Every year, through New York Cares, 63,000 people volunteer their time and talents to help improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of fellow New Yorkers. Our volunteers tutor students in underserved schools, serve meals to the homeless, socialize with seniors, clean up public parks, and more, providing essential services to improve education for NYC students, meet immediate needs of the most vulnerable residents, and revitalize the city’s public spaces.

New York Cares prides itself on a culture of excellence, defined by integrity, reliability, and professionalism. We were the 2009 Winner of the New York Times Company Nonprofit Excellence Award, and have been recognized as a top-notch employer by The NonProfit Times, Crain’s New York, the Princeton Review, and The Wall Street Journal.

Are you passionate about food justice, sustainability, and meeting the basic needs of New York’s more than 1.3 million food-insecure community members? Are you energized by engaging community members and volunteers on impact-driven solutions? Do you want an opportunity to roll up your sleeves with urban farmers and community organizers alike, while gaining hands-on experience in the nonprofit world?

Reporting to the Officer of Immediate Needs Programs, this position leads New York Cares’ efforts to realize the missions of New York's antipoverty agencies through sustainable and volunteer-based solutions, providing access to healthy food, warm clothing, and supportive housing to New York City's most needful neighbors. Working closely with over 300 community partner agencies, these volunteer-led programs include food sorting and collection, meal preparation and service, meal delivery, our Farm to Pantry initiative, our annual New York Cares Coat Drive, and other hunger- and homelessness- related programs. The Program Manager role has four key accountability streams:

Responsibilities:

(1)  Program and Project Management and Evaluation: Develop and implement high-quality volunteer programs and projects (individual instances of programs) for individuals and groups of volunteers from corporations and other organizations to make a measurable impact on our community partners and their clients;

(2)  Relationship Management: Cultivate and maintain collaborative partnerships with partner agencies, primarily soup kitchens, pantries, homeless shelters, and community hubs, to maximize community and partner impact; and

(3)  Volunteer Management: Support volunteer team leaders and volunteers throughout their engagement with New York Cares to ensure a meaningful experience.

(4)  Event planning and management: Support with the planning and execution of the Coat Drive, aiming to provide over 100,000 coats to New Yorkers annually; coordinating exciting and impactful community and volunteer engagement events.

The Program Manager directly manages relationships, programmatic support, and ongoing volunteer support to more than 50 community partners. High quality management entails assessing partner and community need, developing and implementing successful volunteer programs to address that need, ensuring preparation and training of volunteer Team Leaders, and assessing impact by collecting and evaluating qualitative and quantitative data.

Volunteer projects, trainings, and events occasionally take place during non-business hours, requiring the Program Manager to work several evenings and multiple weekend days per year.

The successful candidate will:

·        Manage the design, implementation, and evaluation of a portfolio of immediate needs and urban farming volunteer programs

·        Oversee all aspects of project planning and execution, including community outreach, partner and volunteer team leader engagement, budgeting and expense management, capacity planning, staffing, training, site visits, project evaluation, and new project development

·        Provide direct and hands-on support for corporate engagement events and volunteer projects

·        Recruit, support, and train volunteer project leaders

·        Manage multiple project budgets

·        Cultivate and maintain relationships with key partner agencies and corporate sponsors

• Conduct community outreach to identify new partner agencies for specific program areas

·        Work cross-departmentally with colleagues to assess our program quality, plan and implement new ideas in the service sphere, and assist as necessary with organization-wide initiatives

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or minimum of two years’ work experience at a not-for-profit organization;
• Excellent leadership, interpersonal, and communication skills;
• Strong administrative and organizational skills, with an ability to multi-task;
• Exceptional systems thinking and problem solving skills;
• Ability to work effectively both independently and as a member of a team;
• Familiarity with food justice, poverty, and homelessness issues in New York City
• Capability of lifting/carrying supplies and equipment weighing up to 30 pounds

Compensation:

Starting salary ranges from the mid- to high- $30ks.