Volunteer Board members, PhilaSoup

Posted by PhilaSoup on April 10, 2017

Join our team!
About PhilaSoup

PhilaSoup is a non-profit that provides micro-grants (up to $599) to teachers in Philadelphia schools to fund classroom projects that enhance the learning experience of their students. We do this by hosting quarterly soups, where we invite the community to come together, share a meal and listen to three to four teachers present their ideas in need of funding. The attendees at the soup vote on which project they like best, and the winner receives the largest portion of the grant, but each teacher walks away with some funding! Grants are funded by ticket sales to the soup, with a matching donation from PhilaSoup. Since 2012, PhilaSoup has hosted over 30 events and granted over $30,000.

Who We’re Seeking
We are currently seeking individuals to join our team who can help us with the following:
– Social media management/Public relations
– Video/website design
– Grant proposals
– Strategic Planning & visioning
– Connections to community partners
– Relationships with a diverse community of educators
– Current teachers

We are looking for folks who are interested in board and committee service, as well as one-off projects (such as helping to redesign our website)

If you’re interested in joining the PhilaSoup team as a committee or board member, please contact Elizabeth Schlax,
PhilaSoup Vice President, at elizabeth.schlax@gmail.com

We ask that interested volunteers for the 2017-2018 programmatic year contact us by April 30th.
Where We Are in Our Growth
As an organization, we are currently in our adolescence; we have spent the past four years incorporating as a nonprofit; firming up our systems and processes; stabilizing and building our bank accounts; and working to solidify our programming. We are now at a place in our growth where we are asking questions about how we can most thoughtfully and impactfully fulfill our mission.

We are actively engaging in challenging and necessary discussions around how we can be an organization that convenes a diverse community at our events that is reflective of the students and teachers we serve, and how our board itself can be more representative of a variety of perspectives, opinions, experiences, identities, and values. We are challenging ourselves to think deeply about how we do what we do; this is sometimes a messy process, and always a thought-provoking one.

We hope to bring new members onto our team who find these questions exciting & meaningful; who understand that asking questions is a necessary part of an organization’s growth; and who wish to help us steer PhilaSoup in the right direction, so we can be the most inclusive and impactful organization possible.

Seeking Creative Connectors & A Diversity of Perspectives
Our board is currently comprised mostly (not exclusively, but largely) of white, Center City, millennial women – and while our team brings great assets to our work, we also acknowledge that the homogeneity of our board is problematic for a variety of reasons. We aim to convene diverse communities at our events who share a love for teachers, and we also seek to understand the complicated and various ways in which we can best meet the needs of Philadelphia educators. We need different voices, perspectives, experiences, relationships, values, and identities at our table in order to do this work as powerfully as we want to. We therefore are seeking board candidates who will be bringing these qualities to our team.

Throughout the past year, we have worked, as a board, to better understand and take responsibility for how our
organizational culture and practices have created this situation that excludes the voices and perspectives we want and intend to include. We are proactively addressing these issues within our individual and collective behaviors, and will continue to do so in the coming year. We therefore are seeking board candidates who will be bringing these qualities to our team.