Have a skill to share? Want to connect with other Unitarian Universalists while also working for justice? MUUSJA needs YOU! Check out the volunteer opportunities below to find out how you can support our mission to empower Minnesota Unitarian Universalists to “unleash courageous leadership and collective power to build a just and loving world.”
Please email MUUSJA Executive Director Karen Wills if you are interested in any of the following positions. Include your name and the job position you are applying for as well as why you’d like to volunteer for that particular position and any relevant experience you have.
PrideFest Coordination Team
Do you love a parade? Do you love to proclaim the affirmation and inclusion of Unitarian Universalism? Are you a proud member or supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community? Then we need YOU!
MUUSJA serves as the convener for the UU parade contingent and UU booth each year at the Twin Cities Pride Festival and the Ashley Rukes Pride Parade. We are currently seeking volunteers to help us coordinate with congregations, marshal our marchers, and design and staff our presence in the UU booth. Whether you’re a masterful logistics coordinator, or you have bold ideas for fun costumes, great message signs, or anything else, we welcome your participation! Please email Karen Wills.
MUUSJA Liaison
In an effort to strengthen our congregations’ connections to MUUSJA, and to help congregations connect better with one another, MUUSJA invites each Minnesota Unitarian Universalist congregation to identify a MUUSJA Liaison.
As the main point or contact person for their congregation, the MUUSJA Liaison will have regular direct contact with the MUUSJA Executive Director and MUUSJA staff. Liaisons will be asked to share information about MUUSJA and our work with the congregation, via any and all communication channels (weekly bulletin, social media, newsletter, informational table, listserv, etc.). The Liaison will also serve as a conduit for sharing information about their congregation’s social justice work with MUUSJA, including success stories and/or events that are open to UUs across the state. Please email Karen Wills, Acting Executive Director, to share your talent for connecting UU’s statewide.
Grant Writers and Researchers
Do you yearn to help us fund bold new programs, and resource our vision? Can you present a compelling case for funding faith-based social justice work? Are you connected to funding sources and foundations in Minnesota and beyond? Are you a master of fundraising? We need your skills!
More than a quarter of MUUSJA’s annual budget comes from grant revenue. Volunteer grant writers will be in contact with the MUUSJA Executive Director and the Board’s Fundraising Task Force to research funders, identify potential grant opportunities, and draft proposals. Prior non-profit grant writing experience is preferred. Please contact us with your interest!
One-Time Opportunities
Are your talents organizing events, hosting a social gathering, or extending hospitality? MUUSJA events, such as fundraisers, workshops, etc. often need volunteers serving in various upfront and behind the scenes capacities. This could include a wide variety of roles from greeting to food service to decorations to preparation and cleanup to home hospitality. Contact us about your interests!
Oral History Interviewers
The goal of the MUUSJA oral history interview is to document an individual’s own life’s social justice experiences, memories of an event, personal reflections or even of another person as seen through the lens of Unitarian Universalism. This includes stories from UU congregants around the state who have paved the way in social activism as well as others whose more recent experiences have transformed their lives. This is an opportunity to not only learn from our predecessors and contemporaries, but to honor and celebrate their activism.
It begins with an audio or video recording of a first person account made by an interviewer with an interviewee both of whom have the conscious intention of creating a permanent record to contribute to an understanding of their social justice past. A verbal document, the oral history, results from this process and will be preserved and made available in different forms to be shared with other UUs around the state.
If you are unfamiliar with an oral history process, you will receive training on best practices for oral history. Interviewers must be attentive, excellent listeners, have a critical ear, are respectful and polite but searching! The beauty of oral history is that it can capture the unexpected as long as you have the patience and willingness to see where the digressions go!
An invitation will be sent to each UU congregation requesting that names of those who are willing to be interviewed be provided to our Oral Historians. The name of the interviewee, the number of years as a member of Unitarian Universalism, and a general statement of their account will be requested. Such information will be helpful in creating a variety of histories. Contact us with your interest!