Life as a Community Project Manager
ELBA’s Jonathan Tait, talks about his experience and role as a new ELBA Community Project Manager marking his first month working at ELBA:
“It is very difficult to capture a typical day in the life of an ELBA Project Manager for the simple reason that no two days are ever the same. The Project Manager’s role is to act as a broker or a middleman/woman between ELBA’s Corporate Partners and Community Partners, facilitating volunteering to support both sides to deliver against their objectives and achieve the best possible outcomes for East London communities.
As ELBA work with a huge variety of Corporate and Community partners and community needs are ever changing, volunteering opportunities tend come in all shapes and sizes. In any one day a Project Manager might be trying to find a new Board Member for an East London Charity, attempting to find pro-bono legal advice for a community interest group and simultaneously developing a workshop for corporate volunteers to deliver to East London jobseekers.
Approximately one third of a Project Manager’s time is spent meeting with Community Partners, learning about their projects and working with them to pinpoint the areas in which volunteers can make the greatest impact. Another third is spent meeting with Corporate Partners, hearing about their CSR strategy and planning the most effective interventions that volunteers can deliver. The final third of a Project Manager’s time is spent bringing the Corporate and the Community Partners together for to benefit East London Communities. Evaluation is built into every one of a Project Manager’s activities because, as the ELBA saying goes ‘If a project isn’t captured and evaluated then didn’t happen in the first place’.”
