West End Revitalization Coordinator

We envision a West End of Rock Island that is a preferred place to live and thrive. This requires building the West End community’s wealth, power, and livability. No single person, organization, or sector can do this on its own. We all must work together to achieve it. The Martin Luther King Center is bringing together the West End community and its supporters to make overdue, positive, lasting, transformational change.

The Martin Luther King Center is serving as the backbone support for a collective impact model to enact this transformation. Collective Impact is the commitment of a group of actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem, using a structured form of collaboration.   An established steering committee will provide the strategic oversight for the West End Revitalization with a project coordinator providing the resources necessary that bring together a diversity of stakeholders and lead a synchronized effort to achieve a common goal.

The Project Coordinator will provide day-to-day support and facilitation of the West End Revitalization effort. 

Key responsibilities include:

Working with community partners:

• Developing and maintaining a list of community partners and upcoming events;
• Organizing outreach against that list of community partners and upcoming events, including following-up as needed; 
• Coordinating research and other activities with initiative partners to minimize redundancies and to align strategies and actions, including conducting individual outreach and education as needed;
• Working with Steering Committee to update outreach strategy as new needs emerge; 
• Working with Steering Committee to coordinate with other related projects and coalitions (i.e. in the same field) to maintain a full understanding of the current landscape of local and regional activities, and integrating their work into Steering Committee and workgroup processes; 
• Building and maintaining relationships with community partners.

Strategic coherence:

• Maintaining understanding of current implementation challenges and developing comprehensive solutions to address them;
• Providing support to partner organizations in aligning their work to a common agenda (e.g., identifying opportunities for program work to support specific goals); 
• Coordinating advocacy supporting activities of partners. 

Communications:

• Communicating the objectives of the West End Revitalization to the community and potential partners, including sharing the Common Agenda, Blueprint, or other collateral;
• Facilitating ongoing communication between West End Revitalization partners by hosting regular conference calls, in-person meetings, or coordinating regular email updates to ensure alignment of activity; 
• Planning and managing logistics of, and attending, community events;
• Creating or managing creation of regular summary reports of West End Revitalization progress for Steering Committee, Working Groups and external audiences; and
• The following duties may be done in coordination with a communications consultant or Project Director:
  1. Developing communications materials as West End Revitalization evolves, potentially including summary documents, brochures, FAQs, and other items;
  2. Developing web and social media strategy;
  3. Compiling and maintaining list of press clippings; and
  4. Creating press strategy, including drafting press releases, coordinating with media outlets.

Fund development and management:

• Identify potential funding sources to support West End Revitalization’s goals and priorities:
  1. Writing grants, as needed, or coordinating work of grant writer
  2. Working with implementing agencies to provide information to support their grant applications
  3. Coordinating West End Revitalization grant reporting to funders as required
• Tracking all West End Revitalization funding, including allocated funds from partner organizations

Data collection, analysis, and reporting:

• Coordinating indicator refinement with workgroups and Steering Committee;
• Ensure all partners are aware of targets and indicators;
• Creating or managing creation of yearly summary reports of West End Revitalization progress for Steering Committee and external audiences; and
• Coordinating work of data manager or consultant.

 Reporting Relationships:

The Project Coordinator will ultimately be responsible for building and maintaining strong relationships with the community, day-to-day coordination of the effort and its many moving parts, and being part of a highly functioning team. The Project Coordinator will report to the Executive Director of The Martin Luther King Center.

Performs related duties as assigned.

This is an outstanding opportunity to play a critical role in improving the wealth, power and livability of the West End of Rock Island. Therefore, first and foremost, the Project Coordinator must be committed to the mission of West End Revitalization. 

Additionally, the successful candidate will be able to demonstrate:

• A successful candidate will have a Bachelor's degree;
• A minimum of 3 years work experience including 1 or more years of proven community outreach and coordination experience;
• Possession of a valid Class D Illinois driver’s license or an equivalent license from the employee’s state of residence;
• The presence to inspire confidence and passion in external audiences and to build effective relationships with a range of stakeholders; 
• Advanced project management skills;
• Ability to thrive in a fluid, unstructured, entrepreneurial environment without formal training;  
• Flexibility and the ability to work autonomously as well as take direction as needed;
• Commitment to the collective impact concepts;
• Strong analytical and critical thinking skills; 
• Strong community engagement and facilitation skills;
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills (written and oral); 
• Existing relationships with, or ability to build relationships with, a cross-sectoral range of stakeholders in the local or regional area.

Selected candidates must meet a residency requirement, which includes living in the state of Illinois or Iowa and must report within 60 minutes after being called into work for an overtime assignment.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. While performing the duties of the job, the employee is regularly required to use hands and fingers to handle, feel, or operate objects, tools, or controls and reach with hands and arms. The employee frequently is required to stand and talk or hear. The employee is occasionally required to walk; sit; climb or balance; stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl; and smell. The employee regularly lifts and/or moves up to 25 pounds and occasionally lifts and/or moves up to 50 pounds. Specific vision abilities required by the job include close vision, distance vision, color vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.

Salary : $52,268 - $81,086