Company description

The New Entry Sustainable Farming Project’s (New Entry) mission is to improve our local and regional food systems by training the next generation of farmers to produce food that is sustainable, nutritious, and culturally-appropriate and making this food accessible to individuals regardless of age, mobility, ethnicity, or socio-economic status. In doing this work, we provide critical training, career development, and economic opportunity to new farmers.

Job description

National Farmer Training Networks Manager

Reports To: National Technical Assistance Manager
Posting Date: 3/22/18. Position open until filled.

Job Overview
New Entry Sustainable Farming Project’s (New Entry) mission is to improve our local and regional food systems by training the next generation of farmers to produce food that is sustainable, nutritious and culturally appropriate and making this food accessible to individuals regardless of age, mobility, ethnicity, or socio-economic status. In doing this work, New Entry provides critical training, career development, and economic opportunity to new farmers. The National Farmer Training Networks Manager will work as part of New Entry’s National Programs Team to oversee the administration of New Entry’s National Incubator Farm Training Initiative (NIFTI), Ag Apprenticeship Learning Network (ALN) and other nationally-focused projects. This involves managing partner networks; scheduling, planning and hosting professional development events and conferences; developing educational resources, toolkits and guidebooks; and supporting beginning farmer training programs with ongoing project planning, development, advocacy, and evaluation.

New Entry operates under two fiscal sponsors – Tufts University and TSNE MissionWorks. While this is one unified full-time position, half of the responsibilities fall under projects/funding via Tufts and half under TSNE. The position is therefore technically employed by Tufts 50% and TSNE 50%, and will require your job application be submitted to both entities.

Key Job Elements
• Conduct national planning, outreach, and technical assistance (TA) to emerging or developing beginning farmer training and incubator farm programs through recruiting clients and engaging partners in TA and community of practice (CoP) efforts.
• Help develop TA protocols in areas of financial literacy, land and credit access, and metrics and evaluation for farm incubator projects.
• Maintain national NIFTI TA request and referral system.
• Develop national webinars on beginning farmer training program topics.
• Refine and expand upon web-based national clearinghouse for farm incubator resources.
• Develop case studies, success stories, and best practices.
• Organize multi-day NIFTI Field Schools and CoP national meetings/conferences.
• Facilitate ongoing CoP strategies for beginning farmer program staff.
• Document and evaluate program outputs and outcomes.
• Collaborate on development of national metrics and evaluation of beginning farmer training projects.
• Collaborate on national-level research on beginning farmer training projects.
• Promote and distribute existing toolkits, fact sheets, and other materials.
• Collaborate with national partners on local and regional-level projects to encourage and strengthen farm beginning farmer training programs by partnering and serving in an advisory capacity as requested.
• Work with New Entry’s National Programs Team on other national projects as needed.
• Promote New Entry’s work on a national scale by attending and presenting at relevant conferences and events.
• Participate as part of a team to support the mission of New Entry by working with staff to develop robust program metrics and evaluation tools to share nationally and to educate New Entry staff members about best practices gleaned from national organizations.
• Create and manage consulting agreements and contracts with program partners.
• Develop and maintain operations manuals for all aspects of National TA program administration.

Supervisory responsibilities:
This position provides supervision to graduate student interns and work-study students and manages technical assistance partner contracts with collaborating organizations.

Special requirements:
• Access to reliable private transportation necessary and ability to travel nationally.
• Flexible schedule needed, including evenings and weekends.

Qualifications
• Prior experience in national outreach, adult education theory, beginning farmer and rancher training strategies, local and regional food systems, educational resource development, and organizational development preferred.
• Cross-cultural experience helpful.
• Experience with programmatic evaluation and assessment desired.
• Experience with event planning desired.
• Demonstrated leadership skills, strong project management experience, and attention to detail required.
• Demonstrated commitment to working with diverse ethnic and economic groups.
• Self-directed and able to work well in a rapidly changing, high-performance environment.
• Effective oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills
• Proficiency with standard computer software (MS Office, Social Media, Salesforce CRM, website content development, graphic design, Excel database)

Compensation: Salary commensurate with experience, with a comprehensive benefits package.

Compensation

this position is: salaried, less than $50,000

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline