Company description

Mission and Vision
FAIRVIEW GARDENS BUILDS CRITICAL CONNECTIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITY, AGRICULTURE AND EDUCATION BY: Innovating and producing safe, organic, locally-grown foods in a sustainable manner, serving as a community-based educational resource, advocating for appropriately scaled, healthy food systems, providing engaging, hands-on experience with farming.

Organization Overview
The Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens is a non-profit educational facility situated on a 100-year-old working organic farm in the heart of the goodland, Goleta, California. We’ve been working for 20 years to preserve and operate Fairview Gardens as a working organic farm that nurtures the human spirit through educational programs and public activities at the farm. In short, we grow food, we grow farmers, and we grow educators.

Job description

The Position

Under the direction of the Board of Trustees, the Executive Director is responsible for overall management and operation of the organization, ensuring stability and growth.

The Board of Trustees seek a highly organized, detail and task-oriented self-starter for the position of Executive Director. This position requires a strong practical knowledge of agricultural skills and farm enterprise management, experience in fundraising and event management, a broad understanding of community food security, and a passionate commitment to education and community building. The ED has primary responsibility for developing, assessing, and managing the organic farm enterprises at Fairview Gardens in a manner that meets its business and educational goals. The ED will manage and provide vital support to the Development Director, Education Director and farm staff through ongoing operational analysis, strategic planning, and new initiative execution, as well as critical analysis of operations to Trustees through regular reporting, communication and presentations.

General Duties:

• Position Fairview Gardens for accelerated growth by building short and long-term strategies that support strategic goals to deliver mission impact while achieving financial expectations.
• Pursue new business development opportunities including earned income streams such as instructional programming, merchandising, value-added food production, product innovation and event hosting/site rental.
• Create value for constituents to build customer satisfaction and drive revenue growth. Help grow customer base and fine tune product marketing.
• Cultivate and manage profitable relationships with priority constituents including contributing to stewardship activities of volunteers, donors, program partners.
• Contribute to data-informed decision making including accurately forecasting revenue growth and expenses for programs and initiatives.
• Anticipate community and organizational needs and structure the organization and programs to meet community needs.

Responsibilities:

Operations Management and Financial Analysis

• Develop, manage and evolve a farm business plan that is informed by the vision, strategy, needs and resources of the organization. Lead farm business planning process with support from core management team to develop and improve farm infrastructure and equipment.
• Provide personnel management and leadership including oversight of staff activities and performance reviews.
• Implement accessible and informative record keeping systems for all food production, event, and education activities. Update and analyze patterns, opportunities, and challenges.
• Perform comprehensive fiscal management. Provide business analysis and insight, generate accurate and reliable financials, including cash flow forecasts. Meet with finance committee and present financials to the trustees on a quarterly basis.
• Prepare annual budget for board adoption with staff input.
• Research, identify and develop new revenue and fundraising opportunities.

Donor Engagement/Fund Development

• Working with Development Director, oversee a strategic individual giving program that moves prospects through the cultivation/solicitation cycle.
• Participate in planning and strategic design of cultivation and stewardship events.
• Participate in the development of best practices, policies, and strategies related to fundraising activities.
• Oversee and strategically interact with organization’s CRM database to design communication strategies for donor prospect subsets.

Communications/Marketing/Branding

• Work with staff and Board to build and execute a creative and consistent communications strategy geared toward customers, donors, program participants and community stakeholders, including social media.
• Oversee the implementation of a branding strategy with the goal of increasing earned income streams, charitable contributions, and grant funding.

Community/Education Engagement

• Lead staff and trustees in creating short and long range revenue and fundraising opportunities.
• Work with staff and trustees to develop and implement strategies that make mission-driven, education programming profitable.
• Support the development of infrastructure and marketing of events to create additional revenue streams.
• Nurture relationships with donors, present to community groups, and serve as spokesperson on behalf of the organization at events.

Program/Production Support

• Provide program support in collaboration with the Education Director as needed.
• Serve as contributor to the apprenticeship program as a guest speaker, specifically in the areas of non-profit management, outdoor education, and farm management.
• Provide strategic support to Development Director as needed.
• Provide leadership and direction in the overall care for the land, facilities, and infrastructure.

Required Qualifications:

• Requires a high level of commitment to building community connections through agriculture and education in Santa Barbara County. Must possess excellent communication skills and ability to work with diverse individuals including staff, partner agencies, volunteers and community members.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture, Education, Business, or related field. Masters preferred.
• A minimum of 3 years of full-season organic agricultural experience, preferably in an urban environment, preferably in CA.
• A minimum of 3 years of full-season organic farm management, including creating business, production, post-harvest handling, and marketing plans.
• Demonstrated experience in project, program, and/or organizational management, ability to balance multiple customers, deadlines, projects.
• Experience and interest in youth leadership, development and education.
• Experienced in cross-cultural environments, Spanish helpful.
• Internet literacy and proficiency with Word, Excel, Quickbooks, CRM database software.
• Experience and ability to speak about local food issues and urban agriculture.
• Demonstrated experience in farm/facilities/land management.
• Available for scheduled evening and weekend hours, as needed.
• Experience with permaculture design, regenerative farming techniques and philosophy, intercropping/alley cropping, dry farming, companion planting, no till agriculture, and other progressive farming practices.
• Current driver’s license and clean driving record.

Compensation

this position is: salaried

Application instructions

Deadline

no deadline