Archive | mayo, 2018

2018 Co-Director Search Profile

CEF is hiring for a new Co-Director to join our team, working alongside Co-Directors Janet Xiao and Jon Young as Maggie West steps down from her position on the team. Learn more about this leadership transition process at CEF here.

2018 Co-Director Search Profile

Co-Director Position Responsibilities

Note from the Hiring Committee: As we continue to work to refine CEF’s leadership structure, we have updated this position description to clarify roles and responsibilities, and to offer a more competitive range of compensation. 

This position’s primary responsibilities are to steward CEF’s resource development and support the Chapel Hill team. The position is one of three Co-Directors who work both cooperatively and independently to steward the organization as a whole, and in the Chapel Hill and Durham offices. Each of the Co-Directors leads specific areas of work, and as a team are responsible for fundraising, financial management, organizational development, internal operations, and communications for the organization. Additionally, the Co-Directors serve as connectors with the broader community. Read more about our Co-Director leadership model and organizational structure here.

Lead development and fundraising activities with a relational approach

  • Steward strong relationships with funders, donors, governmental partners, and other allies (see CEF’s 2017 revenues/expenses breakdowns).
  • Create and lead achievement of annual and multi-year development plans in close collaboration with Co-Directors.
  • Draft and submit grant applications, letters of inquiry, proposals, and reports in coordination with Co-Directors and staff.
  • Coordinate team efforts towards and engage actively in individual donor development, including ongoing communication and gift acknowledgments.
  • Identify and cultivate new funder prospects and maintain CEF’s donor database.
  • Manage CEF staff, volunteers, and board members engaged in development, including supervision of part-time development contractor.

Steward CEF’s operations, programs & community in Orange County

  • Coach, supervise, and support the staff team in CEF’s Chapel Hill office.
  • Develop and maintain impactful and collaborative working relationships with partners and stakeholders.
  • Hold long-term vision for the Chapel Hill office’s programs and growth in the context of emergent local needs and opportunities.
  • Work regularly with Members as an Advocate (expected of all CEF staff).
  • Actively lead community-driven advocacy for local systems change.

Facilitate creative organizational vision & growth strategy

  • Guide annual budget development and support ongoing financial management needs of the organization.
  • Support program design to improve CEF’s outcomes, impact, and methodologies.
  • Support staff development and hiring processes.
  • Support the activities and ongoing development of the Board of Directors.

Position Qualifications

  • Previous experience in non-profit leadership, including demonstrated success in fundraising and managing budgets of a similar size
  • Demonstrated commitment to racial equity, social justice, and trauma-informed care
  • Experience with or commitment to a team-based organizational culture and shared leadership practices
  • Exceptional organizational abilities and attention to detail, with attentive follow-through on simultaneous projects

An ideal candidate will have:

  • A commitment to shared leadership, embodying CEF’s values and guiding principles.
  • Affirming, empowering, and listening-based leadership style, with a strong sense of self-direction and accountability to the community
  • Compelling, authentic, and clear verbal and written communication
  • Experience and comfort working with people across abilities and neurological differences, and from diverse racial, socioeconomic, educational, cultural, religious, gender, and ethnic backgrounds and identities
  • Facility with technology, including a willingness to learn new technologies

Salary and Benefits

Compensation is commensurate with experience and education, with a starting annual range of $40,000-$47,000, and an additional $3,330 annually as a health care stipend that allows staff to choose their own insurance plan. A detailed description of Employee Benefits can be viewed here.

To Apply

CEF is an equal opportunity employer, and strongly encourages applications from people of color, persons with disabilities, women, and LGBTQ applicants.

Please send a resume and cover letter to hiring@communityef.org to apply. Your cover letter should be 1-2 pages and speak to your interest in working with CEF, and your experience and skills in community-based leadership and fundraising. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and the position is open until filled. Please contact hiring@communityef.org with any questions. 

Know someone who might love to do this job and work with CEF?
Send them a link to: communityef.org/codirector-search

About Community Empowerment Fund

CEF works with people experiencing homelessness or financial insecurity in Durham and Orange Counties to gain employment, secure housing, and build financial well-being. CEF trains volunteer “Advocates,” many of whom are undergraduate students, to work one-on-one with “Members” with a holistic approach that meets people where they are. We are passionate about sustaining transitions out of homelessness, and combine flexible relationship-based support with innovative matched savings accounts to help Members achieve long-term dreams. Since launching our savings program in 2010, Members have saved over $900,000 to secure stable housing, build emergency funds, purchase vehicles, and even buy their own homes. Our unique, evidence-based model has gained national attention.

CEF is committed to a team-based organizational structure, in which responsibilities and decision-making are shared among staff. We are a growing organization, with 13 staff, 244 volunteer Advocates, and over 1,000 Members. CEF’s FY2018 operating budget is approximately $500,000, with highly diversified financial resources, and a relationship-based fundraising model consistent with our organizational mission. Learn more at www.communityef.org

These guiding principles were collectively discerned by a group of members, advocates, staff and board members in the Spring of 2015. They are a statement of our values as an organization and serve as a compass to guide us in our work.

CEF’S Guiding Principles

People-Centered Relationships: We appreciate and value our differences and are committed to working through relationships built on mutual respect and trust. In doing so, we foster a non-judgmental, welcoming and safe environment focused on relationships that empower individuals.

Active Reflection and Co-Learning: We cultivate an environment where advocates, members, and staff learn from each other. We create organizational space to critically reflect on our work.

Participatory Ownership: We — members, advocates, staff, and board — share ownership of CEF and achieve our organization’s goals through collaborative decision-making.

Financial Independence: We work together towards sustainable financial security for our community.

Community in Power: We contextualize our efforts within systems of power and through member and advocate experiences. We are committed to social justice and pursue local community-level change.

Welcoming Connectors: We are committed to cultivating an open network of people and organizations to holistically serve members’ goals.

Quality and Accountability: CEF strives to be an interconnected and transparent organization that gives and receives feedback for mutual accountability, to ensure quality in all that it does.

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A Decade Ago, Yvette Mathews Was Unemployed and Struggling. Now She’s a Key Advocate for Affordable Housing in Chapel Hill.

Yvette Mathews is the captain of the ship in our Chapel Hill office!  Today, the Indy Week featured her amazing work in our office daily, as well as her leadership in organizing to address the growing affordable housing crisis in Orange County — including through song! We are so grateful for her phenomenal daily presence and the gifts that she brings to CEF.

The Community Empowerment Fund’s small basement office in Chapel Hill bustles with activity as Yvette Matthews scurries in and out, racing to pick up an incessantly ringing phone between guiding those looking for help and sharing a joke with students passing through. She deftly switches from task to task, directing the flow of people into and out of the office like an air traffic controller.

While it looks like she’s moving one hundred miles per hour, this is more or less a normal Thursday for Matthews.

“I’m a pretty good multitasking kind of chick,” says Matthews, a sixty-year-old office manager with short, slightly graying hair and a narrow face that usually frames a smile. “So I can hear you talking here, hear them talking there, and still do what I need to do.”

Read the article here: https://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/a-decade-ago-yvette-matthews-was-unemployed-and-struggling-now-shes-a-key-advocate-for-affordable-housing-in-chapel-hill

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Meet Kevin: CEF Staff Interview

Kevin: CEF Chapel Hill's Workforce Development Specialist and Americorps Vista

What inspires you?

What inspires me to work for CEF is when I complete a task with someone.  It does not matter whether it is a large or small task that helps the person. When that person says to me, that I made a difference for them—their direct feedback and their energized eye-to-eye contact beaming back at me are what inspire me. There is a wide array of diverse people, from all walks of Chapel Hill who visit our office.  Just because I am able to help write or re-construct a person’s resume in a new and refreshing way—I see that person before my eyes become energized and ready to seek employment.

What projects are you excited about right now?

I’m working to modify present systems already in place at CEF to support members looking for employment.  My goal is to help people to easily access and navigate employment opportunities in Chapel Hill. Sometimes, there are not that many options out there for a lot of our Members. We are trying to make employment opportunities more connected, and build more relationship with businesses that see the value in employing CEF Members!

Why is connecting with people important?

I think connecting with people is important because you need people in order to make things work. CEF—as I’ve learned—has a pretty cool model in terms of how we help and support people who are struggling with different issues. It’s like being able to take your individual support and be a part of a collective—in a larger community context.  The difference is that as a collective, CEF can reach into so many different directions; homelessness, families looking for services, hunger, employment and all kinds of things. It’s a “one-stop-shop” in many ways—one organization that can help many types of people.

Tell us about your background!

I have a two-year training certificate in fund development from the University of San Francisco,   a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from JFK University (New College of California), and a Master’s in Social Work from North Carolina Central University.  I presently work at Central as a Clinical Adjunct/Field Faculty Liaison in the social work department.

What has been your greatest challenge working here?

The greatest challenge working here is not being able to help the people with issues that are so much larger than I could ever figure out. There’s a lot CEF does to help people, but then there are people whose issues are large and difficult to get handled in a short period of time.

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Introducing the CEF Housing Justice Fellowship!

We are launching a new one-year fellowship program focused on local housing access and advocacy! Beginning in July 2018, two Housing Justice Fellows (each with four years of Advocate and volunteer leadership experience at CEF) will begin working in our offices to launch new initiatives that directly meet the felt needs and opportunities in our Durham and Orange County communities.

What is the vision for each Housing Justice Fellow?

Liz Brown, 2018 Durham Fellow

In Durham

to develop CEF Members’ capabilities to lead in local affordable housing and anti-poverty advocacy

  • Supporting Member engagement in policy-making and advocacy to build political power in decision-making
  • Deepening relationships with local advocacy partners
  • Developing creative pathways for Member ownership and leadership within CEF
  • Cultivating leadership within CEF to sustain this work for coming years

This fellowship will drive participation of Members in local policy and systems leadership, whose personal stories and wisdom have a transformative impact on policy-making and political dialogue.

Leah Whitehead, 2018 Chapel Hill Fellow

In Chapel Hill

to develop and pilot an initiative with partners to collaboratively increase housing opportunities

  • Recruiting and growing relationships with landlord partners
  • Working together with Members, Advocates, and collaborative programs to successfully secure stable housing for Members
  • Engaging in housing advocacy & Member organizing initiatives in Orange County
  • Crafting infrastructure and securing support to sustain this work for coming years

This fellowship will act as a force multiplier, collaborating with staff from 5+ housing programs across Orange County to jointly support sustained landlord relationships and successfully house program participants.

Who are the inaugural Housing Justice Fellows?

The two Fellowship positions have been crafted both with the felt needs of our two communities at heart, and the distinct gifts of two of our graduating Advocates in mind. Liz Brown and Leah Whitehead both have four years of experience as volunteer leaders with CEF, and will be able to hit the ground running on these catalytic initiatives.

Why Housing Justice?

Housing is one of the most complex pieces of the puzzle in the array of services that CEF helps Members to navigate. Rental housing costs have risen dramatically in Orange and Durham Counties over recent years, causing large-scale displacement of lower-income households and increased challenges in housing placement for individuals transitioning out of homelessness. In Orange County, 90% of renter households who earn less than $35,000 are cost-burdened, ie. spending an unaffordable proportion (more than 30%) of their income on housing. In Durham, for every 100 extremely low-income renter households, only 38 rental units are affordable to them. We know that systemic change is necessary and that we must take a long-view approach to opening up opportunities for CEF Members.

CEF has been an active leader in local systems advocacy and service coordination to address the mounting housing crisis, including everything from pursuing cultural organizing through our locally-famous Advocacy Choir, to anchoring a public-private city-wide initiative to increase housing opportunities for voucher-holders. CEF is strategically situated to effect community-level change alongside our direct efforts for change with individual Members. We have collaboratively built momentum and partnerships in affordable housing advocacy over recent years, and have an opportunity to lean into deeper, impactful responses to community needs through the work of these two Fellows.

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CEF: Community Empowerment Fund

Chapel Hill: 919-200-0233 Durham: 919-797-9233

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