This is a unique opportunity to help lead the only Spay Neuter organization in Rhode Island in the expansion of our lifesaving mission for the cats of our community.
If you have a passion for lifesaving and a track record of successful leadership, we invite you to apply for the role of Operations Manager of the PawsWatch Community Cat Center.
Position Description
The Operations Manager provides the leadership, management, and vision necessary to ensure that the organization has the proper operational controls, administrative and reporting procedures, and people systems in place to effectively grow the organization and ensure financial strength and operating efficiency. The ideal candidate will accomplish this through a respectful, constructive, and energetic style, and will be guided by the lifesaving mission and vision of PawsWatch.
The Operations Manager is responsible for the day-to-day operations and decisions in all areas of a full-service cat center that supports the organization’s Trap, Neuter, Return, Maintain (TNRM) mission, including medical treatment, placement assessment, socialization, daily enrichment activities, and adoption/placement services designed to match cats with their most ideal situation based on lifestyle and compatibility. Services include but are not limited to intake, assessment, animal care, foster care, adoptions (including off-site adoption outreach), farm placement, and partnership development with other animal welfare organizations.
Reports to:
PawsWatch Board of Directors
Provides Direct Supervision to:
Volunteer Coordinator
Community Cats/TNR Coordinator
Shelter Medicine/Veterinary Staff
Foster Coordinator
Adoption Coordinator
Administrative Assistant
Farm Placement Coordinator
Essential Job Functions
General Management
- Operations: Oversee the daily operations, programs, and services at PawsWatch Community Cat Center.
- Culture: Cultivate a culture of excellence, efficiency, and urgency across the organization while creating and maintaining high standards of respect for coworkers.
- Record keeping: Ensure that appropriate records are accurately created, maintained, and reported during the daily operations of the shelters and clinics.
- Plans and goals: Assist the Board with planning and budgeting. Analyze data and make adjustments to processes and programs to achieve organizational goals.
- Implementation: Ensure that all established procedures and policies of the organization are appropriate, in keeping with current best practices, and reliably implemented.
- Assess and adjust: Periodically review and assess policies, processes, programs, and work within the organization to make needed changes to meet the needs of the animals and the community.
- Walk-throughs: Perform daily walk-throughs of the shelter to ensure proper sanitation, care, feeding, and disposition of the animals and to ensure that animals are moving through the system and are made available for adoption in a timely manner.
- Legal compliance: Follow all local, state, and federal laws with regard to animal housing, care, admission, and disposition.
Animal Care:
- Animal care and flow: Evaluate, develop, implement, manage, and monitor animal care and flow processes at the PawsWatch Community Cat Center including, but not limited to, admissions, animal handling, flow through the center, sanitation, feeding, health care, adoptions, transfers, and foster care.
- Standards of care: Ensure high standards of care for the animals in the care of PawsWatch Community Cat Center, for both their physical and mental well-being.
- Humane treatment: Promote a caring attitude toward all animals and treat animals humanely and with compassion at all times, regardless of circumstances including those who are sick, injured, feral, or aggressive.
Customer Service:
- High-quality service: Cultivate staff performance and model outstanding customer service including efficient, courteous interactions with members of the public.
- Courtesy: Treat staff, volunteers, supporters, officials, and the public with respect and courtesy, foster a spirit of teamwork, and perform duties in a manner that assists PawsWatch Community Cat Center in the achievement of its goals and encourages community support of its work.
Staffing:
- Management: Schedule, assign, supervise, and provide clear expectations for staff including performance management and review.
- Training: Ensure training and ongoing guidance and development of all staff and volunteers, and enable their promotion to management positions where warranted.
- Safety: Ensure all volunteers are trained in how to deal with feral cats so as not to get injured or accidentally release a cat from its cage.
Community Engagement:
- Engagement: Work to cultivate and encourage community-engagement efforts including working with volunteers, rescue groups, other shelters, government agencies, private businesses, grant funding entities, other nonprofits, and the veterinary community.
- Promotion: Work with the marketing team to ensure effective promotion for adoptions, as well as for individual animals and needed equipment/supplies.
Facilities:
- Safe, healthy facility: Maintain healthy, safe, sanitary, and pleasant facilities for the animals, the public, and the staff.
- Supplies and equipment: Create processes to ensure an appropriate inventory of supplies and pet food to ensure that staff members have adequate supplies and equipment to do their jobs.
- Create and maintain a system to keep track of equipment loaned out to fosters and the public.
Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- Management experience: Experience in a senior leadership or management position with transferable skills.
- Sheltering experience: Experience in animal sheltering and familiarity with animal welfare issues is an important requirement.
- Sound judgment: Maturity, good judgment, and a professional personal appearance.
- Staff management: Experience in hiring, developing, and managing staff. Successful track record of building and working as part of a team.
- Commitment to animal welfare: Affection for all animals and concern for their welfare and a willingness to accommodate animals in the workplace.
- Strong interpersonal skills: Outgoing, personable, professional, and able to get along well and communicate successfully with a variety of people. Able to remain pleasant and calm even in stressful situations and to turn people down, firmly, when necessary, without becoming aggressive or unpleasant.
- Communication skills: Excellent written and oral communication skills.
- Results-oriented: Able to set goals, plan and carry out projects.
- Decision-making: Strong decision-making and implementation skills.
- Flexibility: Ability to manage multiple tasks and embrace change.
- Organization: Strong organizational skills.
- Technology-savvy: Comfortable and proficient with computer technology. (Proficiency with Windows, Word, and Excel, ease at working with databases, but programming ability not required.) Knowledge of shelter management databases is preferred.
- Learning-agile: Willingness and ability to learn new things
- Solution-oriented: Strong problem-solving skills, able to find ways to make things work.
- Detail-oriented: High level of accuracy with data. Able to follow through and meet deadlines.
- Initiative: Self-directed, works well with minimal supervision and direction.
Minimum Qualifications
- Education: College degree is strongly preferred.
- Management experience: Minimum of three years of management experience, preferably with 10+ employees.
- Sheltering experience: Minimum of three years of experience in animal sheltering and familiarity with animal welfare issues.
- Animals: Ability to work with animals of unknown disposition and those who may exhibit medical and other problems, as well as aggressive tendencies.
- Licenses: Valid Rhode Island driver's license or the ability to obtain a driver’s license shortly after employment commences.
Physical Requirements
- Physical ability to walk and/or stand on your feet throughout a normal workday.
- Physical ability to lift and move objects up to 40 pounds.
- Allergic conditions, which would be aggravated when handling or working around animals, would be a disqualification.
Nature of Employment
The Operations Manager role is a full-time exempt position, which requires a minimum of 40 hours per week and may include weekend, night, and holiday work. The ability to be on call for emergencies on a 24-hour basis is important.
There is no minimum period of employment guaranteed or implied by acceptance of an employment offer.
Compensation
The annual starting salary range is $42,000 to $47,000. Starting salary is dependent upon experience. Benefits and relocation costs, if needed, are negotiable.
How to Apply
Email your one-page cover letter and resume to: The PawsWatch Search Committee c/o Diane Blankenburg of Humane Network at info@humanenetwork.org. The acknowledgment will be emailed upon receipt of your cover letter and resume. Submittals received after September 18, 2022, may not be considered.
About PawsWatch
PawsWatch is a private non-profit 501(c)3 organization whose mission is to humanely reduce and improve the lives of free-roaming cats in Rhode Island by applying the proven Trap, Neuter, Return, Maintain (TNRM) protocol. PawsWatch is the only organization in Rhode Island that exclusively advocates for and practices TNRM. They provide pre- and post-op housing, veterinary care, adoption and foster services, farm placement programs, and community outreach.
The PawsWatch Community Cat Center is a new facility, but the organization has a long and rich history in the world of feline rescue. PawsWatch has been making its mark in the humane reduction of feral, stray, and abandoned free-roaming cats since 1997. Over the past twenty-five years, volunteers provided veterinary care to more than 30,000 cats, helping thousands of people of every economic and cultural background address the suffering of homeless cats in their neighborhoods.
About the Community
The PawsWatch Community Center is located in Johnston, Rhode Island, just minutes from the state’s capital Providence which is the state’s most populous city and one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded in 1636. Providence combines the accessibility and friendliness of a small town with the culture and sophistication of a big city. With a thriving arts community, vibrant and diverse neighborhoods, outstanding hotels, a renowned restaurant scene, and so many things to do including water sports such as sailing, Providence is a great place to visit or live.
When it comes to beaches, it’s hard to beat the variety of those in Rhode Island. Despite its tiny size, the state is home to 40 miles of coastline that offer something for every kind of beach lover: big surf, small surf, peace and quiet, entertainment for the kids, celebrity cachet, and/or all the requisite New England summer food staples (clam cakes, doughboys, Del’s frozen lemonade).
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