“In the food co-op sector, there has long been a home base for job opportunities,” says Columinate Manager Mark Goehring. “That was housed previously in Cooperative Grocer magazine and on the CGN site. Those assets were transferred to us in 2019, and we took on a commitment to maintain that service.” Goehring is hoping to do more than maintain what has been done before, and he sees the Columinate Job Board as a vehicle for societal transformation. Looking beyond the food co-op sector that it now serves, Goehring has a vision for the next evolution of the job board: one where the tool is used cross-sector, both by employers and those seeking work, as their primary source for employment in the social-change marketplace.

Columinate has developed a professional, contemporary job-board software platform.

Users can create an organizational profile and manage posted positions and incoming applications. The vision is that organizations would adopt the job board as their own, posting all their open positions there and using those listings to elevate the visibility of the positions but also the job board overall. Says Goehring, “I’m interested in promoting the job board in such a way that organizational users adopt it as a go-to site for them, so it gets more and more visibility. The overall impact of the job board is somewhat dependent on how users adopt it as being useful for them.”

As more organizations use the service and more individuals find success through utilizing the job board, it can become a more useful tool for strengthening the sector. “Let’s develop a way for the Columinate Job Board to be visible in a variety of ways—obvious ways, like being sure that organizations are aware of it and think of it as a reasonable place to post their jobs. That’s the first step and a big one. If we had a thousand organizations thinking about it that way, the magnitude and impact of the service would be huge. The dream scenario would be the organizational users then adopt it as their own job board.”

Columinate has always had a role in developing cross-sector relationships that strengthen the national network of progressive organizations. The job board is an extension of that work, bringing together those interested in working in social change with the organizations that can facilitate those societal transformations. Goehring states, “It’s in line with the relationship building we have been doing forever. Columinate’s tagline is catalysts for common good, which in this case is really a nice fit.”