Executive Director
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA)
Detailed Job Description
Scope of Authority and Responsibilities
The Executive Director is the management leader of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association and as such is the primary staff person responsible for the administration, programs, finances, and strategic planning of the organization. Other key duties include fundraising, marketing, and community outreach.
The Executive Director oversees and has full authority over all ECWA staff and all staff activities, including staff size and composition, hiring, termination, performance review, and compensation.
The Executive Director reports immediately to the ECWA President but ultimately to the entire ECWA Board of Directors, with the full board having authority over hiring, termination, performance review, and compensation. The Executive Director is required to follow all directives issued by the board as a whole; but no individual board member or group of board members is entitled to give directives to the Executive Director, unless explicitly authorized to do so by the full board.
The Executive Director proposes policies and budgets to the board for approval or alteration. Within the scope of the approved policies and budgets, the Executive Director has full authority over all ECWA operations, including authority to submit proposals and grant applications; sign contracts and other agreements with individuals, other organizations, and government entities; create and organize ECWA activities and programs; and spend money, within the confines of the budget, to carry out those activities and programs.
The Executive Director is responsible for ensuring that ECWA has sufficient resources to carry out its plans and activities, for ensuring that those plans and activities are manageable within the available resources, and for increasing those resources as necessary to match the plans and activities deemed essential and vital to ECWA’s mission and goals.
The Executive Director serves as the primary face and voice of ECWA, connecting ECWA to individual community members, to community and government organizations, and to the media through written communications, public appearances, and private meetings; and ensuring that ECWA lives up to its strong commitments to equity and inclusion.
Specific Responsibilities
1. Organizational Leadership and Communication. The Executive Director serves as ECWA’s leader in representing ECWA to government officials and government bodies, community organizations, and individuals in the watershed. Though often that representation must be delegated, the delegates are in all cases meant to convey messages shaped by the Executive Director, in accordance with ECWA’s mission, goals, and values, and to bring information and concerns back to the Executive Director.
2. Planning and Budgeting. The Executive Director is responsible for leading long-term strategic planning, proposing the pace of ECWA’s growth, and proposing annual operating budgets.
3. Fundraising and Development. Ensure that ECWA’s revenues are adequate to meet its operating needs, plus whatever cushion is deemed necessary by the board. Take overall responsibility for obtaining memberships, contributions, contracts, grants, and in-kind donations sufficient to support ECWA’s current projects and services, plus its goals and plans for future growth and development.
4. Board and Committee Relations. Ensure that the board and the several ECWA committees receive the information they need in order to perform their roles. Stay abreast of current trends in watershed and preserve management, land trust best practices, nonprofit management, organizational development, and related topics, and keep the board members informed about these matters.
5. Staff Oversight. Determine ECWA’s staffing structure: how many positions, how many hours, and how compensated. Ensure that clear lines of reporting are in place for all ECWA staff members and contractors, including clear job descriptions and frequent opportunities for informal feedback as well as formal evaluation processes. Create and maintain written staff policies, procedures, and expectations. Establish and maintain a productive organizational culture.
6. Operations Management. Take responsibility for overall operation of the organization, on matters both large and small.
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association (ECWA)
Detailed Job Description
Scope of Authority and Responsibilities
The Executive Director is the management leader of the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association and as such is the primary staff person responsible for the administration, programs, finances, and strategic planning of the organization. Other key duties include fundraising, marketing, and community outreach.
The Executive Director oversees and has full authority over all ECWA staff and all staff activities, including staff size and composition, hiring, termination, performance review, and compensation.
The Executive Director reports immediately to the ECWA President but ultimately to the entire ECWA Board of Directors, with the full board having authority over hiring, termination, performance review, and compensation. The Executive Director is required to follow all directives issued by the board as a whole; but no individual board member or group of board members is entitled to give directives to the Executive Director, unless explicitly authorized to do so by the full board.
The Executive Director proposes policies and budgets to the board for approval or alteration. Within the scope of the approved policies and budgets, the Executive Director has full authority over all ECWA operations, including authority to submit proposals and grant applications; sign contracts and other agreements with individuals, other organizations, and government entities; create and organize ECWA activities and programs; and spend money, within the confines of the budget, to carry out those activities and programs.
The Executive Director is responsible for ensuring that ECWA has sufficient resources to carry out its plans and activities, for ensuring that those plans and activities are manageable within the available resources, and for increasing those resources as necessary to match the plans and activities deemed essential and vital to ECWA’s mission and goals.
The Executive Director serves as the primary face and voice of ECWA, connecting ECWA to individual community members, to community and government organizations, and to the media through written communications, public appearances, and private meetings; and ensuring that ECWA lives up to its strong commitments to equity and inclusion.
Specific Responsibilities
1. Organizational Leadership and Communication. The Executive Director serves as ECWA’s leader in representing ECWA to government officials and government bodies, community organizations, and individuals in the watershed. Though often that representation must be delegated, the delegates are in all cases meant to convey messages shaped by the Executive Director, in accordance with ECWA’s mission, goals, and values, and to bring information and concerns back to the Executive Director.
- Ensure that the community is connected with the physical watershed, enabling stakeholders to understand the variety of water and land resources that are intimately related to the creek, to participate in creek-related volunteer activities, and to support a variety of other activities that enhance the watershed.
- Network within the environmental, business, government, educational, neighborhood, religious, and civic communities in Durham and its surroundings to promote policies and practices that support the health and vitality of the creek and its watershed.
- Advocate for both government and private initiatives that are important to the health and vitality of the creek and its watershed. Create multiple partnerships, both formal and informal, for these purposes.
- Support an organizational culture that is reflective of ECWA’s expectations and aspirations: resourceful, thoughtful, equitable, and appreciative of the contributions of staff, board members, and other volunteers. Ensure that both internal and external stakeholders are aware of ECWA’s commitments to equity and to active inclusion of all of the watershed’s residents.
- Lead the creation of annual communication plans for maintaining and enhancing ECWA’s efforts to inform and reach out to its stakeholders and the watershed’s residents, including website, social media, and printed materials.
- Ensure that the written and online information of ECWA meets a high standard and is consistent with the goals of the organization.
- Ensure that, per the bylaws, an annual meeting of the ECWA membership is held, and that these meetings are informative and well attended.
2. Planning and Budgeting. The Executive Director is responsible for leading long-term strategic planning, proposing the pace of ECWA’s growth, and proposing annual operating budgets.
- Propose for consideration, usually at the ECWA annual board and staff retreat, an annual set of goals for the ECWA staff to accomplish by the end of each year, in conjunction with the combined set of program goals formulated by ECWA’s committees along with their staff liaisons.
- Work with the board to establish clear goals and benchmarks for growth in organizational capacity.
- Working in collaboration with ECWA’s staff and with ECWA’s Treasurer, Finance Committee, and Fundraising Committee, prepare an annual operating budget that clearly states fundraising plans and provides a prudent financial plan for supporting on-going operating needs.
- Propose this budget to the board for adoption or amendment; then implement the approved budget. Along with the Treasurer, report quarterly on performance against budget.
3. Fundraising and Development. Ensure that ECWA’s revenues are adequate to meet its operating needs, plus whatever cushion is deemed necessary by the board. Take overall responsibility for obtaining memberships, contributions, contracts, grants, and in-kind donations sufficient to support ECWA’s current projects and services, plus its goals and plans for future growth and development.
- Develop an annual fundraising plan, in close collaboration with staff and the Fundraising Committee, that informs and comports with the annual budget.
- Ensure that the communications strategy is aligned with and implemented to support ECWA goals and the annual fundraising plan.
- Cultivate and maintain relationships with members, donors, and grantors, including provision of appropriate reporting, messages of thanks, and other follow-up that complies with the expectations of funders.
- Cultivate partnerships and collaborations with other organizations that meet the goals of both organizations, allowing stronger approaches to donors and grantors and more effective use of their resources.
4. Board and Committee Relations. Ensure that the board and the several ECWA committees receive the information they need in order to perform their roles. Stay abreast of current trends in watershed and preserve management, land trust best practices, nonprofit management, organizational development, and related topics, and keep the board members informed about these matters.
- Attend all board meetings. Participate actively in the setting of the agenda for each board meeting, and review the minutes for each board meeting.
- Provide before each meeting a set of Programs, Development, and Operations reports for inclusion with the agenda and board packet when the Secretary sends these materials to the board, a week prior to each meeting.
- Arrange board development and information opportunities as needed, forming (along with the ECWA President) any task forces that are needed for that purpose. This includes the annual staff and board retreat, at a minimum.
- Serve as the staff liaison to all board committees that are not connected to particular programs, such as the Nominating Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Fundraising Committee.
- Ensure that each ECWA program committee has an appropriate staff member as its staff liaison. Support the staff liaisons in helping their committees set clear and achievable program goals and propose manageable program budgets. Guide the staff liaisons on how best to provide and collect information about what the staff needs from the committees, in order to accomplish the staff’s goals; and what the committees need from the staff, in order to accomplish the committee’s goals.
5. Staff Oversight. Determine ECWA’s staffing structure: how many positions, how many hours, and how compensated. Ensure that clear lines of reporting are in place for all ECWA staff members and contractors, including clear job descriptions and frequent opportunities for informal feedback as well as formal evaluation processes. Create and maintain written staff policies, procedures, and expectations. Establish and maintain a productive organizational culture.
- Present to the board plans and proposals for a sustainable staff size and structure that will support the continuity and growth of the organization.
- Prepare staff, intern, contractor, and volunteer job descriptions as needed, posting job announcements in appropriate venues and ensuring that all regulations are met in establishing and recruiting for ECWA positions.
- Ensure that annual performance reviews are conducted for all ECWA staff. Ensure that they include discussion of opportunities for training and development, as well as review of past performance.
- Ensure that the various staff members are working together with each other in collaborative, informed, and mutually supportive ways.
- Facilitate efficient and effective staff meetings. Encourage staff to speak openly about concerns without fear of retaliation.
6. Operations Management. Take responsibility for overall operation of the organization, on matters both large and small.
- Oversee daily office and organizational operations, including deadlines, supplies, invoicing, payments, and correspondence.
- Work with the Secretary and the appropriate staff members to ensure that all important ECWA records and legal documents are archived safely.
- Ensure that any member, donor, volunteer, collaborating organization, or staff concerns and complaints are handled in a thorough and professional manner.
