Volunteer Position Description

Mark DeGarmo Dance (AKA Dynamic Forms, Inc.) is a New York City-based nonprofit dance organization founded in 1987 with a social justice and equity mission that has produced over 100 original dances and 28 international tours with government and corporate backing involving cultural diplomacy and exchange across 13 countries. Our choice of the schools where we bring our educational programs, and the audiences with whom we share our choreographic work, has always been driven by an anti-racism stance. MDD’s mission integrates education, performance, and intercultural community through dance. President Barack Obama commended Mark DeGarmo Dance for its contributions to our “communities and the nation.” The National Endowment for the Arts deemed MDD’s public elementary school education programs “a national model.” Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer declared November 17, 2017 as “Mark DeGarmo Dance Day in Manhattan.”

We seek Advisory Group Members for MDD’s Vision Quest Strategic Planning Task Force 2023-24 to continue in fall 2022. Advisors will bring a variety of new perspectives to MDD’s strategic planning for its next decade of development. These new approaches are especially valuable during COVID-19 and this unprecedented era’s risks, challenges and opportunities. We seek to diversify and develop new revenue streams via new and existing programs and collaborative opportunities. We want to leverage our 35-year history, including our artist-driven archive-in-development and our local, national, and international contacts and networks.

Responsibilities:

● Serve on, and lend your name to, our Advisory Group to our Vision Quest Strategic Planning Task Force 22-23.
● Disseminate our call for volunteer Task Force members to your networks.
● Meet via Zoom twice for up to an hour each time to meet with other advisors.
● Review and comment on the Task Force’s findings before they are shared with MDD’s Board of Directors by their February 2023 meeting.
● Strengthen our public image as one that always has been and always will be driven by our mission to foment racial, economic, educational, professional, and cultural equity.

Key Skills and Attributes (across our transdisciplinary task force and its advisory group):

● Entrepreneurial innovation and invention.
● Fundraising and fund development.
● Systems analysis and strategic planning.
● Information and communication technologies.
● Knowledge of, or experience with, how online teaching and learning are developing during COVID.
● Elementary educational product and program development.
● Innovative business planning, including not-for-profit, and development of collaborative and mutually beneficial models and opportunities.
● Knowledge of markets, strategic multi-platform marketing, promo, and advertising.
● New local, regional, national, and international client development and sales.
● Operations’ innovations and improvements.
● Succession and sustainability planning.
● Resource analysis and development including monetization of existing cultural assets.
● Public and private strategic partnerships.

Qualifications:

● 3-15 years’ experience in a similar or related position.
● Transdisciplinary knowledge and understanding.
● Creativity and creative process practice across field(s) and domain(s).
● Qualitative or quantitative data analysis experience.
● Ease with theory and practice in chosen field(s).
● Operations, management, and strategic experience.
● Computer information technology knowledge across platforms and programs.
● Combined local, national, and international experiences and accomplishments a plus.

Compensation:

This is an honorary volunteer role with networking opportunities. There is an opportunity for creating high impact across multiple local, national, and international communities.

Action Request:

Should you accept this invitation, please email your acceptance, résumé (1-2 pp.) or cv (4 pp.); and short bio (100 words) and headshot for our website and publicity to: search@markdegarmodance.org

About Mark DeGarmo Dance

Mark DeGarmo Dance has been a resident organization in MDD Studio Theater 310 at The Clemente Center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side since 2001. MDD has gained highly competitive grants from government, corporate, and foundation sources, and individuals of high net worth. Leslie and Daniel Ziff donated $925,000 from 2012 to 2016. Mark DeGarmo Dance annually reaches over 2,200,000 individuals across all outreach and up to five NYC public schools with over 3,000 economically challenged students.

MDD’s “Partnerships in Literacy through Dance and Creativity©” is an interdisciplinary evidence-based embodied-cognition educational intervention studied by Johns Hopkins University. JHU research found that MDD’s students with the benefit of the 16-lesson program saw their state reading scores rise by “a statistically significant amount.” 95% of Partnerships’ classroom teachers wanted the MDD program to return the following school year. MDD’s program has focused for 18 years on New York City BIPOC pre-kindergarten to grade 5 public school students living under the U.S. poverty line in communities of color that are disenfranchised and under-resourced in dance and arts education. Focus over the past five years has included English language learners and students with disabilities.

Mark B. DeGarmo, Ph.D. is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and researcher, and Founder, Executive and Artistic Director of MDD. His work has been recognized with honors and awards from the Fulbright Scholar Program, The U.S. Department of State, and The White House. He earned a Ph.D. from Union Institute & University grounded in Arts and Sciences, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Experiential Education and The Arts; and a B.F.A. in Dance from The Juilliard School.


Upcoming Classes - Coming Soon