Northern Spark is a one-night, all-night participatory arts festival that lights up the Twin Cities on the second Saturday of June. Now in it’s 7th year, Northern Spark – presented by Northern Lights.mn – will take place on Saturday, June 10th, 2017 along the LRT Green Line spanning Downtown Minneapolis and Lowertown St. Paul. This will be the second and culminating year of Northern Spark’s climate change theme under the banner of Climate Chaos | Climate Rising.

For more information, visit 2017.northernspark.org.

 

Job Description: Volunteer Coordinator

This position is responsible for the recruitment, scheduling and training of approximately 200 festival volunteers and survey seekers as well as paid, night­-of Zone Lead positions. On the night-of Northern Spark 2017, the Volunteer Coordinator will oversee all audience services operations, including attendance tracking and survey collection.

Deadline to apply:

Send resume and cover letter to jobs@northern.lights.mn by January 11, 2017.

Stipend: $6,000

Estimated hours: 5­-40 hours a week, (5-10 hrs/week, Jan, Feb, March; 20 hrs/week, April & May, 40 hours/wk two weeks prior to festival, 5 hrs/wk remaining wks of June)

Approx 300 hours total

Must be available for bi-weekly (Jan-March) and then weekly (April-June) staff meetings Wednesdays at noon.

Must have flexible hours the week of the festival: June 5th – 11th

Duration: January through June 30th, 2017

Reports to: Northern Spark Co-Director

Tasks include:

Volunteer Strategy

• Review existing volunteer structure, training materials, and night-­of operational plan and adapt as necessary
• Work with Partner and Outreach Coordinator to develop a volunteer recruitment strategy for Northern Spark 2017 neighborhoods

Volunteer Recruitment and Management

• Recruit volunteers to fill approx 200 shifts for pre-festival & night-of events (including Launch Party, general festival volunteers, project-specific volunteers & production volunteers)
• Create volunteer schedule including pre-­festival, festival night and

post-­festival duties

• Schedule volunteer shifts and conduct ongoing communications
• Organize & attend all pre-­festival outreach events (3)
• Organize and lead at least three general volunteer orientation sessions, work with Partner and Outreach Coordinator to organize any additional, neighborhood or partner-specific volunteer orientations.
• Hire and train night-­of paid Zone Lead positions
• Track festival attendance via Zone Lead counts
• Oversee all audience-service operations (hospitality, signage & merchandise sales) on night-of festival including Info Tents and Volunteer Lounge (if latter is applicable).

Survey Seekers

• Work with Projects Manager to update audience survey, organize and implement it on festival night
• Recruit Survey Seekers (paid positions) and work with the Projects Manager to train them
• Coordinate survey data entry after festival

Other duties

• Attendance at monthly, then weekly staff meetings in NE Minneapolis
• Create a final list of all completed volunteer shifts and update festival records
• Conduct a post-festival volunteer survey

Requirements:

Excellent written and verbal communications and public speaking skills; interest and enjoyment in working with other people; ability to work independently and efficiently; keen ability to organize and track large amounts of data. Experience working with volunteers a must; ideal candidate has a broad network from which to recruit volunteers.

Experience using Google Docs is essential, knowledge of Asana and CiviCRM preferred but not necessary if willing to learn these tools.

Access to a vehicle is ideal but not necessary.

Smartphone w/ data plan necessary for festival night-of communications.