***Important Notice: Deadline Extended until 11 November 7am EST***
Thank you to all the applicants who have submitted your materials by our requested deadline! We are excited about the applications we received from all over the world.
Based on this preliminary analysis on the regional diversity of these first applications, and the realities of virtual connectivity, the Leadership Transition Team has decided to extend the deadline to November 11th 7am EST. We encourage young feminists from the Global South especially applications from the Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern European, Caucuses, Central and North Asia, and Caribbean regions to apply. In the next days, we will be reaching out to the networks in this region especially. Please help us spread the word.
Sincerely – FRIDA Leadership Transition Team
***
OVERVIEW
After five years leading FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund, Ruby Johnson and Devi Leiper O’Malley will be stepping down as Co-Executive Directors by the end of 2019. Since they began, FRIDA has gone from an incubated project to an independent organization, grown its budget by ten times, expanded its core team to over 15 young feminists around the world, and awarded over 3 million USD to young feminist groups by the end of 2018.
We see this leadership transition as part of a larger Organizational Transformation process with our Strategic Plan (Read our entire Change Announcement here). The Strategic Plan comes at a critical moment for FRIDA to re-understand the context of young feminist organizing – in a time of increasingly repressive governments but also greater questioning of institutions and structures. FRIDA has experienced rapid growth of the past years, and the Strategic Planning process enables FRIDA to reconfirm its values, direction, pace, and depth.
With trust, kindness, and generosity of our entire community, we know we will move through this moment and come out the other side stronger. We are approaching this transition with care, commitment, and understanding of the community. We strive to ensure trusting, open and shared learning throughout the process, and see this as an opportunity for new creativity and continued courageous leadership.
Download the full text of the announcement: FRIDA Co-Executive Leadership Search and Job Description
ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION
Founded in 2010, FRIDA | The Young Feminist Fund is the only youth-led fund focused exclusively on supporting young feminist activism to advance social justice movements and agendas across the globe. We believe in the collective power, expertise, and innovation of young feminist organizers to address root causes and structures of inequality in order to create lasting change in their communities. To this end, FRIDA:
- Provides small flexible grants to fund initiatives led by young women and trans*youth under 30 years old with small flexible grants for core support, selected through an annual participatory review process.
- Offers opportunities for capacity development that are accessible and responsive to the needs of young feminist organizers, and based on linking and learning relationships that strengthen networks of young feminist activists within multigenerational movements;
- Mobilizes resources from both traditional and non-traditional sources, with new and modern methods, to enhance the quality and quantity of funding for women’s human rights; and
- Builds knowledge for advocacy to ensure financial and non-financial policies are inclusive and responsive to the priorities articulated by young women, girls and trans* youth.
THE OPPORTUNITY
1. You could be the next Co-Executive Director of FRIDA if:
- You are a young feminist from the Global South
- You work easily in English and preferable another FRIDA language (Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, Portuguese, and/or Mandarin)
- You have a strong vision and passion for transforming the leadership and influence of girls, women and trans* youth in their local, regional, and global communities;
- You believe in collective power and working in a co-led, shared leadership context
- You are innovative and creative – you can work in a virtual environment and are not afraid of change
- You are confident about who you are, what you still need to learn, and how you want to grow – you enjoy learning with others along the way
- You are committed to participatory decision-making processes
- You enjoy and can build a strong sense of team spirit and collaboration across identities, geographies, and generations – especially in a virtual environment
- You are committed to the values, priorities, and viewpoints of FRIDA and can speak openly and confidently about them. For example, FRIDA funds groups that are made up of, working with and/or defend the rights of socially excluded and disadvantaged young women, trans* and intersex youth, especially: sex workers, refugees, ethnic, national and caste minorities, people living with HIV and AIDS, people with disabilities, people working on access to abortion.
*Young people, from the global south, under the age of 30 and trans*youth are especially encouraged to apply.
2. You could be the next Co-Executive Director of FRIDA if you have experience in some or most of the following areas:
- Getting young feminists organizers more resources:
- You can lead a team to ensure FRIDA provides accessible, responsive, and strategic resources for newly established young feminist-led initiatives; you oversee participatory grantmaking processes; strengthen the capacity of young feminist organizers; you can increase the commitment of donors and allies to resource young feminist activism
- Ensuring young feminist organizers are leaders of stronger intergenerational and intersectional social movements
- You can amplify the voices, influence, and contributions of young feminists; identify and support young feminist-led initiatives and collaborations that respond to the needs of our current movements; engage and leverage diverse partnerships that contribute to increased and better resources for young feminist activists; model and advocate for better practices in movements and the funding sector
- Creating innovative, holistic, and transformative organizational cultures and systems
- You can ensure the physical and psychological health of FRIDA’s structure and organizational culture so that all community members are happy, sustainable, safe, and effective; you can foster leadership in all team member; promote and manage collaborative team structures; think outside the box – and present new ways of organizing
- In all of these areas, you would be responsible for:
- Implementing the strategic vision of FRIDA with staff
- Overseeing the daily operations of the organization
- Managing and developing the leadership of FRIDA’s staff team
- Serving as a public face
- Ensuring the financial health of the organization and leading resource mobilization strategies and tasks with institutional, individual, and community funders.
2. In particular, you have these skills and experience:
- 4+ years of activism both offline and online with young feminist organizations/initiatives in the Global South working for human rights, including at least two years in leading roles;
- Demonstrated skill in grant writing and reporting;
- Demonstrated skill in managing budgets;
- Excellent written and oral communication skills in English, plus one other FRIDA working language (Spanish, French, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, or Mandarin);
- University degree in women’s studies or a related social science field OR equivalent experience in human rights, not-for-profit management, international development, community development, women’s leadership;
- Demonstrated skills in effective management and supervision;
- Strong interpersonal skills and facilitation skills including proven ability to provide leadership to a team and work in a culturally diverse team environment;
- At least two years’ experience in mobilizing resources and/or has the capacity to build relationships with those who have resources that benefit young feminist organizing, this can include writing proposals and reports, running crowdfunding campaigns, organizing events, facilitating meetings, negotiating agreements, making connections between key people, and more;
- An understanding of women human rights, feminist movements, advocacy and the the funding eco-system surrounding young feminist activism.
THE PROCESS
This recruitment is part of a long process of transition at FRIDA. We are committed to supporting and nurturing young feminist leadership. We are equally committed to modeling good practices and learning from the experience in order to strengthen our knowledge of what are natural and regular and healthy processes of transitions in organizations and movements.
While we need to always be flexible and open to changes, we hope that our recruitment process will enable the new Co-Executive Directors to start in early 2019.
Once final candidates have been selected, they will go through an orientation and handover process with outgoing Co-Executive Directors. They will have access to training and coaching during this time, as well as throughout their tenure as Co-Executive Directors (a practice FRIDA offers all of its staff). This is to ensure the incoming Co-Executive Directors feel confident and comfortable as they embark on this journey of leadership individually and as a duo.
For the recruitment and selection process, we have created a Leadership Transition Team, made up of Board and Staff Members. They will be the Hiring Committee and make a recommendation of the final candidates to FRIDA’s Board, who will ultimately decide who will be FRIDA’s next Co-Executive Directors.
Supporting this team and process, are Barbara Williams, Organizational Development Consultant, and Roseline Kamden, an outgoing FRIDA Advisor, who has been hired as a consultant to support this process.
HOW TO APPLY
Please submit in confidence:
- A letter of interest outlining how you, your experience and skills align to the 3 areas of the position statement in this announcement.
- A recent resume
- A 3-5-minute video that shares your favourite quote to describe your leadership and why
- Please do not worry about making a high quality video – we only need to be able to hear you well and get a sense of you!
- Remember we’re looking for diverse range of skills and experience, so don’t worry about whether you are the best public speaker and are not always comfortable on camera. However, this position does require you to make speeches from time to time, whether it is in front of 5 people or 100 people.
- A Statement of preference on your co-leader: Because we are accepting individual applications while searching for two Co-Executive Directors, please include a short statement that outlines:
- What qualities and capacities you would look for in your co-leader OR if you know another candidate who is applying and would like to work with them, you may state their name and explain why you think they would compliment you
We hope to match the candidates based on skills, interests, and capacities as best we can for the overall benefit of FRIDA.
Send all materials to coleadersearch@youngfeministfund.org by 28 October 2018.
You may address your letter to Roseline Kamden, who will be reviewing all applications, coordinating interviews, and managing any follow up communications.
CONSIDERING APPLYING?
Check out this video we made to encourage young feminists to apply.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Throughout the call for applications, Ruby and Devi as the current Co-Executive Directors invite interested applicants to submit any questions they have about the role. You can read them here!
Please submit your questions to the following email: coleadersearch@youngfeministfund.org Please include “FAQ” in the subject line.
