Operations Coordinator

Background

Grains of Salt (GoS) is a collective of artists who work on projects for the public good. We have two brands:

• Our consulting practice offers strategic thinking and creative problem solving to organizations—primarily nonprofits focused on the arts and community development. Most of our clients are in Portland, OR and Washington state.
• Our farm offers creative/collaborative events as well as eggs, produce, baked goods, and value-added products. This social enterprise focuses on foregrounding creativity and wellbeing alongside business practices—and supporting others to do so.

It’s also worth noting that GoS currently serves as Interim Executive Director for Friends of IFCC—a nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing a long-standing home for Black arts and culture in Portland.

Working with us will expose you to strategy/operations, communications/marketing, events/hospitality, regenerative agriculture, real estate development, and a ton of community engagement.

The Gig

We need someone to help anchor our place-based work in Portland. To us, operations is an art form; we’re looking for someone who will match our enthusiasm for administration, even when the work is coding receipts.

Examples of the day-to-day:

• Managing the calendar and scheduling meetings
• Task-tracking and note-taking for internal + client meetings
• Corresponding with clients and artists to address their needs
• Helping to ensure thoughtful functioning of our office and community space in Portland
• Writing and proofreading things like emails, consulting deliverables, and grant proposals

In an environment like ours, there’s room to grow based on your unique skills and interests. In this role you’d join countless discussions about what it takes to run a business from a relational, operational, and financial perspective—and we’d look forward to supporting wherever you’d like to deploy the entrepreneurial experience that you cultivate.

We’re a lean team and you’d be working most closely with Prentice Onayemi, one of our founding partners. He’s pretty intense and has high expectations for himself and those closest to him, but he’s also fun to work with and will really care about what’s best for you long-term.

Qualifications

• Required
  • Relentless attention to detail
  • Strong writing/editing skills
  • Ability to adapt communication style to the preferences of others (e.g., foundation president vs tractor mechanic)
  • Awareness of non-verbal communication
  • Patient confidence when you’re in over your head
• Preferred
  • Leadership and/or project management experience
  • Familiarity w/ Slack, Google Suite, Zoom, and other digital communication tools
  • Bachelor’s degree
  • The ability to be likeable and no-nonsense at the same time

Expectations

You’d have a few daytime meetings per week at the office (in NE Portland), most of our client meetings happen over Zoom, and there’ll be occasional trips out to the farm in Hillsboro. Outside of meetings, as long as you meet your deadlines it doesn’t matter where or what hours you work. We’ll occasionally need support for events on nights and weekends, and there’ll also be occasional travel for consulting engagements.