see how organizations, incentives, power, and culture influence one another.
• Is comfortable asking difficult questions before WSN says yes.
• Can balance openness to collaboration with discernment and boundaries.
• Understands the importance of mutuality, accountability, and long-term relationship care.
• Communicates with humility, clarity, cultural responsiveness, and professionalism.
• Can collaborate without dominating.
• Is comfortable working within an evolving founding-stage organization.
• Respects confidentiality and understands that identifying survivor information must never be used casually in partnership development.
• Supports WSN’s survivor-led, trauma-informed, and culturally responsive approach.

Time Commitment

Approximately 4–6 hours per month, including:

• board meetings,
• committee meetings,
• meeting preparation,
• occasional partnership research or review,
• selected strategic conversations,
• light system-building support.

There may be occasional periods of increased involvement during partnership planning, program development, ecosystem mapping, or review of significant opportunities.

The role is designed to be meaningful and active while remaining sustainable.

Additional Leadership Opportunities

As WSN grows, board members may be invited to take on additional leadership responsibilities, such as serving as committee Co-Leads or supporting special governance initiatives.

These opportunities are based on organizational needs, demonstrated collaboration, board development, capacity, and mutual interest. They are not automatic components of any board role.

Inclusive Recruitment

WSN welcomes applicants across race, ethnicity, nationality, immigration experience, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, faith, socioeconomic background, professional pathway, and lived experience.

Survivors and people from communities historically excluded from nonprofit leadership are strongly encouraged to apply.

Lived experience is valued, but no applicant is expected to disclose personal trauma or survivor history.