Employment & Volunteer Opportunities

Join the NepRWA team and help make a difference in your community!

Employment Opportunities

Posted 9/1/2021 — Immediate Opening: OFFICE MANAGER

Introduction and Organizational Background

Use your talents to protect the environment as our part-time Office Manager!

The Watershed Association is a grassroots nonprofit environmental group dedicated to cleaning up and protecting the Neponset River. We are lucky to have a close-knit and mutually supportive team of ten staff with scientific, legal, and communications expertise.

Responsibilities

The Office Manager’s primary duties include bookkeeping, maintaining our donor database, and helping to keep a 10-person office running smoothly. This includes:

  • paying bills & preparing grant invoices,
  • maintaining donor records and preparing thank you notes,
  • helping monitor project budgets,
  • processing payroll,
  • helping organize meetings and events,
  • coordinating the annual audit,
  • ordering supplies,
  • assisting with bulk mailings,
  • helping coordinate volunteers, and
  • other administrative and program-related duties as they arise.

This position reports to the Executive Director and works with the entire staff.

Qualifications

The Association is an equal opportunity employer and applications from people with diverse backgrounds are strongly encouraged.

The successful candidate will be highly reliable, organized, detail-oriented, team-focused, flexible, and trustworthy.

They will have a bachelor’s or associate’s degree, strong communication skills (phone/writing), will enjoy working with a diverse group of staff and volunteers, and will be enthusiastic about the organization’s environmental mission.

They must have strong computer skills with Windows, Excel, and MS Word and aptitude for learning new systems. Experience with bookkeeping (QuickBooks), nonprofit accounting procedures, and database maintenance (FileMaker) are all preferred, however, we are willing to train an otherwise strong candidate that does not have deep financial expertise.

Schedule, COVID, and Compensation

This is a permanent position and is available to start immediately. The schedule is part-time (24 hours per week) and very flexible. There is an opportunity to work some hours from home, but regular in-person work is required.

The Association’s offices are currently operating on a semi-remote basis. Masking is required in the office and all staff are expected to be vaccinated. We will be evaluating a return to full or partial onsite work for all staff over the coming months as circumstances allow.

Compensation is commensurate with experience.

Application Process

To apply, send a cover letter describing your interest and qualifications, along with a resume via email to: Ian Cooke, Executive Director at cooke@neponset.org. Please indicate where you heard about the job. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. References and a background check will be required for the chosen applicant before a job offer is finalized.

Immediate Opening: Stormwater and Water Conservation Professional

Organizational Background

The Neponset River Watershed Association is a regional nonprofit conservation group working to protect and restore the natural resources of the 14-town watershed area that drains to the Neponset River in Greater Boston. The Association’s tight-knit and mission-driven staff of nine applies its expertise in watershed science, engineering, policy, and communications to the cross-disciplinary challenges of managing an urban watershed.

Two critical goals for the Association are to reduce stormwater pollution and restore more natural streamflow patterns in our highly developed watershed. Toward those ends, we work with municipalities and property owners to reduce polluted stormwater runoff, increase groundwater recharge, reduce peak flows, and reduce the volume of water diverted from the watershed by private and municipal water supply and wastewater management activities.

Position Description

The Association has an immediate opening for a full-time Stormwater and Water Conservation Professional. The Professional will work alongside our other program staff to provide technical assistance, training, and outreach to residents, business owners, and municipalities on stormwater management and water conservation issues. This may include activities such as:

  • Managing the twelve community Neponset Stormwater Partnership which aims to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of municipal stormwater management and MS4 compliance programs by delivering services and technical assistance on a regional basis.
  • Working with businesses and municipal staff to prioritize, design, and install stormwater BMP retrofits to improve water quality, and fixture updates to increase water efficiency.
  • Analyzing land use and water use data to recommend and implement targeted stormwater management and water conservation interventions and/or incentives.
  • Contacting landscapers and retailers to encourage compliance with the MA fertilizer law and best practices.
  • Delivering technical training and presenting information to municipal staff, business groups or local residents on stormwater and water conservation topics and organizing training to be delivered by third-party instructors.
  • Planning and delivering educational outreach campaigns, such as mailings, websites, social media, videos, or educational signage, working with municipal partners and volunteers to disseminate campaign materials, and evaluating results.
  • Providing technical support to colleagues working on stream and riparian corridor restoration, culvert replacement, and dam removal projects, and assisting colleagues with technical reviews of stormwater engineering reports and plan sets for site development proposals.

Applicant Qualifications

The successful applicant should have a bachelor’s or master’s degree in civil or environmental engineering, hydrology, geology, water resource management or a related field and at least 3-5 years of relevant work experience. Experience with stormwater management, water supply, and/or wastewater management will be invaluable, as will experience working with municipalities. Experience with locating and designing stormwater best management practices, managing MS4 permit compliance and/or management of municipal water conservation programs will be very helpful.

The position requires strong analytical skills, including the ability to use spreadsheet, database, GIS, CAD, and/or HEC-HMS/RAS software to collect and make sense of environmental and utility data and develop evidence-based strategies to achieve environmental results.

The position requires strong communication and interpersonal skills that will allow the Professional to effectively engage, educate, motivate and assist local residents, business owners, municipal partners, and volunteers in various settings including over the phone, through one on one interaction, group meetings, workshops, and written communications. Strong public speaking and project management skills are also required as the Professional will be coordinating the efforts of an in-house multi-disciplinary team.

Finally, the successful applicant will be excited about the opportunity to work in the nonprofit sector and apply their creativity and skills to produce tangible environmental results in partnership with a team of colleagues that has the freedom to focus on achieving meaningful conservation outcomes.

Position Details and Application Process

This is a permanent, full-time (40 hour per week) position. The schedule is flexible and the position is based out of the Association’s office in Canton MA. Our office is transitioning back to in-person work, but staff will have the opportunity to work remotely for a portion of their time if desired. Applicants must have their own transportation and be comfortable working outdoors on uneven terrain. The position requires occasional participation in evening or weekend meetings or events. The position reports to the Association’s Executive Director. Compensation is commensurate with experience. EEO/AA employer. Applications from people of diverse backgrounds are encouraged.

Applicants should forward a resume and a cover letter explaining their interest and relevant qualifications via email to Ian Cooke, Executive Director at cooke@neponset.org. Please also indicate where you heard about the opportunity.

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. We expect to begin scheduling interviews for promising candidates by mid to late July. The most recent version of the posting will be maintained at www.neponset.org/about/employment and will be removed promptly once the position is filled.

Internship Opportunities

There are no internship opportunities at this time.

Volunteer Positions

Water Samplers Needed, May-Oct 2021

Join the Citizen Water Monitoring Network (CWMN) Team! Volunteers are needed annually to collect water quality samples at various sites throughout the watershed, as part of the CWMN program. Sampling occurs once a month, on the second Thursday, from May through Oct. Training is provided.

We always need backup or fill-in volunteers to sample on days when our regular volunteers aren’t able to.

If you or anyone you know might be interested in helping us out, please email Declan Devine at devine@neponset.org.

Learn more about the CWMN Program.

 

We have many additional volunteer opportunities throughout the year, so be sure to sign up for our emails to stay up to date.

 

As a volunteer, you might:

  • sample water at streams around the watershed
  • work with other volunteers on a river cleanup
  • staff an event table on behalf of the Watershed Association
  • take photo’s of sites around the watershed for use in publications
  • survey dams and culverts
  • assist with office projects

Click here to register as a volunteer or email our Volunteer Coordinator, Andres Ripley, at ripley@neponset.org

volunteer-group-photo-for-web

Descriptions of Volunteer Opportunities

Citizen Water Monitoring Network

The Citizen Water Monitoring Network (“CWMN” – pronounced “swimmin”) is a volunteer-based monitoring program that assesses water quality in Neponset waterways. Each year, roughly 50 volunteers take water samples, monitor dissolved oxygen levels, and transport samples from 41 locations around the watershed, six times throughout the spring, summer and fall.

For the monitoring season, we seek volunteers to fill the following CWMN positions:

  • water samplers
  • dissolved oxygen samplers
  • sample coordinators
  • sample transporters

Each position plays a vital role in helping the Watershed Association to monitor water quality throughout the watershed. In addition to filling those positions, we also seek “Fill-In Samplers” whose duty it is to help cover sampling locations when a station’s regular volunteer is unable to sample. We provide training and equipment, and you provide a few hours of your time. The result is a comprehensive look at water quality around the Neponset River Watershed, which helps the Watershed Association to monitor the river and prioritize clean-up and restoration efforts

Photographers

We are looking for folks who like to take photos! We could use pictures of beautiful landscapes, wildlife, watershed association events, and even pollution, flooding, and drought. Most of all we need pictures of people (and faces) who are out enjoying or working on the watershed.

Please keep photographs focused on the geographic area of the watershed, which includes Canton, Dedham, Dorchester, Dover, Foxborough, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Medfield, Milton, Norwood, Randolph, Quincy, Sharon, Stoughton, Walpole, and Westwood.

To email photos:

Share photos via social media @neprwa:

Advocate for Watershed Protection

Advocate for watershed protection! Join the watershed association’s e-mail list to receive advocacy updates, and then act according to your own schedule.

“On-Call” Helpers

These volunteers have their names added to the “on-call” volunteer email list and agree to “help when they can” with short-term group efforts to prepare mailings, provide an extra set of hands on the day of a special event, or assist with other miscellaneous tasks as they come up.

The location varies depending on the need – e.g., sometimes at the office and sometimes at a special event location. Time and schedule also depend on need. Generally, short-term projects are 1 to 2 hours in duration. Commitment is determined by the volunteer.

Volunteer today!