About Sprout
Sprout equips community and climate organizations with data and storytelling, so they can imagine, organize, and build for their future. We are volunteer-run and Toronto-based. Our team is made up of technology, climate, and community professionals, newcomers applying their skills in a Canadian context, and youth building experience beyond the classroom.
We work in support of communities and their leaders, because they are the experts in what their neighbourhoods need. Our job is to help turn data into shared power and stories into collective action.
Why we are recruiting now
Three years ago most of this was a set of volunteer side projects. Today it is multi-year commitments with universities, the City, funders, and community organizations who are counting on us to deliver.
Our current directors bring climate, technology, GIS, and community expertise, and all three of them are deep in delivery. That has carried us a long way. It also means the work of building the organization itself, the fundraising, the systems, the financial oversight, has been fitted into whatever time is left over. It is the honest limit on what we can take on next.
Our 2025 to 2030 strategic plan names this under Strengthening Our Roots and Measuring What Matters: we need a diverse funding model, clear governance, stronger project management, and a real framework for understanding our impact.
So we’re recruiting three working directors whose primary contribution is building the organization rather than running the projects.
What "working director" means here
This is a hands-on role, not a quarterly-meeting board seat.
Sprout has no paid staff. Our directors govern, and they also carry a portfolio of practical work: writing the grant application, reviewing the contract, building the budget template, running the onboarding session. You'll be shaping the very systems you oversee, which is a big part of what makes the role meaningful.
We'll be honest with you: this is a bigger commitment than a conventional board role. In exchange, you get real decision-making authority in an organization small enough that your work stays visible and matters, in both the short and the long term.
A note on time: we're specific about hours because we've learned that a board of capable, busy people still needs real time set aside to move things forward. These roles ask for roughly 20–30 hours a month, with reasonable consistency. If that's more than you can take on right now, we'd rather help you find another way to be part of Sprout than start you in a role that isn't the right fit.
Position 1: Director, Fundraising and External Communications
You'll lead how Sprout resources its work, and how the world outside comes to understand it. Steady, values-aligned funding is what lets us keep showing up for the communities we serve.
What you'd take on
- Shape our funding strategy: a healthy mix of grants, partnerships, and recurring revenue, so we're never dependent on any single source
- Guide our external communications and public voice, from the website and newsletter through to annual reporting
- Help us decide which opportunities to pursue, and open doors we can't open on our own
Backgrounds that fit: Fundraising and development, nonprofit communications or marketing, grant writing, partnership development, or public affairs.
What matters most: you've raised money for a nonprofit before, and you know the difference between a good story and a fundable one.
Position 2: Director, Operations and Internal Communications
You'll lead how Sprout runs day to day, and how the people inside it stay connected. Strong operations are what free our volunteers to put their energy where it counts: alongside communities.
What you'd take on
- Strengthen project management so ten concurrent projects don't rest on any one person holding it all in their head
- Guide the volunteer experience end to end, recruitment through recognition, with our operations and volunteer leads
- Set up the internal rhythms and impact measurement that keep a distributed team aligned and let us describe our results in more than anecdotes
Backgrounds that fit: Nonprofit operations, program or project management, people and volunteer management, monitoring and evaluation, or knowledge management.
What matters most: you've built operating systems inside a small organization where nothing existed yet, and that kind of blank-page building energizes you.
Position 3: Director, Governance, Finance and Legal
You'll lead how Sprout stays accountable to its funders, partners, communities, and the law. This is the work that lets people trust us with their data, their stories, and their support.
What you'd take on
- Oversee our finances: budgeting, controls, and reporting, and build healthy separation between managing money and overseeing it
- Advise on legal and compliance matters, from funding agreements and insurance to our charitable and volunteer obligations
- Lead on data governance and privacy, and keep our governance structures clear and defensible: bylaws, policies, and a risk register
Backgrounds that fit: Nonprofit or charity finance, CPA or controller experience, charity and nonprofit law, corporate secretarial or treasurer roles, or audit, risk, and compliance.
What matters most: you've held a treasurer, finance lead, or general counsel role somewhere, and you're comfortable telling an enthusiastic team that something needs to wait until the paperwork is right.
What we are looking for across all three roles
Experience: you've carried real responsibility for something and know what tends to break first - whether that experience came from a nonprofit, another sector, community or grassroots organizing, a board or volunteer role, or lived experience. We care more about judgment and follow-through than job titles or where you got them. (For Position 3, we'll also welcome strong candidates from finance and law whose nonprofit exposure has come through treasurer or board roles.)
We are also looking for people who:
- Are comfortable in a small organization where the systems do not exist yet and someone has to build them
- Understand community resilience work, meaning how people and neighbourhoods withstand and recover from climate impacts, and how that differs from corporate sustainability
- Can tell us when we are wrong, including when it is inconvenient
- Bring networks, lived experience, or community relationships that reflect the neighbourhoods we work in
We are not looking for a complete match on every item. The boundaries between these three roles are firmer than most small nonprofits would draw them, and that is deliberate, but we will adjust the split for the right people.
We particularly welcome applicants from the communities most affected by climate impacts in Toronto, and applicants whose professional experience was built outside Canada.
What you get
- A board seat with genuine authority in an organization at an inflection point
- Direct working relationships with universities, municipal, government agencies, nonprofits and community hubs across Toronto
- Work that is visible: our tools are public and in use
- A team that is small, fast, and does not run on process for its own sake
Please email us your resume and statement of interest directly to helena.yu@sprout-climate.org with subject line - Sprout Board of Directors Position [X] - [Full Name]