First & Potomac Ave SE, Washington, DC 20003 tel.202.479-4505 fax.202.479-4509

Executive Director

Job Description

The Earth Conservation Corps is a nonprofit youth and environmental organization. Our mission is to empower our endangered youth to reclaim the Anacostia River, their communities and their lives. We are a staff of 8.

The Executive Director is the Chief Executive Officer of the Earth Conservation Corps, which empowers our endangered youth to reclaim the Anacostia River, their communities and their lives. The Executive Director reports to the Board of Directors and is responsible for overseeing the organization’s financial management, organizational development, staff management, program operations and achievement of its mission.

Responsibilities:

Leadership, Management, Fundraising and Communication

·  Establish sound working relationships with government agencies, private sector, community groups and organizations that share the ECC’s goals and help the ECC to achieve its mission.

·  Represent the ECC in the media and promote its programs and philosophy to relevant stakeholders and the general public.

·  Oversee fundraising planning and implementation, including identifying resource requirements, researching funding sources, establishing strategies to approach funders and maintaining positive relations with the funding community.

·  Implement the Earth Conservation Corp’s strategic plan with the Board of Directors and the Board of Advisors, identify timelines and resources needed to achieve the organization’s strategic goals.

·  Work closely with the Board Chair and Board Committees. Support operations and administration of the Board by advising and informing Board members, serving as the liaison between the Board and staff and supporting Board’s evaluation of the Executive Director.

·  Provide a monthly report to the Board of Directors that includes programmatic, operational and financial updates, trends, and challenges.

·  Ensure ongoing programmatic excellence and rigorous program evaluation.

·  Build and maintain partnerships, establish relationships with the relevant government agencies (both local and federal), funders as well as political and community leaders.

·  Recommend yearly budget for Board approval and prudently manage the organization’s resource within those budget guidelines, according to current laws and regulations.

·  Be responsible for recruitment, employment and release of all personnel.

·  Coordinate staff development to retain staff. Maintain an organizational climate that attracts, retains and motivates a diverse staff of high caliber employees using sound human resources practices.

Leaderships Competencies

·  Strong background in environmental riparian restoration, urban habitats and adjudicated youth

·  Diplomacy

·  Relationship Building

·  Listening Skills

·  Financial Acumen

·  Problem Solving and Decision Making

·  Initiative

·  Adaptability

·  Results Oriented

·  Environmental Knowledge

·  Outdoors Oriented

Qualifications

·  Minimum of 5 years senior leadership experience in nonprofit organizations.

·  Minimum of 5 years of youth development organization experience.

·  Strong knowledge of the environment.

·  Experience with public and private sector.

·  Flexibility, adaptability and capacity to work in a fluid, changing work environment.

·  The ability to interact credibly and diplomatically with the Board and its committees; all levels in the organization and the community – tailoring communication effectively for different groups and stakeholders.

·  An open, inclusive, team-oriented work style and ability to collaborate.

·  Bachelor’s Degree preferred.

·  Valid driver’s license, insurable driving record, and acceptable background check.

·  Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite applications and ability to manage information in an organizational database.

Executive Summary of the Earth Conservation Corps

ECC is a nonprofit youth development and environmental action program located where the Anacostia River flows through the Capital’s most disadvantaged communities. Our goal is to restore the river, while building the knowledge and skills of ECC corps members in science and natural resource fields that can help them earn high-quality credentials and obtain employment. Since 1992, ECC has been successfully reclaiming two of Washington D.C.’s most endangered resources – our youth and our environment. ECC uses the challenge of restoring the Anacostia River and the surrounding national and district parks to engage unemployed youth from surrounding communities for a transformative “service year” of environmental action, learning, and skill-building. A small and highly dedicated staff provides these committed ECC Corps Members with the leadership skills to engage thousands of school children and adults from different backgrounds, geographies, races, ethnicities, income levels, and political affiliations in shared work to restore and preserve the Anacostia River and surrounding lands.

History

Our history is inspiring. In 1992, nine unemployed young men and women living at Ward Eight’s Valley Green public housing project volunteered to engage in national service to change their lives by restoring the polluted Lower Beaverdam Creek. Motivated by the belief that their strong hearts, minds, and muscles could reclaim the Anacostia, they pulled on waders, climbed into the polluted creek, and started to demolish negative stereotypes of black urban youth and urban rivers. The astonishing commitment of these young volunteers launched a community youth movement to take back their Anacostia. Today the river is much improved, but having 25 young adults laid to rest during that time is grim testament to the racial and economic divide in our nation’s capital.

Following the leadership of ECC Corps Members, thousands of youth from troubled Anacostia River neighborhoods laid the cornerstone for a solution to the city’s intertwined problems of pollution and poverty. In the process, ECC Corps Members desperate to become part of American society have blazed new paths for themselves, their families, and their communities. Their success was in bringing the proven esprit de corps of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the nation’s largest national service effort in history that was created during of the Great Depression, to the impoverished communities of our nation’s capital. Engaging unemployed youth to undertake the vital work of restoring natural habitats harnesses the leadership, educational, and employment potential of this vital segment of our community.

Through restoration work and deployment of science, we strive to inspire and lead the restoration of the Anacostia River. We will use our muscles, hearts, and minds to turn a once forgotten river into a global model for the power of active conservation. We find strength from the words of Dr. Dianne Fossey, “it’s not talking about conservation, it’s the action that counts. Conservation begins with the boots on your feet.”

ECC Corps Members have inspired the Restoration of the Anacostia River initiative and continue their leadership of ecosystem restoration. The ECC Corps Members have always done this by tackling the impossible and getting it done. Today, having turned a city’s focus to the Anacostia River, our youth are continuing to deploy innovative science and fully restore this once forgotten river to its full function as an environmental system with all its native species.

Everything that ECC does is youth-led.

·  Hands-on direct service -- leading service projects, wetland planting, and shoreline preservation

·  Cutting-edge science -- teaming up with renowned scientists, ECC Corps Members facilitate satellite tracking of ospreys and eagles, engage others in the research, and inform countless others through internet outreach

·  Youth journalism - present stories of the river and the community that lives in the watershed to inform others and inspire change

·  Lifelong conservationists – by fully engaging our remarkable partners, youth mentors from city and federal agencies, and public and environmental nonprofits organizations, ECC Corps Members are exposed to a variety of “green” workforce opportunities.

Please direct all résumés and inquiries to:

Mary Ellen Sprenkel
President & CEO
The Corps Network

Mission: To empower the endangered youth, to reclaim the Anacostia River, their communities, and their lives.