About Us

The idea for Jericho Road came from a small, passionate community of successful venture capitalists, bankers, lawyers, entrepreneurs and ministers from the First Parish Unitarian Universalist church in Concord, Massachusetts, who sought to create an alternative, participatory and high-impact form of volunteerism.

From early 2000 to late 2002, the group met regularly and refined its vision of a business-minded, volunteer-driven, social-and-economic-justice-oriented organization. The groups' energy and enthusiasm was fueled by over 300 responses to a church skills survey that allowed Jericho Road to immediately create a valuable database of potential and skilled volunteers.

Inspired by this dramatic response, the group, now acting as Jericho Road Project's (JRP) board of directors, raised enough money to hire the organization's first executive director in January 2003.

The JRP focused its initial efforts on building the capacity of nonprofit organizations in the city of Lowell. While it considered other cities, especially Boston and Maynard, Lowell was compelling, had great needs, was nearby and offered immediate partnership opportunities with welcoming, community-based, grassroots organizations that allowed Jericho Road to quickly test the viability of its vision and emerging process.

The success of Jericho Road Lowell (now a program of the Jericho Road Project) led to the establishment in 2005 of Jericho Road Lawrence, separate nonprofit organization under contract with JRP. In 2006, JRP evolved its strategic focus to include replicating its model to other cities. Over the course of two years JRP created a replication business model and a replication manual. In 2009, Jericho Road Worcester, an affiliate of the JRP, was launched utilizing the replication strategy and tools that JRP developed.

With sites in Lowell, Lawrence and Worcester (and with a fourth site scheduled to launch in Lynn in 2010) JRP is pioneering the application of skills based volunteers on nonprofit communities serving smaller, underserved, post industrial Massachusetts cities. Given that these cities share similar urban challenges and are in proximity to one another, JRP is also examining the impact of a “Jericho Learning Community”, facilitating the sharing of successes, tools and volunteers among our different sites.

JRP is now part of a national and fast growing skills-based-volunteer sector and has positioned itself as a leader and innovator in the application of a powerful, unique and abundant resource--skills based volunteers.

Board

Jericho Road's Board members are largely drawn from our volunteer and nonprofit communities. Many of our board members have served as Jericho Road volunteers, have led nonprofits and businesses and bring their commitment and knowledge to their board work.

Staff

Jericho Road curently has seven staff members: an Executive Director, four Program Directors, an Operations Manager and a Director of Marketing and Development. (See bios here.)