Retreat Center Director

Retreat Center Director
Southern Dharma Retreat Center
Hot Springs, NC

Southern Dharma Retreat Center (SDRC) is seeking a Retreat Center Director to ensure a safe, supportive, and welcoming environment for exceptional retreat experiences and residential life by overseeing daily operations, facilities, and on-site staff. The Retreat Center Director leads a small team of on-site staff, retreat managers, residents, and volunteers, and reports to and collaborates with the Executive Director.

Mission:
To offer meditation retreats, provide Dharma instruction, and support communities, grounded in Buddhist practice traditions.

Vision:
To bring about personal and collective awakening based in mindfulness, wisdom, and ethics.

The Board of Directors and Staff of Southern Dharma have identified the following as the highest priorities for the new Retreat Center Director to focus on:

• Strengthen physical infrastructure of SDRC in collaboration with the Executive Director with a focus on staff housing and retreat ant experience
• Develop and update organizational systems, structures, and policies in collaboration with the Executive Director in order to sustain core programs
• Support on-site staff in fully embodying the value of hospitality to ensure exceptional retreat experiences

• On-Site Operations Management
  • Manages and oversees day-to-day operations on site at the Retreat Center
  • Oversees the functioning, cleanliness, and safety of all facilities and grounds, in cooperation with Facilities staff
  • Supports and protects silent retreat environment
  • Establishes and adheres to operating procedures and recommends changes to policies to ensure staff, retreat ant and teacher satisfaction
  • Maintains and updates online databases
  • Creates fair and functional on-site team schedules, balancing team capacity with retreat needs to ensure seamless retreat support; with ability to cover shifts in all areas as needed, including relief cooking
• Staff Supervision & Culture
  • Fosters a supportive, growth-oriented staff culture rooted in compassionate communication and accountability
  • Effectively recruits, hires, trains, leads and supports the on-site team; provides coaching, feedback, evaluation, professional development, and clear direction.
  • Leads the on-site team in the selection, onboarding, and mentoring of residents and volunteers
  • Cultivates a spirit of mindfulness among onsite staff, to better embody the Dharma and carry out the mission of Southern Dharma
  • Tends a healthy environment for staff members living in community and sharing space
• Program & Retreat Coordination
  • Collaborates with Executive Director to plan the retreat calendar and diverse, high-quality programmatic offerings that align with organizational and staff capacity
  • Oversees end-to-end retreat processes with attention to detail, including registration
  • Ensures timely processing of all retreat-related tasks including:
    Set-up, arrival and check-in, orientation, closing announcements, dana (voluntary contribution) instructions and processing, and check-out
  • Manages retreat schedules and assists guests and teaching staff as needed
• Relationship Management & Communication
  • Builds strong working relationships and communications with the Executive Director, on-site staff, and the Board of Directors and related Board Committees
  • Maintains supportive relationships and manages general inquiries and feedback with teachers, teaching assistants, and retreatants, responds to concerns with kindness and compassion; uplifts and de-escalates issues as needed
• Retreatant & Teacher Experience
  • Centers spiritual hospitality and care in serving retreatants, teachers, and guests.
  • Suggests and implements creative new approaches to providing a high-quality and high-impact guest experience
  • Leads evaluation processes to better understand programmatic impact and opportunities for improvement
• Budget & Resource Management
  • Supports management of operations budget by monitoring and reporting on departmental expenses
  • Collaborates with Executive Director and staff on developing annual and capital budgets

Southern Dharma is committed to building an…