FRIENDS OF BASEBALL IS HIRING! 
Friends of Baseball is looking for motivated baseball or softball enthusiasts who are interested in working in our Full Count RBI youth programs. We are currently expanding our team of Full Count Coach Mentors, and have openings for Lead and Assistant Coach/Mentor Positions. Expand your skills as a leader and a coach, help youth in our community, and explore baseball career options with Friends of Baseball.

Questions? Want to learn more?

​Contact Molly Newcomer at molly@friendsofbaseball.org 

Full Count RBI Lead Mentor Coach Job Description

Full Count RBI Assistant Mentor Job Description

 Last week, Coach Anna, our Full Count Fellows, and 16 campers from the Full Count RBI Girls Lead Softball Program attended Portland State University for a field trip after it was postponed over the summer. 
 
The trip provided campers with their first college campus visit and tour of the campus athletic facilities. The school tour was led by Vikings Assistant Softball Coach, Iris Rodriguez, and four softball student-athletes.
 
Our Fellows played a huge role in the field trip as they provided extra help for our campers during the tour and learned more about college. The field trip included transportation, chaperones, a Q&A with the athletes, dinner, and front row seats to a Vikings volleyball game. For just $35, you can help sponsor a future field trip spot for a Girls Lead participant! 

Do you believe in the power of baseball and softball to enhance children’s lives through the life lessons of the game? Are you game to enact system change to provide young people with the opportunities and tools to swing for the fences on the field and in life? Friends of Baseball’s Executive Director is responsible for the successful leadership and management of the organization’s mission to enhance children’s lives through baseball’s power to teach. You will set the organization’s strategic direction in collaboration with the Board of Directors and develop a revenue generating plan to support capacity-building and program sustainability. This position works closely with the Board President and Officers and meets regularly with the full Board of Directors and leadership staff.

As Friends of Baseball’s next leader you will bring deep roots and connection to community and a passion for baseball and softball. You will lead the Friends of Baseball team and extended Friends of Baseball family of partners, volunteer, and fans with a strategic, active, curious, and committed approach using an anti-racist framework to realize lasting impact for youth and their families and extend the regional reach of the organization.

After reviewing the position description, interested candidates should send their cover letter, resume, and optional portfolio materials addressed to FOB ED Search Committee at EDSearch@friendsofbaseball.org Deadline to apply November 30, 2021.

Read more about our Executive Director transition

After a successful 7+ year tenure at Friends of Baseball, during which she delivered a 10x increase of revenue and oversaw exponential growth in community impact, we are announcing that Nova Newcomer will be making a transition out of her role as Executive Director. Nova came to this leadership role as the first staff person at Friends of Baseball and has helped secure the legacy of the organization as an enduring community institution. We want to thank her for her dedicated service, which involved many significant accomplishments: 
​

• Co-Founded the award-winning Full Count RBI program growing it from a 1 week program with Jefferson High School Baseball into a program serving 24 school and non profit partners in 5 school districts and 3 counties
• Assembled a diverse staff of baseball and softball youth development experts and emerging young leaders to provide culturally responsive programming
• Developed financial and strategic partnerships with Major League Baseball, the Seattle Mariners, Portland Diamond Project, the Hillsboro Hops, Positive Coaching Alliance, and Portland Interscholastics League
• Secured multiple large grants from funders such as The Oregon Community Foundation, NIKE Employee Impact Fund, adidas Social Purpose, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Juan Young Trust, and Multnomah Athletic Foundation​
• Received the 2017 Impact Award from Multnomah Athletic Foundation
• Presented to the MLB RBI Institute in 2019 and 2021 on FOB’s leading edge programming and community outreach work
• Led the organization through the challenges of a global pandemic and supported staff in the creation of a COVID-safe virtual Full Count RBI Academy and Play Catch With a Coach program
• Launched the Play Ball Everywhere campaign to engage youth in active recreation statewide, securing funding from Oregon Community Foundation and being chosen as a BIPOC Caucus American Rescue Plan Act funding priority

Nova will be transitioning from her day-to-day role in late November, however she will be consulting with our team to support a successful hire and transition to a new Executive Director. The Executive Director position will be posted next week and we encourage you to share within your networks. If you have any questions or concerns during this process, please do not hesitate to reach out directly at EDsearch@friendsofbaseball.org.

Sincerely,

Jason Dailey
President, Board of Directors of Friends of Baseball

​Dear Friends of Baseball family,

You have been the best fans an Executive Director could ask for. You have cheered us on through significant growth and wins for our organization, and put your rally caps on for us when the challenges of our times called for it. It has been an honor and a privilege and the most rewarding ride to be the skipper at Friends of Baseball the past 7+ years.

I’ll start where I began.

I was a 9 year old girl who just wanted a chance to play. And my community wrapped its arms around me and made that possible. My coach, when I was 11 years old, saw leadership in me and asked me to be a catcher — a role I played with pride from 5th grade until my senior year of high school.

So long after my playing days were over and the opportunity presented itself for me to get behind the plate for Friends of Baseball in 2014, it wasn’t just that I was interested, I couldn’t think of anything else. The idea that we could rally the community around a promise of what baseball and softball could make possible for youth burned so bright that it propelled us through early and discouraging rejections.

Together, we persevered, we innovated, we put youth and their families at the center of what we do. We continued on, knowing if we did that, we could put baseball and softball youth development back on the map.

Last spring, we were asked to be one of the organizations to help end the isolation for youth disproportionately impacted by a global pandemic and we are answering that call.

Because I personally know what it’s like to have insecurity about where you will lay your head for the night, whether you will have enough food, or the threat of utilities being shut off, and because I understand firsthand the ravages of mental health issues on a family and young children — our team’s response to the pandemic is something I am most proud of.

Our charge to right the wrongs of racism that has seeped into every aspect of our society remains. When less than 8% of Major League players identify as Black Americans, the work remains. When the ballfields of neighborhoods across our region aren’t filled with the joy and laughter of all of our community’s children, the work remains. And until girls of all backgrounds can see sports as a viable pathway for the future where their voices will be heard and respected, the work remains.

In the search for a new Executive Director at Friends of Baseball, we will be looking for a leader with a commitment to that ongoing system change who has deep roots and connection to the community. The new leader will need to have a passion for baseball and softball and possess a competitive spirit to take Friends of Baseball’s impact to new heights.

I want to thank our dedicated team at Friends of Baseball who have been the key to all that we have been able to accomplish before and through the pandemic. To our Board, thank you for seeing our organization through great heights and hardships with a steady hand and giving us the flexibility to move toward the community in a just and compassionate way. And to all of our friends and supporters who have believed in us and walked alongside us, I want to extend my deepest gratitude.

In the near term, I will be focused on supporting a successful transition to a new Executive Director for our organization. I will carry my heart and passion for this work into my next role.

The future of Friends of Baseball is bright, we have an exceptional and committed staff, and our foundation is strong. I am excited to see what the next era of Friends of Baseball will make possible for the children of our community.

​Play Ball,

Although Covid-19 has been putting a stop to gatherings, Friends of Baseball saw this as an opportunity to get creative. Rather than cancelling a night full of recognition and celebrating resilient communities within Portland, we converted people’s homes to be at the center of our appreciation through our very first Virtual Gala! 
Through the support of our community, we were able to push out a handful of programs to help brighten the lives of young ball players around the Portland area. These programs were created with the idea of bringing joy and healing to families in our community. Although these programs were designed for ball players to come out to get some batting or fielding practice, we also saw parents light up at the sight of their children enjoying an outdoor activity for the first time in 6 months. 
Thanks to the support of the community we were able to provide the following programs this fall:

• Full Count Virtual Enrichment Classes and Online Lessons at multiple school sites, with coordinating equipment distributions throughout the Fall Term. 
  
• “Play Catch With A Coach” safe in-person mentoring sessions for young ballplayers
  

• Play Ball Fall Classic Weekend, with multiple distribution sites in the Portland Metro area to distribute free baseball/softball equipment and youth “swag bags” to 1000 local youth. 
  
• Virtual Film Screening/Zoom Discussion - The Other Boys of Summer, designed to educate Portland youth about the legendary players of the Negro Baseball Leagues, and to celebrate the Centennial Year of the founding of the Negro Leagues.
  

We hope to see you very soon in the safest way possible!
​​

We stand with Black Americans protesting police brutality, and the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the horrifically long list of Black men, women, and children who have been killed by police officers and racist vigilantes.

We stand with Black ballplayers in MLB, Minor League Baseball, college baseball and softball, and recreational baseball and softball who are told in myriad ways to “play the game the right way” — a pervasive spoken and unspoken code to exclude them from the fruits of their hard work, dedication, and joy on the field. A message that is so loudly heard on fields across our nation where one can visibly see the children, who are missing from our baseball and softball diamonds.

At Friends of Baseball, our mission is to enhance children’s lives through baseball’s power to teach. And there is no greater lesson needed in America right now than the one that Black Americans have been trying to tell us in the face of denial, contempt, and brutality at the hands of community members and government institutions.

We are committed to continuing and deepening our ongoing commitment to using a racial equity lens in our planning, decision-making, and how we operate. Unfortunately, we can’t in one statement, say all of the action we need to take that we have too many times hit the snooze button on — a powerful metaphor we recently saw on the sign of a young black activist.

So, in the spirit of not hitting the snooze button, here is what we are doing right now:

• Requiring anti-racism training for all levels of our organization (Board of Directors, Leadership, and Staff). All staff will receive this training prior to restarting programs for youth and drafting new program documentation to improve our anti-racism practice in our program partnerships with schools and community organizations.

 

• Using our platform to highlight injustice in youth sports and education with a specific focus on elevating the voices of Black athletes and activists.

 

• Reviewing our vendor and partner selection and developing a policy to hold us accountable to reinvestment of resources to BIPOC businesses and firms.

 

• Our staff, on their own, have begun an anti-racism book club to develop a shared language and framework for working together and to put explicit anti-racism practices into our curriculum. Our Board is currently scheduling a follow-up session to our anti-racism training last December to actively put these learnings into our practice.

 

• Our leadership are working in partnership with staff to review our programs to ensure that activities and longer term strategy supports our long-held goals of increased access to the game at all levels for Black youth and youth of color.

To say that we believe baseball is for everyone is not a platitude, it is Friends of Baseball’s mandate. Yet we say that with the knowledge that we have not always demonstrated clearly or spoken out effectively on our commitment to this mandate, as it specifically applies to the Black families we have served from the beginning.

The nonprofit industry exists entirely due to the existence of inequity. Friends of Baseball exists because of racial and economic inequity that we have allowed to subsist. As an organization funded by community support, we believe we must repay the debt our community owes to families whose communities have been historically underinvested in for decades in Portland and in Oregon. This means that when we open new after school and summer programs that we make sure these programs are running at school communities serving youth whose families have disproportionately experienced the devastating impacts of gentrification, multigenerational poverty, housing instability, poor air quality, lack of access to healthcare, and over policing. Just like with education and other enrichment activities, there is a direct line that connects the experiences of racism (e.g. exclusion, barriers to access, prejudice, bias) in baseball and softball to the lifelong and disparate impacts, we see for Black Americans across all determinants of health, wellbeing, and financial opportunity.

8%. Just 8% of all Major League Baseball players are Black. After steadily increasing after Jackie Robinson faced down racism and segregation in baseball to break the color barrier in 1947, the percentage of Black players in Major League Baseball reached a plateau in the 1970s of around 18%.

If you are someone who supports Friends of Baseball’s work in the community, we are so grateful. When you give us that praise, know that you are lifting up a deep bench of Black community leaders, moms, dads, high school leaders, youth, and businesses who have trusted us not only with their time and resources, but also with the gift of helping us understand where we have fallen short, what work we have to do, and when we need to get out of the way.

We won’t be satisfied until we stop hearing the phrase, “Baseball is a white sport” explicitly, implicitly, or because of how it feels for a Black youth or youth of color to participate in it. Hold us to that.