Jobs at SQSH

Our Vision: We work towards a liberated St. Louis Metro Area where people of all genders and sexualities live with safety, power, and abundance.

Our Mission: SQSH strives to build the St. Louis queer/LGBTQIA+ community’s capacity for peer support, transformative relationships, community care, healing justice, storytelling, advocacy, education, leadership, and systems change. 

Our Values: At SQSH, we are committed to using an intersectional, anti-oppressive, and community-driven approach in our work. SQSH’s work focuses on finding synergies between micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level interventions; our success is inherently tied to the collective liberation of all oppressed peoples.

We believe in accountability, accessibility, transparent and shared decision-making, building trusting relationships that can weather principled disagreement, transformative justice approaches to conflict, bringing our full selves into work and community, and being trauma-informed and survivor-centered. We strive to minimize hierarchy in the workplace, combat the impacts of white supremacy culture/values, and resist harmful power dynamics, while acknowledging that this is an ongoing work in progress. We check in with each other at the start of meetings, and frequently provide affirmations to uplift each other and combat shame.

We are a nonprofit that is critical of the nonprofit industrial complex. We believe in divesting from carceral systems while creating new visions and models for community care. Learn more about our mission and values.

We strive to take a non-punitive approach to performance evaluation. We tailor performance goals to individual employees’ skills and needs; focus on employees’ ability to meet their role descriptions within their unique context; and strive to be generous and expansive in our appreciation and valuing of diverse gifts and skills needed for movement work.

Full-Time Staff select 4-6 days of the week to work remotely on a semi-consistent* schedule, with some room for flexibility and negotiation depending on other staff’s schedules. We offer flexible work schedules and remote options to promote work-life balance and accommodate diverse needs.

• We will provide a suggested work schedule to you, but you decide your final schedule.

• Occasionally, meetings and community events will fall on weekends (but will be avoided where possible).

• 4-day weeks with 10 hours/day (or 6-day weeks with 6-7 hours/day) are allowed to accommodate needs on a case-by-case basis – such as for caregivers/parents, people undergoing treatments, etc.

*Semi-consistent means: Generally the same across a 4-month period, with accommodations for weekly fluctuations with at least 1 week of notice provided to the Staff Team.

Your weekly hours would include preparing for and attending:

• 1-3 meetings a day (1h - 1h 30mins)

  • Note: Volunteer Team Meetings may require weekday evening availability (between 5.00-7.30pm), as most of our volunteers work Mon-Fri 9am-5pm and are only available outside of those times.

• 1 every-2-week 1:1 Check-In with the Executive Director (1h 15mins)

• 1 every-2-week All-Staff Meeting (1h 30mins)

Here’s what a draft work schedule might look like, depending on your schedule.

• 50% Employer Contribution to Health Insurance Silver Plan through United HealthCare, starting 01/01/2024

  • Bronze, Silver, and Gold Tier Coverage Options

  • HSA- and FSA-eligible plans available 

• 75% Employer Contribution to Dental and Vision Insurance Plans, through Guardian

• 100% Employer Contribution to Life Insurance through Principal Life

• Annually (out of 260 work days¹): 15 PTO days, 8 paid holidays, up to 1 month of paid leave.

• Flexible schedule with both remote and in-person working options. 

• Access to SQSH’s co-working space at the CIC (4220 Duncan Ave).

• Access to up to 1 laptop and 1 smartphone through SQSH’s Tech Device Loan-Out System, awarded to SQSH by the PowerOn Mobile Mini Grant. 

  • The purpose of this system is to reduce technology disparities and improve access to devices for (especially poor and working-class) SQSH members 

• Political education, consciousness-raising, and skill-building opportunities, on topics such as:

  • Social Justice: Tools and frameworks for queer liberation, healing justice, racial justice, nonprofit industrial complex, prison & police abolition

  • Building Organizational Culture: Direct communication, identifying boundaries, navigating conflict

  • Organizing Skills: Facilitating meetings, creating agendas, consensus decision-making, managing volunteers, community engagement, building partnerships, peer counseling, resource referrals

  • Logistical Skills: Scheduling meetings, task management, timesheets, budgeting and spending

• Free membership at City Greens Market, starting in 2024

• Monthly community-building opportunities

• Possibility of longer-term employment with SQSH past each 2- or 3-year grant project period – pending grant funding, evaluation of performance & fit, and SQSH’s budget and organizational structure.

¹ 5 work days per week, 52 weeks, holidays off

SQSH is dedicated to empowering groups that are historically oppressed due to race/ethnicity, religion, age, gender, sexuality, disability, immigration status, and more. We strongly prioritize and encourage members of minoritized and marginalized communities, i.e. communities historically impacted by health disparities and systemic violence, to apply.

In alignment with our disability justice values, we believe that working remotely during a pandemic should be the norm and not the exception.

We will ask for proof of vaccination, require masking, encourage social distancing, and invite you to participate in other COVID-cautious steps that are accessible to you to help protect the safety of SQSH’s staff, volunteers, and community – especially our disabled, chronically ill, and immunocompromised siblings.

We will consider requests for medical, religious, and/or other identity-based exemptions from the vaccination requirement on an individual basis.

SQSH takes the risk of physical, mental, and sexual abuse and violence in our community and programs very seriously, especially against our most marginalized and vulnerable community members, including children and youth.

Background screenings expand the carceral state and are not our preferred method of protecting the safety of children and youth. In general, we aim to take an approach that is aligned with our values of transformative justice, harm reduction, and community care. We aim to best honor the wishes of the community members (especially children and youth) who are most harmed or at risk of harm in the situation, including honoring their wishes for confidentiality or privacy. However, due to funder requirements, all personnel that provide direct services to children and youth are asked to undergo screenings for child abuse and neglect with the Family Care Safety Registry, before their start date and annually thereafter. Only SQSH personnel providing direct services to children or youth aged 0-19 will be screened. 

SQSH’s Staff will review all background screening results, determine the relevancy of the findings, and make individualized recommendations to our Leadersihp as to the right course of action. This may include follow-up steps to maximize the safety and agency of the victim(s), potential victim(s), and other community members at risk of violence or harm. Factors considered in their assessment may include the nature of the harm at issue, the time elapsed since the harm occurred, the nature of the candidate’s job / role (including the extent to which the job / role involves contact with vulnerable persons), the role of oppressive systems in the situation, and the candidate’s willingness and ability to engage in repair, accountability, and transformation.