Volunteer Board of Director

Board Member Position Description

Sur Legal Collaborative ("Sur Legal") is an immigrant and worker rights nonprofit legal organization based in Georgia. Founded in October 2020, Sur Legal addresses the need for community-based legal advocacy at the nexus of labor, immigration, and decarceration movements in the Deep South.

Sur Legal's mission is to democratize legal knowledge so that immigrant and working-class communities are empowered with the legal resources they need to fight for economic, racial, and social justice in the Deep South. The dire need for Sur Legal's unique intervention model was made apparent during the height of COVID-19, when vulnerable immigrant workers were deemed essential workers. These workers were put into situations that heightened the likelihood that they would contract and spread COVID-19. Yet, this community knew nothing about their labor rights and specifically their rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

Our approach is multi-tiered, designed to address the unlawful exploitation of immigrant workers. Sur Legal's work includes direct legal services, technical assistance, and community legal education. All individual clients we represent, most of whom are women of color, are referred to us from community-based grassroots organizations tied to the immigrant community. By empowering workers to individually and collectively enforce their labor rights, Sur Legal strives to transform the labor conditions for low-wage immigrant workers in the South and ensure that immigrant women in the workforce are included in the movement for economic justice.

Sur Legal has filled a critical unmet need in Georgia and other parts of the Deep South, as there are few to no organizations educating vulnerable immigrant and working-class communities about their labor rights in this part of the country. In the almost three years since our founding, Sur Legal has played a significant role in democratizing legal knowledge and putting legal tools in the hands of workers to hold abusive employers accountable for labor violations. The impact of our work was never clearer than when we helped a group of poultry processing workers who survived multiple chemical leaks at their workplace, including a nitrogen leak that killed six of their co-workers, file successful Occupational Safety and Health complaints against their negligent employers and simultaneously obtain immigration relief and work permits on their behalf.

Board Member Experience and Shared Values

Sur is currently inviting individuals to serve on its Board of Directors who have expertise in the areas of grassroots organizing, nonprofit management, immigration law, labor law, movement lawyering, human rights advocacy or framework, working with immigrant and working class communities, grant writing, and fundraising

Sur is building a different kind of legal nonprofit, and ideal candidates for the Board of Directors will understand and aspire to that vision. In organizations using the traditional model of direct legal services, staff are inundated with individual client cases, which leads to burnout and leaves little to no capacity for community outreach or rapid responses that are needed in the face of crisis situations within immigrant worker and other working-class communities (e.g. ICE raids, mass evictions, strikes, layoffs). Instead, we wish to create an organization that internally practices the values that we espouse and hope for for the communities we serve, where we constantly check in on our capacity and promote a culture of clarity, wellness, and accountability.

Ideal Candidates For Our Board Also Recognize The Problems Endemic In The Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC) And Want To Support Sur In Its Mission To Disrupt These Problems, Which Include

• Western saviorism
• Organizations and funders setting priorities, rather than the communities we serve
• Long hours and low pay
• Burnout culture due to unreasonable caseloads and grant requirements
• Labor abuses including race discrimination and wage theft
• Social work rather than social change

Sur Seeks To Dismantle The NPIC By

• Having grassroots organizations as well as immigrant and worker communities set the priorities for our work
• Paying our staff well (**we realize this is relative but we think the median salary for nonprofit attorneys and staff in Georgia is too low and we are committed to exceeding it**)
• Being thoughtful and critical about where we seek funding (e.g., Can we ethically accept federal funding from an agency that is responsible for detaining and deporting the immigrant communities we serve?)
• Creating and modeling a culture of work/life balance (flexible hours; self managed paid time off, refusal to apply for grants that have reporting requirements that are too onerous to the day-to-day workload of staff)
• Living the same values that we hold toward the communities we serve-respect, empathy, and common humanity-in our day-to-day interactions with coworkers and colleagues

We therefore seek Board Members that not only share these values but hold us accountable to maintaining these values as we develop and grow.

Board Member Expectations and Responsibilities

Time Commitment and Tenure
Board of Directors (BOD) members will serve for a term of one (1) to three (3) years. Board members can serve a total of two terms, not to exceed six (6) years in total.

Sur's BOD will be a working board with a time commitment of no more than five (5) hours per month, including attendance at 2-hour quarterly board meetings (virtually)

Responsibilities
Board members will support Sur's work with their expertise in areas such as community outreach, activism and grassroots organizing, grant writing, fundraising, communications, and other subject matter expertise. As Sur's highest leadership body and as fiduciaries, Sur's BOD will be expected to:

• Reviewing, understanding, and supporting Sur's mission, programs, policies, and needs;
• Ensuring strong fiduciary oversight and financial management;
• Approving and monitoring Sur's programs and services;
• Enhancing Sur's public image through personal connections, communications, and outreach;
• Assessing the performance of Executive Director as well as the Board's own performance as the governing body of Sur;
• Preparing for, attending, and conscientiously participating in board meetings;
• Following the organization's bylaws, policies, and board resolution;
• Disclosing potential conflicts of interest or interpersonal conflicts before meetings and actual conflicts during meetings;
• Maintaining confidentiality about all internal matters of the organization;
• Making an annual donation of any amount

Additionally, BOD will be asked to assist with the following if capacity permits:

• Connecting Sur staff to grassroots organizations, activists, organizers, and immigrant/worker communities;
• Serving as active advocates and ambassadors for Sur and fully engaging in identifying and securing the financial resources and partnerships necessary for Sur to advance its mission;

• Fundraising and resource development, including:

• the creation of a development plan

• engaging with individual donors

• Engaging with and selecting future board members;

• Assisting with developing programmatic goals and new initiatives;

As Sur grows, the BOD and Sur Staff will discuss whether future obligations should include:

• Attending and actively participating in an annual planning retreat;
• Attending special events such as fundraisers;
• Attending new board member orientation;
• Meeting with potential donors/funders to make a case for funding the organization, answer questions, etc.