Skills to Win: Call for Group Coordinators

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Group coordinator job description

Because Skills to Win is practice based, there will be small group breakouts within your organization–and at times across organizations–enabling you to use the training time to accomplish campaign work, including improvements in your skills, right in the course. Additionally, groups will role play together with some skills, such as how to hold a successful organizing conversation. To make this work, each team will have a group coordinator to set up the exercises in a breakout. The group coordinator is responsible for getting folks into small group breakouts, doing small group exercises and campaign practice assignments together, and, generally, being sure all participants are clear about the exercises, what they are working on, how to find their materials, etc. The group coordinator does NOT teach any new curriculum. You will direct people to their materials, give pre-written instructions, and answer questions, but you will not be responsible for teaching any new material.

We estimate that it will take 1-2 hours per week to act as a group coordinator, in addition to the Skills to Win session and campaign practice session. It’s a really, really important role—without group coordinators, we can’t do breakouts in any meaningful way. Many groups use this time to make real-time improvements in a campaign that is already underway, in addition to one you might be planning.

What does the group coordinator do?

  • Host the small group Zoom meeting on their own Zoom link and set up Zoom breakout rooms: we will provide training for anyone who needs technical training!
  • Introduce the small group activities and debrief the activities together during session breakouts
  • Connect the curriculum in the class to your organization’s current work
  • Communicate logistics and reminders about the training to your breakout group
  • Problem solve with your participants if they run into issues with technology, missing a session, homework, etc
  • Schedule and facilitate one additional session per week to complete campaign practice assignments within your group–this one-hour session is meant to be done separately from the main Skills to Win session
  • Recruit group members to participate in “fishbowl” exercises in the main webinar plenary sessions

What are the requirements to be a group coordinator?

  • Committed to the goals and methods of the course
  • Comfortable using breakout group functions in Zoom
  • Highly detail-oriented and well-organized to “drive the work” and answer basic questions from a sub-team of 20 people
  • Reasonably confident at facilitating: Skills needed include knowing how to run a meeting, including setting objectives, keeping and minding time, politely and effectively cutting off people who dominate, drawing out those who don’t speak or participate, do light prep and follow up i.e. answer questions for their section
  • Attend the 2-hour group coordinator training in mid-September
  • Attend additional 30-minute Zoom practice if needed
  • Update the email tracking sheet to log reminder emails send to your group
  • If you have Spanish-speaking participants in your group, you will need to provide a group coordinator from your group who can set up the exercises and communicate course details in Spanish (we will provide the Spanish language documents)

Find out more about the Skills to Win workshop.