We believe that everything in life is better when life is rich with meaningful connections. By deepening the relationship between consumers and producers – between ourselves and the craftsmen, artisans and farmers who make the products we buy – we believe we’re not just bettering their worlds, but our own too. After all, chocolate tastes great, but chocolate you personally helped to bring to market tastes even better.
The Hoop’s Business Model
We’re an angel-backed startup that’s building a platform to enable consumers to invest in and support the makers of products they love from the developing world, creating new opportunities for producers to improve their businesses while also driving new demand for their products here at home.
We work in collaboration with Fair Trade producer groups and brands to discover projects that grow or improve the producers’ businesses: everything from seed banks, handheld looms, to harvest financing and more. We post those projects on the Hoop Fund and give people an opportunity to fund the projects through small loans ($25 and up). People can support the producers behind products they already love, or discover new ones entirely.
Simultaneously, our customers can keep supporting producers by enjoying the products they helped producers create, and by sharing those products and stories with their own friends and family. In addition to facilitating loans, the Hoop partners with the brands that bring these products to the marketplace. Our customers can invest in a better world, and great chocolate too.
For more info, visit www.jointhehoop.com
- Community and Events Intern
- This role involves Member attraction, Community Engagement, Event Creation, Promotion and Execution. From dinner parties to larger Hoop produced product events, the Hoop Community Intern interfaces with Members to design, promote, and execute daytime and evening events focused on products. Identify communities joining together around food justice, international development, food tasting/sensory experience, and establishing partnerships to fund loans and gather support for the Hoop.
- Interns also write blog posts about events and follow up with event attendees to encourage. Support design and implementation of constantly evolving online and offline Hoop Member attraction strategies that include guerilla marketing, online media, event creation, partnership building, website development, and more.
- Sustainable brands and platform criteria
- The sustainable brands intern will research and identify new brands to enter platform, and establish vetting criteria for new brands to demonstrate a neutral and thorough approach to brining on new brands.
- Required Skills: Familiarity with sustainable brands including organic, fair trade (all certification standards).
- Outreach and Growth Intern:
- The Outreach and growth intern is responsible to increase and engage members via all social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. His/her role is to improve the social media strategy, increase twitter followers, conversations and retweets, and represent the Hoop online. Moreover, the Social media intern has to be able to identify and hit social media targets. He/she should be able to evaluate these goals in qualitative and quantitatively analysis.
- The Social Media intern will be closely working with the community intern to engage with members.
- Required Skills: Social media, twitter, tweetdeck, wordpress, blogging, HTML, tweet analytics, effective Social media management
- Web and digital designer Intern
The web and digital design intern will spend 10-15 hours a week helping us with front-end web development for our current and next generation platforms1.The ideal candidate is one that connects deeply with the consumer movement we’re building, about people becoming investors in their own consumption. A key quality is the ability to work in a startup environment: this means being both a self-starter and a team player, the kind of person that recognizes that the only limits to the opportunity are what you put into it.
Working knowledge of CSS, HTML, the DOM and who’s not afraid of Javascript. You’re a person that feels comfortable taking a wireframe layout or Photoshop template and turning them into CSS and HTML.
General Skills applies to all:
Desired Qualifications:
Education: The ideal candidate has or is pursuing an MBA, an undergraduate business degree, or has working on related business operations in a startup enterprise.
Prior Experience: Minimum of two year working in an office environment, preferably within a small, entrepreneurial setting. Experience working with diverse groups of individuals and communities. Experience with community development, event coordination, public speaking are major pluses. Experience with creating and executing online and offline marketing strategies also a plus. Experience with managing websites, writing blogs, using salesforce and vertical response also helps.
Knowledge: Understanding of and deep curiosity about the emerging social economy.
The Hoop interns have a special combination of core qualities:
- Entrepreneurial drive in Sustainability, Fair trade and Microloans
- Ability to work in start-up environment
- Excellent team-working skills
- Ability to gather people, find synergies, build on ideas, and inspire others
- Ability to connect with diverse cultural, social, and educational backgrounds
- Grounded attention to detail
- Hands-on approach
- Values-driven
- Energy, determination and resolve
- Exceptional communication skills
The Particulars
Location: Hub Soma, 901 Mission, San Francisco
Hours: 10 hours a week, workflows are during normal business hours and evening hours for events
Expected Start Date: 10/25/10-1/25/10(with option to extend for a longer period)
Supervision: Interns will report to the Operations Manager
Application Process:
Send a cover letter and CV as attachments to: maia@jointhehoop.com
