Coaching Consultant - Mayors of Impact Programme

What is the Mayor of Impact Program? What is the role of the Mayors selected?

The Mayors of Impact program groups 12 community champions from 12 different regions in Lebanon. 

Their roles are to onboard and attract new organizations (NGOs, social enterprises, etc.), to the Volunteer Circle platform. Organizations are the volunteer opportunity providers, and in this case, they represent the demand, where volunteers represent supply. Currently, our community is rich with 5,000+ volunteers and 180 NGOs in Lebanon. 

The collective target of the Mayors of Impact is to go to from 180 to 500 organizations in 10 months by establishing contact with new organizations, uncovering their needs towards volunteer management and demonstrating how to make the best out of The Volunteer Circle. 

What exactly are we offering the organizations? What are the Mayors of Impact promoting?

We offer a new marketplace for volunteers where non-profit organizations get access to skilled volunteers on-demand, as well as an end-to-end experience to manage their volunteers. 

We also offer more services as our rapport and relationship with the organization progresses (e.g. volunteer management, volunteer strategy, etc.)

Without the non-profit organizations, the platform would not be running since they represent community needs. Our objective is to reach as many non-profit organizations across all sectors and locations and be as inclusive as possible.

Organizations do not pay to be part of The Volunteer Circle or post volunteer opportunities. 

Who are the Mayors of Impact?

The Mayors of Impact have been selected among 60 community champions who applied to be the Mayors of Impact Program in Lebanon this year. They are all under 30 years old and are true examples of citizens who are turning all the challenges we are facing into opportunities. Their target is to build partnerships and activate their local community, so they have a very wide range of stakeholders that they are getting in touch with every day. Every week, we bring to them a new workshop or challenge that will help them increase their impact during these times. It ranges from soft skills to more technical or in depth knowledge. Because they don’t all have same skills or backgrounds, we would like to give them a fair chance to achieve their targets. 

Why now more than ever?

The Program started in February 2021. We are two months in and the Mayors haven’t been scoring their targets. Based on their feedback, here are the top 3 reasons why they haven’t been reaching their targets:

1. Lack of time management (Passion is there, but not enough to prioritize it) 

2. Lack of confidence/experience in making the outreach online

3. Lack of communication and negotiation skills (e.g. When an organization turns down their request for volunteers/request to meet or to discuss further, they feel like they face dead ends). 

We really believe that they are the social innovators of the present and the future, and that they deserve our support to succeed in their roles. We need them as much as they need us.

What we need? 

An experienced expert in the third sector to provide our Mayors of Impact with a motivating capacity-building training to serve them throughout THIS particular role and any future role they may have within the third sector. The consultant should develop the training content with the following themes in mind: 

- Ice breakers allowing the mayors to express their concerns regarding their work within the third sector

- Skills to improve communication, negotiation, and the ability to engage organizations 

- Skills to improve time management 

- Maintaining motivation, inspiration

- Overall tips and inputs on activism and third sector work. 

We would prefer for the training to take place in person (with COVID-19 precautions taken into consideration) in an aim to really engage and motivate our Mayors of Impact and allow them to renew their enthusiasm and drive toward achieving their goals.