Are you one of our next Board members? Apply for the oikos International Board 2022/23!
You are passionate about oikos and its international community of student change agents? You love putting strategies into action and are looking to enhance & develop your skills in a specific field that aligns with your strengths?
Then this is your next leadership opportunity: Become a Board member of oikos International! Work in a team of like-minded people from all over the world, while learning all about an international non-profit organization!
What is the oikos Board & how do we work?
The oikos International Board is part of the oikos International Team and governs the strategies and actions on the international level. Representing the oikos community, the Board is given the responsibility for inspiring and empowering the community to move towards our common purpose, mission and vision and for demonstrating its core values. Next to this, expanding the organization’s resilience, and exploring systematic linkage with other organizations engaged in the pursuit of similar objectives are topics that move the Board as a whole. Each member of the Board is needed as a proactive and co-creative participant in a body that functions effectively as a team, taking on roles that match their strengths.
What are the main roles & responsibilities of a Board member?
Each Board member…
- Empowers and inspires the community through practicing leadership and exploring strategic directions for the organization
- Works alongside their fellow Board members, as a body that is in constant exchange and supports each other.
- Pursues a certain thematic role and is accountable to the community for competent, conscientious, and effective accomplishment of this mandate. This includes developing strategies together with volunteers and employees and overseeing the implementation of everything related to your mandate. In other words, you might convene and manage a sub-team of oikos International, depending on your role and the situation within the team.
- Assesses the impact of our organization and reporting them to the community and partners
- Stays informed and engaged with all fields, initiatives, squads etc. related to and organized by oikos International
Next to these general duties of a Board member, our Board works hands-on to support a specific circle within the organization. At the beginning of the term, the newly elected Board comes together to agree on the ways of working and the official roles and responsibilities of each individual Board member. These conversations aim at co-creating commitments that highlight our strengths while covering all fields of responsibility.
Below, you can find summaries of the current roles covered by Board members. These fields might give you some orientation for your application – but might be restructured based on the needs of the team and organization. If we identify that roles are missing, we will add them during the process. One Board member can cover several of these additional roles, according to their availability and scope of commitment. We will also set priorities and specify goals of your roles within the Board. We are looking for curious people who are eager to try out new things!
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Fundraising
The fundraising role is diverse and challenging. If you are a real people’s person and great at keeping an overview, then this is for you. We have different fields in fundraising, like the work with foundations, the outreach to new potential partners and alternative approaches like crowdfunding. As a board member for fundraising, you are at the forefront of coordinating a team of volunteers, coordinating their work and support of the international team.
Current BM: Niklas Ziemann
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Partnerships
Partnerships within oikos International are hosted by individuals across the team. The partnership role in the Board is responsible for supporting the hosts in starting, tending and ending these partnerships. Each relationship to our partners is unique and the network of partners very diverse. Broadly speaking, we categorize partners in three different domains depending on the frequency and depth of the relationship. We distinguish between friends, collaborators and donors. To give an example, PRME (collaborator), AIESEC international (friend), and Movetia (donor) are some of our important partners within oikos. Your role as a Board member for partnerships is to create an overview for the team and check-in with the hosts to support and give space for arising needs and questions around the topic. You are also responsible for the maintenance of our Airtable CRM tool and the development of the infrastructure.
Current BMs: Elena Müller, Mehraj Aliyev
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Communication & Marketing
Communication & marketing play an important role for the organization, with diverse tasks and needs to be addressed regularly. It combines finding strategic direction and putting projects into action together with the communications team. The team is responsible for the management of the oikos International website contents, social media engagement, newsletters, print media, and other marketing channels. You will be responsible for stewarding the team and collaborating closely with all the different teams at oikos in order to communicate the activities and the impact we make as an organization and a community. Additionally, co-creating important documents like the annual reports or reports to donors are particularly important for us as a non-profit organization. Beyond that, we also want to make sure our communication always reaches the right people (our community, potential donors etc.). Recently, we’ve put a greater focus on story-telling, over which we shape around the communication with the oikos community and beyond it. By telling stories, we aim to teach, inspire and motivate, but also extend the reach of the impact oikos creates.
Current BM: Yari Marquina Amador
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Community & Chapter Development
This role is all about tending to the heart of oikos International, namely our wonderful network of 42 local chapters at universities around the world. As Board member for chapter and community development, your task fields currently include chapter pathways (supporting the everyday operations of chapters through the semester kick-off and reflection calls, monthly house calls and chapter check-ins with the oikos International Board), community development (conceptualizing and implementing new formats for oikees to come together internationally, such as in the oikos Agora), chapter lifecycles (supporting the foundation of new chapters and closing chapters if necessary) and squad support (enabling oikees to self-organize across chapters around topics that they are passionate about). In this role you will have the opportunity to connect personally with oikos members from all around the world and practice your leadership and facilitation skills by coordinating a team of community volunteers as well as a team of house facilitator volunteers. In 2021/22 we split these roles between two people.
Current BMs: Francois Bernier, Anna Kurth
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Organizational, Team & People Development
Over the past years, we have established our so-called “team team” – a team of people tending to everything related to organizational, team and people development at oikos International. These fields of development are wide – and in these roles, prioritizing and having an overview is key. Together with the co-presidents and the responsible person for human relations at oikos, you might work on topics like feedback, decision making and organizational culture which all are key to the thriving of oikos. Recently, we have been working hard to “reinvent” our organization, focusing on our organizational structure and are currently in the process of aligning our internal communications with it. This process requires further prototyping, reflection and adaptation and is an exciting opportunity to learn by taking the whole oikos International team with you on our collective development journey. In the past term, the roles around organizational (OD), team (TD) and people development (PD) were held by three people in the Board.
Current BMs: Anna Kurth (OD), Elena Müler (TD), Carolin Lemke (PD)
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Legal Matters
There are many legal questions to address for an international organization with multiple layers of complexity. In this role, you help address these questions together with our legal partners, coordinating between the sub-team with the issue at hand and the legal support. One of the main recurring tasks: preparing and co-charing legislative meetings, understanding our legal base (constitution etc) and helping to keep our governance structure up to date. You don’t have to be a legal expert to enter this role, you only need some great coordination competencies and interest in diving into legal topics affecting our organization.
Current BM: Carolin Lemke
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IT (Information Technology)
You want to provide strategic direction on the use and optimization of online administrative tools, data management policies & processes, and privacy and security threats & opportunities? You have an interest in digitization and want to learn how it looks like on the IT admin side of a remote organization?
No need for having coding skills or being an IT expert for this exciting role! One of the most important characteristics are curiosity and the willingness to learn and dive into the topics. For the upcoming Board term, it is really about leading a team of dedicated IT volunteers, moving projects around data security & privacy ahead and continuously improving internal workflows for us as a remote organization. An additional project would be updating our data privacy guidelines and communicating those new guidelines in an accessible way.
Current BM: Carolin Lemke
What are Opportunities and Benefits of becoming a Board member?
There are plenty! You will, for example,…
- Join a high performing and multicultural team in an innovative and open-minded environment
- Take decisions that guide the direction of the organization with a truly international scope and impact and see our vision come to fruition;
- Enhance your networks and connections with students, faculty and sustainability professionals from all over the world;
- Develop a variety of skills that surely will last beyond your time as a Board member (eg. leadership, strategy and communication skills)
- Gain deeper knowledge of your role and areas of responsibility while having the opportunity to create and try new things
- Have the opportunity to be coached by a professional coach
- Join our international gatherings, programs and strategy sessions (onsite or online) and get to know the oikos community from a completely different perspective
What should you bring – Qualifications & Requirements
You should…
- Be a current Bachelor, Master or PhD student or recent graduate
- Have a commitment to, and a clear understanding of the purpose, mission and vision of oikos;
- Have a minimum of one academic term (4 months) of experience at oikos at any level;
- Have a B2/C1 level in written and spoken English;
- Be open-minded and curious to try out new things. oikos is a playground and we do most of our work in co-creation. You should be up for working together and be willing to communicate and take time for teambuilding and similar efforts.
- Be available for a one-year commitment to oikos, excluding the handover process until the end of 2022. We see that long-term, honest commitments are the only thing that serve the organization, so please only apply if you are up to staying around for a whole year;
- Have the will and availability to dedicate approximately 10 h/week (40 h/month) to oikos. In view of this, we request candidates planning to go on exchange, graduate or take up a full-time job within their mandate to carefully consider if you would be able to fulfill a sustained commitment to oikos and to state possible restrictions in the application. Furthermore, from experience we see that a double commitment as a chapter president and an oikos International Board member is hard to balance, so please take this in consideration, too;
- Be available for weekly and monthly calls, annual international meetings and strategy meetings.
How to apply? 5 simple steps!
If you are interested in applying, please fill in this form until Wednesday, 5.10.22, 11:59 pm CEST. Next to some general information about your person, you will have to upload
- Your curriculum vitae (max. 2 pages);
- A motivational letter stating why you wish to apply, how you want to make a difference, the skills and experiences you will bring to oikos, and a brief summary of your time availability over the next one year. You can also share your motivation for certain roles you might be interested in, knowing that you won’t be elected for any of them, but as a Board member in general (max. 2 pages);
- Your vision for oikos in general and the roles you could imagine to fulfill in the Board (max. 2 pages)
- A short 100-word biography and a picture to be put on the oikos website.
- A 3-to-5-minute video to introduce your candidature to the Legislative Assembly
Once the application deadline closes, we will share all information with our community as a preparation for the Legislative Meeting where the new Board will be elected. Documents (except the short biography) won’t be published on our website and are only accessible to community members on our Google Drive.
All applicants then are required to join the virtual Legislative Meeting on 16.10.2022. via Zoom in order to take part in a panel conversation, defend their application and run for election. The election of the Board members is a democratic process involving all chapters holding the status of a full membership.
Any questions? Please contact us at darija.miletic@oikos-internatioanl.org or reach out to any Board member.
We are looking forward to your application!
The oikos International Board
