Employee Handbook Development

We are looking for a volunteer with a background in HR and/or nonprofit operations to help us develop our first employee handbook. As a young, fully remote nonprofit operating across multiple states (primarily New Hampshire and California), we want to ensure our handbook reflects best practices, meets multi-state compliance requirements, and clearly communicates our policies, benefits, and expectations to our small but growing team.

This project will contain the following activities:

- Conducting an audit of our existing draft policies, including reviewing materials we have already prepared and asking any clarifying questions about our organization, team structure, and priorities
- Identifying policies that should be modified and any new policies or areas that should be addressed and included in the handbook
- Presenting a detailed outline of the complete handbook for our team's review and feedback
- Finalizing the handbook after incorporating feedback from our team, resulting in a document that is ready for board review and adoption

E-Motion exists to ensure that no one has to navigate grief alone. We provide grief support programming, facilitator training, and grief literacy education to healthcare organizations, universities, and nonprofits across approximately 20 states — reaching bereaved individuals at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Our volunteer facilitators and staff are the backbone of this work. They show up week after week for people carrying heartbreaking loss — and we owe it to them to show up just as consistently with the organizational infrastructure they deserve.

Right now, E-Motion is at an inflection point. We have proven our model, grown our reach, and earned the trust of institutional partners who share our commitment to grief literacy. The next chapter of our growth depends on building the internal infrastructure — including clear HR policies, employee protections, and a professional handbook — that allows us to recruit and retain the talented, mission-driven people our work requires.

A well-crafted employee handbook does more than check a compliance box. For a small nonprofit like ours, it signals to current and future staff that we value them, protects the organization so we can continue serving our communities without interruption, and demonstrates to the foundations and institutional partners who fund our work that E-Motion is a responsible, well-governed organization worthy of their investment.

In short: when our team feels supported, protected, and clear on what E-Motion stands for as an employer, they are freed up to focus entirely on the people we serve. That is the ripple effect of this project — and that ripple reaches every grieving person our facilitators sit with across the country.

We are well-prepared and genuinely excited for this partnership. Here is what we have already done to set this project up for success:

Internal alignment: Our Executive Director and Board Chair are fully aligned on the need for this handbook and have prioritized it as a key organizational milestone for 2026. The final handbook will go through a formal board review and adoption process, ensuring it has organizational buy-in at the highest level.

Materials ready to share: We have already begun drafting several foundational policies, which we will share with our volunteer partner at the start of the engagement. We also have our Articles of Agreement, Bylaws, and IRS determination letter readily available for reference.
Clear priorities: We have a well-defined list of policies we still need to develop, and we understand which items will require outside legal review (specifically our sexual harassment and anti-discrimination policy, given our multi-state footprint across New Hampshire and California). We will not ask our volunteer partner to provide legal advice — we have a clear lane for their work and a separate lane for counsel.

Responsive and committed team: Our Managing Director will serve as the primary point of contact for this project and is committed to responding promptly, providing feedback quickly, and keeping the engagement moving. We understand that our volunteer's time is valuable and we will come to every touchpoint prepared.
Implementation plan: Once the handbook is finalized, it will be formally adopted by our board, distributed to all current employees, and incorporated into our onboarding process for all future hires. It will also support our ongoing insurance compliance, state charitable registration, and foundation grant applications — so this work has immediate, concrete impact beyond the document itself.