Position Description: UMR is seeking outgoing and polite individuals to assist our Washington DC office’s Call Center in promotion and outreach efforts for our upcoming #LebanonStrong campaign. We are looking for individuals that can work closely with other team members to provide outstanding service to our donors by answering questions, assisting with technical issues, and soliciting donations. They will also support our Donor Care Department in updating contact information collected over the course of the week-long campaign. 

The Call Center Representative should be comfortable handling a high volume of calls and should seek to create a positive experience for each caller. They should also be courteous, polite, respectful, and professional in their interactions and are encouraged to engage with our donors about our #LebanonStrong campaign.

Department/Individuals Assisting: Our DC office’s Donor Department and Call Center

Responsible to: Our DC office’s Donor Relations Management Coordinator Hasnia Bekkadja and Donor Relations Specialist Nausheen Ahmed

Responsibilities:

• Placing outgoing calls to our database donors informing them about UMR’s 2021 #LebanonStrong Campaign
• Answering questions donors might have about the campaign 
• Addressing problems or issues donors might be having while attempting to donate to the campaign 
• Assisting in our donor outreach and solicitation to help us reach our fundraising goal for the campaign
• Recording and maintaining our call center databases by entering information accurately, timely, and in line with our guidelines
• Establishing a positive user experience throughout the call and retaining donor acquisition

Position Qualifications: 

• Required:
  • Excellent verbal/written communication skills
  • Excellent interpersonal skills
  • English language proficiency
  • Cordial, respectful, polite, and professional in communication
  • Data entry skills and the ability to pay attention to details
  • Tech-savvy, able to assist donors while multitasking on the computer and phone
• Preferred:
  • Experience with Google Drive, specifically Google Sheets
  • Bilingual (Arabic preferably)
  • Previous experience with customer service and/or donor outreach
  • Flexibility within commitment during week for assisting Call Center

Commitment:

• Assistance will be needed throughout the duration of our campaign starting on August 3rd and lasting the whole week. 
• Additional assistance the following week to collect, review, and update donor information will also be needed
• Volunteers will be asked to contribute 20-30 hours throughout the duration of this opportunity, during the work week. Flexibility as to days and time will be allotted.
• Able to complete the training necessary prior to the start of the campaign on Sunday, August 1st at 12:00 PM EST.

Technology Needed:

• Reliable internet connection and phone connectivity
• Google Suite

Application: To apply for this volunteer opportunity, you can email our Volunteer Coordinator (VMC) at volunteers@umrelief.org.  Upon receiving your interest, they will invite you to the necessary training on Sunday, August 1st, which is required to participate in this opportunity. During this meeting, you finalize the schedule of your commitment for the week and receive your orientation packet including our donor call sheets, scripts, and instructions.

If you have any questions before applying or before meeting, please do not hesitate to reach out to our VMC at any time!

Position Description:  UMR is looking for talented volunteer blog contributors to generate engaging, original content for our new blog, “Reflections of a Humanitarian.” Contributors will research topics and develop interesting posts focused on international humanitarian crises around the world from environment disasters to man-made catastrophes to refugee resettlements and migrations. Their posts should appeal to our target audience while reflecting the values and mission of our organization. Contributors should also promote the blog using social media, direct email, and other methods to alert and expand the blog’s readership. 

The ideal contributor will be a writer who can create appealing, insightful posts that will reach and grow our audience. To succeed as a contributor, you should be focused on generating and composing interesting content and expanding readership of our blog. You should be creative, adaptable, and analytical with excellent writing skills and a unique voice. We list the responsibilities of this role as well as the qualifications, post requirements, and application process below:

Department/Individuals Assisting: Our DC office’s Volunteer department

Responsible to: Our DC office’s Volunteer Management Coordinator, Connor Paul and Social Media & Communications Officer, Caroline Evashavik

Responsibilities: 

• Generating, researching, and pitching ideas for posts.
• Writing, editing, publishing, and promoting content for our “Reflections of a Humanitarian” blog.
• Promoting new posts using email, text, social media, and other methods to alert and attract new readers to your post and our blog.
• Staying current on current affairs and humanitarian trends for possible opportunities to attract new readers or create stronger, more engaging content.

Position Qualifications: 

• Required:
  • Excellent written communication skills in English.
  • Results oriented with the ability to meet self-imposed deadlines.
  • Be a team player and work effectively with others, including editors of your pieces.
  • Be receptive to constructive feedback and willing to make necessary changes or adjustments to your pieces.
• Preferred:
  • Previous experience blogging or drafting columns, journals, articles, or op-eds for publication.
  • Knowledge about current international affairs, humanitarian assistance, and refugee populations, with a focus on the MENA, East Africa, and South Asia regions.

Blog Post Requirements: All submissions MUST abide by the following guidelines to be accepted and published on our platform. Any pieces that do not meet these requirements will not be eligible for publication. The post guidelines are as follows:

• Written in English.
• Have a title.
• Word count of minimum 250 words and a maximum of 1,000 words.
• Contain original material, we will not accept plagiarized posts.
• If citing specific facts, figures, or data, please link the source of your information to your piece. All links should direct to credible, reputable sources, preferably in English.
• All blog posts should be within the geographic and programmatic scope of our organization’s work.
• Refrain from any politicization of your piece including speaking in support of or against the actions of governments, groups, or leaders.
• Refrain from promoting other organizations, groups, or projects unrelated to UMR.
• Refrain from using any inappropriate, offensive, incendiary, or insensitive language.
• Be free of spelling and grammatical errors.
• Be free of any images. We will select one of our images to accompany your post.

Commitment: To be worked on at your convenience! If after your first published piece you would like to come up with a recurring schedule to post on, our Volunteer Coordinator would be happy to discuss such with you.

Technology Needed:

• Reliable internet connection
• A word processor, ideally Microsoft Word or Google Documents

Application: Sign up to be a volunteer blog contributor here where you will submit a draft of your post that meets the requirements listed above. Upon receipt of your post, our Volunteer Coordinator will contact you to discuss your piece, edits needed before publication, and if accepted as a volunteer blog writer, create a consistent schedule for you to submit publications. We are strongly welcoming blog posts on the following topics:

• Beirut Explosion/Lebanon’s Economic Crisis
• Importance of Education for Refugee Children
• Winter in Poverty-Stricken Countries
• Women Economic Empowerment among Refugees
• Refugee Camps/Overcrowding
• Water Scarcity 
• Food Desserts 
• Effects of COVID in Countries We Operate
• Disabled Refugees
• Child Labor due to Extreme Poverty
• Child Refugees

If you would like to discuss a possible blog post topic not mentioned above to confirm it falls within our guidelines that is not only acceptable but encouraged! Feel free to email your intended topic or outline to volunteers@umrelief.org for approval before drafting to ensure your piece will be considered for publication once submitted!

Position Description: UMR has recently just launched our Fundraising Leader opportunity which allows for our dedicated volunteers to expand their assistance beyond a one-time or even recurring donation through the management of their own personal fundraising page! Through a variety of fundraising and marketing strategies from social media messaging to community outreach to event planning, our fundraising leaders can amplify the impact of their desire to donate!

And we at UMR want to do more than just provide our crowdfunding platform and toolkit to guide our dedicated fundraising leaders in their work. We are in the midst of continued work on supporting guides and toolkits that will only continue to expand the creativity, marketing, and most importantly fundraising of our volunteers’ incredible efforts! And we are looking for some assistance on this project so that we can publish our content faster than we plan!!  

The ideal content creator is someone who has had previous fundraising and/or crowdsourcing experience and can contribute their knowledge to the ongoing work of our supplementary materials. This person should be creativity, adaptable, responsible, team-oriented and able to generate instructional content for a diverse audience. We list the responsibilities of this role as well as the qualifications and application process below:

Department/Individuals Assisting: Our DC office’s Volunteer department

Responsible to: Our DC office’s Volunteer Coordinator, Connor Paul

Responsibilities: 

• Assisting with the publication of supplemental materials to the UMR Fundraising Leader toolkit including a Donor Storytelling Toolkit and a Virtual/In-Person Fundraising Event Guide.
• Generating new ideas that can be used in the above materials
• Contributing to the drafting and editing of the above materials 
• Brainstorming and developing any new ideas that could serve as supplemental materials to the UMR Fundraising Leader toolkit

Qualifications: 

• Required:
  • Excellent written communication skills in English.
  • Results oriented with the ability to meet self-imposed deadlines.
  • Creativity with a desire to present and try out new ideas
  • Be a team player and work effectively with others, including UMR staff and other volunteers.
  • Be receptive to feedback and willing to make necessary changes or adjustments to your work.
• Preferred:
  • Previous experience fundraising or developing fundraising materials for an organization or cause.
  • Previous experience with crowdfunding platforms, specifically Classy
  • Social media savvy and experience  

Commitment: This is a flexible opportunity but we do have other volunteers assisting so we would like to find at least one time on a weekly or biweekly basis that we could all check-in together.

Technology Needed:

• Reliable internet connection
• Google account/email to receive and work on shared documents

Application: To apply for this volunteer opportunity, you can email our Volunteer Coordinator at volunteers@umrelief.org.  Upon receiving your interest, they will reach out to you to set up a time to meet to ensure the assistance required is something you will be interested in and your commitment to the assistance as well!

If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Volunteer Coordinator at volunteers@umrelief.org.