Build Program Coordinator

Job description created February, 2009

Salary/Benefits
Salary is $30,000 per year. 3.6 weeks paid time off per year (combined vacation and sick time, based on an assumed 37 hours work week). Health care, dental, and vision plan. Employer-matching retirement plan
Work Hours
Four and a half to five days per week, Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30am to 7:30pm, some evening or morning meetings, with some flexibility.
To Apply
To apply, e-mail your cover letter and resume to jobs@freegeek.org, detailing your volunteer coordination experience and any other pertinent information. We will be contacting a small group of candidates via e-mail to take a tour of Free Geek prior to being interviewed. This position is open until filled.

Job Description

The Build Program is one of Free Geek's very popular volunteer programs. Volunteers in the Build Program are given a hands on education to acquaint themselves with computer technology. They use this knowledge to build the computers that Free Geek gives back to the community. Volunteers in the Build Program arrive at Free Geek with varying levels of past computer experience, from no experience at all to years of hobby computer building.

The Build Program Coordinator needs to recruit, train and draw on a volunteer base for the Build Program. They will also help Build Program graduates find areas best suited for them to plug in after they finish Build.

In addition the Build Program Coordinator participates in general Free Geek operations, being able to substitute for other collective members and fill in where needed. He/She also cross trains other collective members so that they will be able to cover gaps in the Build program.

This is a job in a worker collective. Your first six months would be as a provisional member of the collective. At the end of that time our decision whether or not to bring you on as a permanent collective member will be made through a peer review process.

Note: You may be a great candidate and not know it. It's more important for us to find someone who has a strong hands-on volunteer management background and an aptitude to learn nerdy stuff than for us to find a someone that speaks binary. Free Geek is an organization that teaches everyone who wants to learn about computers more than they ever wanted to know. We can teach you too.

Responsibilities:

• Teach and recruit volunteer instructors for Build Workshops
• Teach Build Workshops when volunteer instructors are absent
• Refine build and quality control procedures
• Recruit quality volunteers for Advanced Testing, Laptops Build, Mac build, and Enterprise Build
• Coordinate with other members of the Production team
• Work floor shifts coordinating volunteers
• Participate in collective management structure
• Take on tasks and committees unrelated to production coordination
• Keep the Build area orderly and stocked with needed computer components.
• Be an active member of the Reuse Committee
• Raise Build to version 6.0 (i.e. bring it to the next level)
• Attend bi-weekly staff meetings, and other meetings as necessary
• Ensure a steady supply of completed systems are supplied to the Adoption, Grants, & Store programs
• Keep Build related documentation up to date as the build processes change,

Required skills:

• Experience managing volunteers
• Friendly, outgoing personality
• Likes working with people
• Aptitude for learning technical skills
• Well versed in troubleshooting techniques
• Self-motivation
• Patient and courteous with the public
• Detail oriented, but able to see (and understand) the big picture
• Good organizational skills
• Good written and verbal communication skills
• Able to work in an informal, friendly environment with a diverse staff
• Work well under stress in an unusual setting, maintaining a positive attitude even in the face of adversity
• Ability to work and communicate well in a collectively-run organization
• Ability to work in a consensus decision making process related to staff and policy issues
• Not afraid to ask questions, but able to work on projects almost entirely without supervision
• Able to remain flexible as Free Geek grows and changes
• Must be available all day Saturdays

Desired skills:

• Some experience with computer hardware a plus