Membership Coordinator

California Data Collaborative

1d•$90,000 - $120,000•Remote

About The Position

We’re hiring a full-time Membership Coordinator to be the relationship engine of the California Data Collaborative: bringing in new member water suppliers, keeping current members engaged and successful, and making sure they get real value from CaDC’s tools, committees, and events. You’ll be a welcoming people-person who can communicate effectively with both agency leadership and frontline staff. Comfort wearing many hats in a small organization, and a genuine interest in helping people, matter more than a specific background. Some knowledge of the water sector is a plus but not required. Recent decades in the American West have been the driest in more than a millennium—an unprecedented reality that will only grow worse as our region becomes more arid. This changing hydrology is stressing our water systems to a breaking point. Adapting will require changing our behaviors and systems using the best tools and information available to us. Meanwhile, California’s water management system is fragmented among thousands of local water retailers and additional layers of regional, state, and federal agencies. This fragmentation creates high costs to the sharing and collection of data, which results in planning and regulations that are often based on outdated, inaccurate, or non-existent data. Even in the birthplace of Silicon Valley, we are failing to fully harness the potential of modern software and data science to face up to the challenges in front of us. The California Data Collaborative (CaDC) is a nonprofit organization and network of water professionals collaborating on the creation of open-source software, data, standards, and applied research that support the informed planning and analysis needed to ensure a reliable and sustainable water supply in California into an uncertain future. We build tools and community to empower local water suppliers on the ground and put their data to use for planning and policy. You will be the first point of contact for current and prospective member agencies. You’ll own member growth, member success, and the relationship work that keeps CaDC’s network healthy and engaged. You’ll connect members with the benefits of CaDC membership, including our analytics software, committees, and events, and help determine what new benefits we should build next. You’ll own the vision and oversight of our flagship event, the annual California Water Data Summit, working alongside a contract event planner who handles logistics. You’ll plan our quarterly webinars, lead member-facing marketing and communications (with help from a part-time member support associate and outsourced marketing contractors), and cultivate sponsor relationships. This is not a technical role, but the ability to understand and communicate about water utility operations, data, and software is important. You’ll work closely with our Program Manager, who handles project delivery and strategic initiatives, a part-time admin assistant for paperwork, and will report to the Chief Data Officer. Our mission deals directly with some of the biggest issues of the moment: water management, drought, and climate change. You’ll work closely with water managers and the people delivering essential public services, helping make their jobs easier. Data science is really cool (or at least we think so). We get to develop tools and analysis that lead to smarter operations and better policies. We have a small staff of employees and contractors, so there is often ambiguity, and you’ll need to be a motivated self-starter who isn’t afraid to learn new skills constantly. The water industry is often very risk-averse, and timelines can be long. We are in this for the long haul. Every one of our member agencies gets a seat on our steering committee, which means we have a lot of stakeholders—though we share a common vision and purpose, so consensus is usually within reach.

Requirements

3+ years of professional experience in member or customer success, account management, partnerships, community management, or a closely related field.
Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; comfort moving fluidly between executive conversations and frontline staff conversations.
Strong planning, organizational, and time-management skills; ability to organize large volumes of information and give clear, concise direction.
Comfort working remotely and often asynchronously using tools like email, Slack, Notion, Asana, Zoom, and MS Teams.
A genuine interest in helping people.
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant subject or equivalent professional experience.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of California’s water sector or prior experience working with water utilities.
Experience selling or driving adoption of software products.
Experience planning conferences, summits, or large stakeholder events.
Experience in marketing/branding, or comfort directing creative and marketing contractors.
Experience growing an organization or building from scratch.

Responsibilities

Serve as the first point of contact for current and prospective member agencies.
Bring in new member agencies through outreach, prospecting, and consistent follow-through.
Onboard new members and help them develop the internal CaDC network connections that make membership valuable.
Manage ongoing member relationships: regular check-ins, understanding evolving needs, account management, retention.
Connect members with their benefits, including supporting adoption of our Wavelet software—demos, training, troubleshooting, and feeding member input back to the product team.
Use member input to help shape the next wave of member benefits: what we build, who we build it for, and how we deliver it.
Plan and oversee the annual California Water Data Summit, a 250 person conference, including vision, agenda, and sponsor coordination. (A contract event planner handles event logistics.)
Plan and run CaDC’s webinars and other related online/in-person member events.
Coordinate committee and work group logistics: scheduling, agendas, action items, and follow-through.
Cultivate and manage sponsor relationships, particularly for the Water Data Summit.
Lead member-facing marketing and communications (newsletters, social media, member updates), supported by a part-time associate and outsourced marketing contractors as needed.