Opportunity overview

The Eastside Jewish Commons mission is to create and sustain a joyful, inspiring, and inclusive Jewish community space on Portland’s eastside where people can connect, learn, and grow. Join our team as Executive Director to help make this vision a reality!

About the Eastside Jewish Commons

For decades, eastside community members have dreamed of creating opportunities to engage in Jewish life closer to where they live, work, and play. Now, this dream has come to life! After a four-year process involving community engagement and organizing, we proudly opened our doors in July 2021 at NE 24th and Sandy. Our core values are:

• Inspiring. We inspire the opening of ears and minds, ignite curiosity, and embrace innovation.
• Inclusive: We are welcoming, accessible, and inclusive to all interested in Jewish life.
• Joyful: We uplift each other by coming together in a place where we all feel seen and heard and can celebrate and honor what unites us.

The EJC will both serve and strengthen our community for generations to come.

About the Position

The Executive Director will be the key leader in development, administration and operations. They will report to the Board of Directors.

EJC is three things:

1. A community space for individuals to connect, learn and grow.
2. A venue for events, activities, and programs offered by 24 Jewish community partner organizations as well as individuals and other organizations.
3. A co-working space for Jewish community professionals.

This means we must carefully manage our community space, including scheduling and programming of both public and private events and activities offered by numerous organizations and individuals. We rely on space usage fees, donations, and grants to support our mission.

We opened our doors on July 1, 2021, in partnership with Congregation Shir Tikvah (CST), who is our generous partner, leaseholder, and collaborator. We have a solid, engaged, and supportive Board of Directors; a strong financial foundation; a thoughtful business plan; excellent bookkeeping and support staff; and a tremendous level of momentum and community support. Our Interim Executive Director, Mia Birk, was our founding board chair and will provide mentorship, guidance, and support to the selected candidate. Additional information about EJC may be found on our website.

We are seeking a leader adept in development, operations, people management, finance, board management, stakeholder relations, and building and program management. This is a job for someone who is highly detail-oriented, organized, tech savvy, proactive, energetic, communicative, and thorough. They will hire and supervise staff. The perfect person will feel comfortable at both the leadership and detail levels. They will manage their time (and that of staff) well, understand how to delegate, seek help and support, and find joy in being in a community space.

We value backgrounds and experience in event management, administration, building and/or co-working space management, development, and budgeting/finance.

As we are a small start-up organization, the preferred candidate will be hands-on, creative, flexible, and collaborative. They will identify and work through challenges and problems. They will work at both a strategic planning/thinking/creating level as well as an on-the-ground level, and they will have the freedom and flexibility to garner and apply resources. They will be grounded in carrying out EJC’s mission within the boundaries of financial reality, and they will contribute to all sides of the financial equation, from building/tracking budgets to mindful spending to increasing revenues. They will be versatile; daily tasks will vary and the pace variable depending upon the number of activities at any given time. They will have opportunities to participate in a wide range of spiritual, cultural, educational, social, and religious programming. They will never be bored!

See below for more detailed responsibilities and desired qualifications.

EJC recognizes that it’s unlikely that any one person will have all the desired skills and experience. Capacity and desire to learn are essential.

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES

Internal operational lead

• Responsible for the financial health of the organization.
• Oversee operational processes: admin, finance, HR, legal, communications, IT.
• Partner with EJC’s Board of Directors.
• Manage smooth operations within and pertaining to our building.

Development/Fundraising

• With Board of Directors, develop and execute a fundraising campaign with specific targets, metrics, and strategies.
• Oversee internal systems related to pledges and donations

Community Engagement

• Create and oversee systems, processes, and protocols for management and smooth flow of events and activities in the Commons.
• Manage the schedule of events, activities, gatherings, and other uses of the Commons.

Events

• Supervise overall space usage for events and activities, supported by staff

Marketing/Communications

• With communications team, supervise external and internal outreach and communications

Minimum requirements

The ideal candidate will have a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in a relevant field and at least 10 years of relevant professional/field experience in business management, events management, co-working space management, operations, logistics, and/or multi-tenant property management. In sum, we are looking for a combination of education and experience that provides the knowledge, skills and abilities required to perform the job, as well as a personality that will fulfill our organization’s mission.

Knowledge, skills and abilities

• Strong organizational skills and project management capabilities, including planning, program and budget development, time management, problem solving, leading project teams, facilitating meetings, delegation, evaluation.
• Ability to hire, supervise, schedule, and administer volunteers, interns, and staff.
• Ability to negotiate, solidify, and manage relationships, agreements, and contracts with individuals, community partners, other organizations, donors, businesses, and vendors.
• Ability to ensure events and activities are staffed.
• Ability to step in and flex to take on roles and responsibilities as needed.
• Experience with HR functions, such as payroll, onboarding, handbooks, benefits, time tracking.
• High level of proficiency with web-based platforms. Ability to assess, quickly learn, and select appropriate tools for the task at hand.
• Experience with a wide range of administrative tasks, from scheduling to budgeting, database and asset management, record-keeping, interaction with banks, and other aspects of running a non-profit organization.
• Strong work ethic with a high degree of integrity.
• Working in a start-up environment with a high degree of collaboration, layered with a mission-driven ethic.

Application Requirements

Applicants are invited to submit a resume, cover letter and a response to the following: Please describe your involvement in a property, business, or non-profit start-up or venture that involved multiple interests. Identify those aspects you led. Explain some of the challenges you faced and how you overcame them; your engagement with customers, board members, donors, partners and/or investors; and how your experience will be relevant to EJC.

Please attach your response as a PDF or Word file, up to 400 words.

We look forward to hearing from you!