Get more involved with GGWash as a volunteer!

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Have you been looking for a way to get more involved with GGWash? Today is your day!

Since its founding in 2008, Greater Greater Washington has owed much of its greatness to the efforts of volunteers. From contributors to graphic designers, policy experts, organizers and advocates, so many talented and dedicated community members have used their unique skills to help us advance our mission to promote an inclusive, diverse, growing Washington, DC region where all people can choose to live in walkable urban communities.

As GGWash grows, it is important to us that volunteers remain central to our day to day operations, and that we are able to give community members opportunities to deeply engage with our work in whatever way is best for you. To better achieve this, we’ve made a few changes to our overall volunteer structure and are excited to announce that we are now recruiting new team members for 2020.

Whether you’re interested in helping to improve the quality of articles, or working on our political endorsements, or coming in to the office once a year to stuff envelopes, we hope you will fill out our volunteer interest survey and let us know how you would most like to contribute.

This year, we’ve expanded the roster of volunteer opportunities, so here is a quick overview of them all. We’ll be following up with some articles in the coming weeks getting into a little more detail about some of these areas, but here’s a quick overview first!

Editorial

Editorial volunteers help with the content on the website (this one!)

Our Content Advisory Panel is a new program we are starting to get feedback on articles early in the editing process from people who have some relevant knowledge or insight. We’re looking for some people who have a specific interest in looking at posts with equity or sustainability lenses, who will get a set of posts one night a week to look at and give feedback. And, we’re looking for people with expertise in any of the content areas we cover, or the geographies (especially outside DC) we write about, to look at posts as some come up that are relevant to those topics or regions.

Our Contributors have, for many years, been the cornerstone of our publication. We’re looking for people who are interested in writing newsy articles about things going on in their neighborhoods. We also know that for some people, doing a whole article can be daunting, so we’re experimenting with a structure where people could just do some research, while other people can write up the article, and still others could add illustrations and graphics.

Our Editorial Board is the governing body for the publication. Selected by application by a Nominations Committee and approved by our Board of Directors, the Editorial Board sets the poicies around our content, including topics to focus on, style guide changes, and general direction. We’d particularly invite people with journalism and/or blogging experience to apply to be part of our Editorial Board this year. The group talks via a Slack chat twice a month and has discussions over email in between.

If any of these roles sound interesting to you, please apply today!

(And, on the non-volunteer front, we’re looking for a new Managing Editor to run the publication, so if that’s you, please apply!)

Advocacy

As GGWash continues to explore its role in the regional advocacy space, we are looking for volunteers to help us identify the issues our readers want to see action on and to help us determine the official stances our organization takes. Right now we’re looking for people in two areas:

Action Allocators will help us engage readers by looking at upcoming posts and identifying ones appropriate for putting the “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” buttons we’ve been using (even more in 2018 with a drop-off in 2019, which is why we’re looking for volunteers to get involved in this and rejuventate it for 2020). These volunteers will sign up for a night a week to look at some posts and identify if the post could lead to a potentially actionable item.

Our Advocacy Committee is the governing board for this area. It determines whether we take positions on issues, send out email alerts, join coalitions, or sign on to letters, and sets policies around these. Members join a conference call about twice a month, attend quarterly in-person gatherings, and participate over email in between.

If either of these roles sound interesting to you, please apply today!

Elections

GGWash has endorsed candidates in election cycles for years. For the last few years, we’ve had a great formalized Elections Committee which studies the races, writes articles informing people about them, writes and distributes questionnaires, and ultimately determines the endorsements. This takes about 20-40 hours (or more) over an election cycle.

In 2020, we’ll have some folks looking at DC Council races in wards 2, 4, 7, and 8 and at-large, and another group doing our Advisory Neighborhood Commission endorsements for DC’s 299 ANC seats. There’s also an Arlington County Board seat that could have a competitive primary. If this sounds interesting to you, please apply today!

Community

The Community Engagement Committee is focused on getting people more engaged in our community, beyond just reading the site or sending emails, by planning fun social and educational events. We’ve had happy hours and other social events for people all around the region and want to do more at specific neighborhood levels as well.

Our Social Media Mavens help us to engage people through our social media by posting or retweeting relevant content, engaging with other people as appropriate, and looking at the messages that come in. This is great for people who are into social media and want to help us put a GGWash-y voice on our social media presence!

If either of these roles sound interesting to you, please apply today!

Board of Directors

Finally, our Board of Directors is the governing body for the organization, and we’re interested in finding a few of the right people to join it. Board members oversee the organization and its finances, but don’t set policies for our program areas — those come from the Editorial Board, Advocacy Committee, and Elections Committee, so this is a great role for people interested in organizational management. Members participate in a quarterly board meeting, assist with one revenue opportunity, and are asked to contribute or raise $2,500 or more per year.

Do any of these sound right for you? If so, please fill out our survey to show your interest and apply!

Or, if you want to be involved but aren’t sure how, that’s okay too! The survey includes an option to let us know about your general interest without having to pick. So please don’t feel intimidated, either. It is very important to me that you are able to engage with GGWash in the way that is best for you.

Thank you all for helping make GGWash the greatest it can be!