As a nonprofit, we are constantly looking for volunteers to help us realize our mission of empowering children around the world to think deeply—and share those thoughts with the world.
If you are interested in any of the positions below, please write to Emma at emma@stonesoup.com. If you are interested in volunteering for us but don’t see anything that speaks to your specific skillset, please write to Emma!
We look forward to hearing from you.
Resource Development Committee Member. We are looking for volunteers who are passionate about Stone Soup and eager to help us find and secure the resources we need to reach more children. Committee members need not have experience in development but should be willing to learn, enthusiastic about our mission, and able to make a yearlong commitment.
Working with our board, the committee will:
- Help us set priorities and goals for raising funds for the current fiscal year.
- Help plan for upcoming campaigns.
- Participate in ongoing campaigns.
- Review the ongoing performance of each campaign.
- Help identify potential donors (institutional or individual).
Marketing Consultant to advise us and help us develop a strategy as well as an annual marketing plan/calendar to increase magazine subscriptions, book sales, and class enrollment. This would be a one-time project though we would appreciate occasional conversations and advice as we implement it.
Public Relations. The ideal volunteer would have experience in PR and be able to advise Stone Soup on ways to increase our visibility and draft press releases for us (one every 2-3 months). This could be an ongoing volunteer opportunity (a year or longer) or it could be closer to 3-6 months.
Sales. We are looking for someone with experience in sales OR no experience but lots of gumption, extroversion, and enthusiasm to place calls to former school and library subscribers about reactivating their subscriptions, as well as to cold-call potential new institutional subscribers. This could be an ongoing volunteer opportunity (a year or longer) or have a limited tenure (for instance, two months).
Grant Writing. We are applying for a number of grants this year. The ideal volunteer would have experience in grant writing or at least very strong writing skills and a strong understanding of Stone Soup’s mission. This could be ongoing support (drafting grants for us for the next six months to a year) or involve just a couple of hours of time—for instance, a meeting to provide advice on grant strategy and then reviewing a draft or two to help us perfect our ask.
Curriculum Writing. We are looking for volunteers with experience teaching middle school students (or comparable experience in education) to develop a number of full-length lesson plans based on Stone Soup stories and poems. This could be an ongoing or limited opportunity (capped at a set number of lesson plans).
Intern Coordinator. The ideal volunteer for this position would have excellent organizational and management capabilities and could help us create an intern handbook, training system, and internal reporting and management structure so that we can better support interns and take on more. This could be a commitment of a 1-3 months, as systems are put in place; it could also be ongoing, if the volunteer is interested in actively managing and mentoring current and future interns.
Website development and/or design…is very expensive! If you or someone you know has expertise in this area and is looking for a pro bono project, we are very interested in talking. We have a few pages that still need to be redesigned.
We also have a number of small ongoing needs for our website—mainly creating and revising simple pages and posts on our WordPress site—and would be excited to speak to a volunteer interested in creating and revising some pages for us in the next 3-6 months.
Refugee Project. A volunteer to support Laura Moran in her work on the Refugee Project. This would involve administrative and grant-writing support as well as research on potential new contacts. The ideal candidate is passionate about the mission, organized, an excellent writer and researcher; must be willing to take on administrative work.
YouTube Redesign. We need to redesign and rework our YouTube channel as well as rethink our video strategy going forward. We would love to talk with anyone with the expertise and interest in helping us do this. This would be a one-time, monthlong project to rework/redesign/reorganize the page and brainstorm new approaches to the channel for the future.