About the Foundation

The Empire & Great Jones Creative Arts Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to fostering and supporting art in education, business, and life. We believe that creativity leads to excellence in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The Foundation, which operates E&GJ Press, is currently an all-volunteer organization. From the readers who review submissions to our editor-in-chief and admin team, the Empire & Great Jones Creative Arts Foundation is staffed entirely by goodwill.

About the Role

To ensure that our volunteers feel their contributions are meaningful, and to help us effectively accept the time and talents they offer, we rely on the crucial support of the Volunteer Coordinator team.  As a member of the Volunteer Coordinator team, you will:

• Communicate with current volunteers to encourage engagement, to answer questions (or to find the person who can answer them), and to demonstrate that we value them and their time
• Maintain a list of roles, activities, and tasks performed by volunteers at the Foundation or Press—and keep track of which volunteers perform them
• Post role descriptions (like this) for open opportunities or areas we need more help with. This may include listings at colleges and universities, since students can receive internship credit for their work
• Review volunteer applications and participate in the acceptance process to ensure a great fit between candidates and opportunities
• Welcome new volunteers, facilitate introductions, and help them find the tools and websites we use to enable a fully-remote team to work from anywhere in the world
• Perform technical tasks of adding new user accounts for volunteers and configuring access permissions—or quickly bring on a new volunteer who can help with the technical side of the role

We will accept up to three candidates for the Volunteer Coordinator team to share the workload so that the commitment of any one coordinator should not exceed an availability of 5-10 hours per week.

Minimum Qualifications

• Must be age 18 or older
• Must be willing to commit to 6 months (or more) in this volunteer role
• Must have a stable internet connection and a modern web browser
• Must be able to work independently and remotely
• Must have a strong grasp of written and spoken English 

Preferred Qualifications

Experience is helpful, but not required! As part of our mission to foster excellence in technology through access to creativity, we offer training in the tools and processes in use at E&GJ—and we're open to your input in selecting better tools and improving our processes.

• Past work with a non-profit organization or a small press
• Volunteer or people management
• Project or task management
• Communication skills, both interpersonal and professional
• Community outreach experience
• Strong organizational and time management skills

Compensation

This is an unpaid volunteer position.

Benefits

We love doing work that makes an impact on the world—and we hope you will, too. We also feel that volunteers themselves should gain something through the work! This role offers:

• Training and use of common business tools like Slack, Google Workspace, Jira, Zoom, and more
• Experience with remote collaboration and communication
• Experience with people, project, process, and task management
• Qualification for community service hours and internship requirements at many schools, colleges, and universities
• A letter of recommendation to future career opportunities confirming the experience you've gained or practiced in this role

When you apply, be sure to let us know what you're hoping to gain from the opportunity so we can work together to match your goals.

#LI-Remote #Volunteer

Dive into the world of emerging literature, refine your critical skills, and gain invaluable experience. Perfect for writers, readers, and charitable givers!

To help us keep up with the positive response to our publications and process submissions in a timely manner, we maintain a staff of volunteer readers to review and take notes on submitted manuscripts. This is an unpaid, volunteer position, but it may be listed on your resume/C.V. 

In many cases, this volunteer position also qualifies for college internship credit.

Perks

• All staff receive access to free digital copies of E&GJ publications and a discount on print copies.
• Readers have a unique opportunity to see trends in poetry and short prose and enjoy early access to work from established and emerging writers.
• Authors and poets have consistently reported that spending time in the "slush pile" of any magazine has improved their own writing, and this has been confirmed by E&GJ Press volunteers, too.

Responsibilities

• Read up to twenty submitted works per week.
• Vote "Yes" or "No" on each work read.
• Write a brief note explaining your reaction to each work read.

Requirements

• Be at least 16 years old.
• Have regular access to the Internet.
• Have regular access to e-mail, and check it at least once per day.
• Be able to work independently and commit to at least 5-10 hours per week.
• Be willing to accept Non-Disclosure Agreement and abide by U.S. and International copyright laws.
• Must be fluent in English. Fluency includes a reasonably solid grasp of spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
• Be willing to read any genre of work and judge it objectively.
• Be willing to read and comment on both poetry and prose.

Preferred skills

These are not required, but candidates who have these skills will be selected over those who do not. 

• Previous experience on the staff of any publication
• Previous experience with Submittable submission manager
• An understanding of traditional and modern poetry forms, meters, and rhyming schemes
• An understanding of the differences in spelling and punctuation standards around the English-speaking world

Training

We're with you all the way! Once your application is reviewed and provisionally approved, you'll have access to senior staff members who will walk you through our tools, review our feedback style and standards with you, and leave you with our "Getting Started" documents for reference. During your initial period as a new staff member, you'll have an opportunity to make sure we're a good fit for you—and we'll be able to see that you're a good fit for us, too.

We encourage open discussion and mentorship, so we welcome your questions and suggestions whether you're a new intern or a veteran volunteer.

Location

There are no location requirements! We have staff members around the world, and we welcome international applicants. Keep in mind that all tasks, tools, and communication are completed online, so wherever you are: a reliable internet connection is critical.

Our Publications

Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things is a print journal of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction for all age groups. Submissions for and by readers aged 10 to 18 are strongly encouraged.

As an all-ages publication, our refusal to print profanity/vulgarity is based on an understanding of our audience, not on censorship. Similarly, while allusions to the occurrence of love and sex, anger and violence may be integral to some stories, we tend to err on the side of making Ember accessible to middle-grade readers.

If a manuscript with harsh language or mature scenes is accepted for Ember, it is because we believe that appropriate revisions can be made without affecting the integrity of the work. In such cases, we will work with the author to implement those revisions.

Ember submission guidelines: emberjournal.org

Spark: A Creative Anthology is a print literary magazine featuring great writing from new and established authors and poets.

Because the target audience of Spark is a bit older than the audience of Ember, there is some flexibility in the themes and language that can be printed. There are still limits and certain words and themes that will never be included in this publication under any circumstances. 

Spark submission guidelines: sparkanthology.org

Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry is a monthly online literary magazine for short literature we love but which may departs from conventions in imagery and story. We want Zetetic to be a space where readers can find unique writing they can connect to; writing that will make them say, as we did: “This was quite unusual, but I loved it.”

Zetetic submission guidelines: zeteticrecord.org
 

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