Position Title: SCOPE Administrative Assistant
Tier / Category: Tier 2/Associate II
Reports to: Southern Crossroads Director
Employment Status: Part-Time; 20 hours per week
FLSA: Non-Exempt
Location: Remote
NLRA: Bargaining Unit Member
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) is a national organization that brings white people into
fights for racial and economic justice. We work to undermine the power of the Far Right and
build the white flank of multiracial majorities fighting for the things all communities need. We
organize white people by engaging their shared interest-- what they stand to gain by joining
alongside people of color. We do this through 150+ local chapters across the US and Canada, a
National Membership base, and local base building projects in the South.
Southern Crossroads is growing an alliance of membership-based grassroots organizations
building collective power and multi-racial alliances among cash poor and working people in
majority white majority small towns and cities across the region. To see this vision become
reality, we expect all staff to:
- Be serious about your leadership development, personal growth, and goals.
- Have accountability to our membership base and the communities in which we work.
- Be wise and prudent with staff time and limited financial resources.
Summary of Position:
SURJ is seeking an Administrative Assistant to support planning, scheduling, and coordination
for the Southern Crossroads Director and overall Southern Crossroads team.
A successful person in this role will become a trusted extension of the Southern Crossroads
Director in many ways, providing real-time support and proactively anticipating the Director’s
and organizational needs. They will be highly organized, a strong communicator, and the “calm
in a storm”.
This position will report to the Southern Crossroads Director. This position is included in a
union-represented collective bargaining unit, and specific terms and conditions of employment
are subject to negotiations for a Collective Bargaining Agreement.
PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES — Essential duties and responsibilities may include, but are not
limited to the following:
Priority 1: Manage Southern Crossroads Director’s calendar and support on
administrative task completion. (70%)
- Manage Southern Crossroads Director’s calendar via weekly meetings and bi-weekly co-working sessions.
- Support Southern Crossroads Director in fielding her scheduling requests and send reminders about upcoming events along with any additional documents.
- Manage all travel start to finish; finding appropriate accommodation options, creating and booking travel itineraries, managing changes as they occur.
- Ensure the Director is fully prepared for all travel, registering the Director for events, and confirming any in-person meetings.
- Track and input all receipts from travel or other expenses within deadlines set by Finance.
- At Director’s request, attend meetings and conduct needed follow up (note taking, setting up new meetings, send a task list to Director).
- Review tasks that Director assigns and send email follow ups
- Help manage Director’s Google Calendar, Zoom, Calendly, Doodle Poll, and any other online tools to maintain fast turn-around times and user-friendly appointment creation
- Schedule internal meetings for members of SURJ when the ask involves the Director, Deputy Director, and/or other Southern Crossroads team members
- Gather needed information for reports.
- Scheduling and protecting priority work blocks and tasks.
- Close coordination around priorities and pushing back appropriately as needed.
- Maintaining space between meetings as needed.
- Responding to all requests for time with the Director rapidly, within the same day.
- Primary point of contact for all scheduling requests for the Director.
- Acts on knowledge of Director’s priorities to balance all requests for the Director’s time.
Priority 2: Coordinate internal communications and operations support. (25%)
- Available upon request for Every Action related tasks.
- Available upon request to create graphics and to draft/schedule posts for social media
- Available upon request for updates to the Southern Crossroads website.
- Keep track of incoming staff and manage website to reflect current staff
- Add new media mentions to the Southern Crossroads website.
- Manage weekly metrics reporting.
- Every Tuesday, move previous weeks’ metrics over to the tracking spreadsheet, refresh the week, and move people’s individual metrics to their individual tracking spreadsheets.
Priority 3: Support the Southern Crossroads team as needed. (5%)
- Work with Southern Crossroads Deputy Director to prepare onboarding documents and onboard new staff.
- Work with the Southern Crossroads Deputy Director to prepare for events.
- Coordinate with SURJ when needed.
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Minimum of 2 years as administrative assistant experience or 2 years of equivalent work-related experience.
- Google Suite proficiency and experience with data tracking required.
- Strong relational / customer service skills are required.
- Familiarity with EveryAction and Asana preferred.
- SURJ policy requires all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, subject to reasonable accommodation under federal, state, and local law. Accommodations may be not possible for positions that require in-person contact with other staff or members of the public.
KNOWLEDGE:
- Experience doing organizing on issues of racial justice
- This person will also undertake any other duties or projects that may be reasonably required, and deal with matters arising in a timely and effective manner.
- Demonstrated experience proactively managing a complex and dynamic schedule.
- Must be proficient in data management and demonstrate a command of spreadsheets.
- Feels at ease and comfortable amidst rapidly changing priorities and pivots.
- Experience working remotely or comfortable working with a distributed team.
SKILLS:
- Excellent relational and verbal communication skills
- Solid time management skills
- Strong written communication skills
- Strong attention to detail
- Extremely detail oriented.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including proofreading and copy-editing.
- Excellent interpersonal skills and capacity to work with people across a wide range of differences, especially lines of race and class. The ability to build trust and work with a wide range of individuals and personalities, and to establish and maintain effective working relationships.
ABILITIES:.
- Flexible - open to new ways of doing things and experimentation
- Reliable - follows through on what they said they are going to do
- Demonstrated ability to work both independently and as part of a team
- Ability to look ahead and anticipate needs.
- The ability to learn new technologies quickly.
- The ability to prioritize work and to balance several work streams at a time.
- Strong ability to complete complex tasks and projects quickly with limited guidance.
- Ability to handle confidential and/or sensitive organizational and personal information with tact and diplomacy.
- Ability to exercise excellent judgment, with the ability to react with appropriate urgency and take effective action, even without having the full picture.
- Ability to make grounded assessments of how long tasks will take.