Reports to: High School Director of Communities

Job Summary

The Resources and Opportunities Manager, reporting to the Director of Communities, is responsible for executing Thread’s strategy to connect its community members with resources, opportunities, services, and collaborators to alleviate personal barriers to thriving and ensure all community members are on the path towards general well-being and self-efficacy. To execute this work, the Manager will coach and manage volunteer Resource Teams (volunteers who help execute Thread programming) and Thread collaborators (external partners who offer resources, expertise, and services to Thread community members). Success will be measured based on community members’ ability to access and forge meaningful connections with necessary resources and opportunities, community members’ capacity to overcome personal and structural barriers, and the alignment of Thread’s practices and policies to ensure the safety and support of both minors and young adults.

Thread enrolls young people for 10 years, connecting them with a “Family” of volunteers who rally around them to graduate from high school, attain a post-high school certification, and work towards self-efficacy. The Manager will collaborate with the Program Managers around programming that builds self-efficacy, work with Community Managers to support individual barrier removal efforts, and is expected to be one of Thread’s resident experts on areas such as resources, job and internship opportunities, and the best practices/policies to ensure the safety and support of young adults.

Key Responsibilities

Resources and Opportunities Connection/Case Management

• Identify, manage, and track available opportunities, resources, and services
• Connect young people with academic and professional opportunities that advance their goals, as well as elevate their voice and confidence in their self-efficacy
• Connect young people and volunteers with resources that alleviate barriers to self-efficacy, including housing, mental health, food, and supplies
• Help run summer jobs program for Thread young people leveraging both city-wide YouthWorks program and individual community partnerships
• Regularly audit community engagement policies and practices in order to ensure alignment with best practices for minor safety, wellbeing, and self-efficacy
• Other duties as assigned

Coaching and Capacity Building

• Build scalable team of Resource Team Volunteers, interns, and collaborators, coaching them to execute strategy and facilitate resource and opportunities connections
• In collaboration & consultation with the Curriculum and Student Programs teams, develop and deploy trainings and programming that build capacity of young people and their volunteers to remove barriers, leverage opportunities, and work towards self-efficacy
• Develop, maintain, and deploy electronic and online resources for volunteers and young people through all channels, including the Thread mobile app, Thread Guide, email communications, and more

Relationship and Resource Management

• Maintain and strengthen community partnerships that meet the resource and opportunities needs of high school young people and volunteers
• Recruit, develop, and retain Resource Team Volunteers and Collaborators to effectively execute strategy, in alignment with Thread values and core competencies
• Identify community needs through quantitative and qualitative data collection, cross-team collaboration

Qualifications/Skills

Required

• Master’s Degree and 3 years of experience required; Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) preferred and/or strong record of crisis management and trauma-informed care
• Strong knowledge of the Baltimore community resources landscape and/or available academic/professional opportunities
• Strong project and process management, including ability to organize complex tasks and prioritize multiple assignments
• Ability to clearly communicate and live out Thread’s core values & core competencies.
• Ability to work during the evenings and weekends as necessary.

Preferred

• Prior non-profit experience or knowledge
• Experience working with learning management systems

WORK PLACE/ENVIRONMENT

• Hybrid Work Environment
• Flexible and Supportive Work Culture
• While Thread is a flexible work environment, community positions do often need to be able to engage in-person during core business hours, in addition to work in evenings and weekends as needed.

COVID Requirements

• “Effective September 20,2021 , Thread requires all new employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a condition of employment, subject to reasonable accommodation. All offers of employment after [date] are contingent upon proof of COVID-19 vaccination as a part of the pre-employment process. If you are unable to be vaccinated due to medical or protected religious reasons, please reach out to Human Resources at HR@thread.org to submit an accommodation request.”

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

• We value a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture and encourage applications from all interested persons, including, but not limited to, people of color, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

ADA ACCOMMODATION LANGUAGE

• Thread will make reasonable accommodations for the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability who is an applicant or an employee, unless undue hardship or a direct threat would result from the accommodation. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please contact HR@Thread.org.
  

More About Thread

Our Mission

Thread harnesses the power of relationships to create a new social fabric of diverse individuals deeply engaged with young people facing the most significant opportunity and achievement gaps. Our community is committed to ending social isolation and building a more equitable culture in which everyone thrives.

Our Why

Studies have shown that the defining difference between Rust Belt cities that struggled and those that were hotspots of rejuvenation was the structure of social networks. The Thread Community Model brings together a broad cross-section of our city by forming authentic, mutual, and enduring relationships and in turn provides a vehicle for sustained change. Thread believes that the power of relationships—the dynamic web of interconnectedness created when futures are woven together—can end the poverty of isolation and allow both youth and Baltimore to realize their full potential.

Thread is weaving a new social fabric where everyone thrives and which is expanding to connect with even more students, volunteers, and collaborators. Thread currently serves 655 students and alumni with the support of more than 1200 volunteers and more than 1300 collaborators. We plan to continue to increase our annual and total enrollments until we meet our long-term goal of engaging 300 new students each year (5% of every high school freshman class across Baltimore City). This expansion and evolution requires that Thread be nimble and innovative, and leverage identified opportunities in a way that is congruent with our values and core competencies.

Our How

Team members at Thread are hard- and smart-working, collaborative, curious, passionate, gritty, strategic and resilient. We meet people where they are. We go all in with care, compassion, and empathy. We believe small acts make a big difference. We trust each other to be sincere, reliable and competent. The outcomes Thread has achieved are exemplary. However, the road to excellence is peppered with iterative learning. We make mistakes often and fail frequently, but we learn from our mistakes and continue to tenaciously try and try again. We are about building communities of responsibility and have high expectations of students, volunteers, collaborators, and staff. We believe that each human being has a purpose in life and have found that individuals living on purpose have discovered the intersection of their skills, passion, and what the world needs. The journey to find this intersection, one’s dot, is often simultaneously exhilarating and difficult. Thread creates a safe and challenging space for all individuals in our community—students, volunteers, collaborators, and staff— to find their dot through deep reflection, honest feedback, and in-depth coaching.

Posted On: Wednesday, June 15, 2022