Location: Christchurch

Status: Part-Time Contract (approx 26 hours per week)

Do you love bringing people together, creating welcoming spaces, and making sure everything runs seamlessly behind the scenes?

We're looking for an organised, proactive, and people-focused Community Coordinator to help create exceptional experiences for our tenants, community members, and event attendees. This is a varied, hands-on role that combines community engagement, office coordination, event delivery, and operational support.

If you're someone who enjoys solving problems, thrives on variety, and takes pride in creating organised, welcoming environments, we'd love to hear from you.

Ministry of Awesome – who we are

Ministry of Awesome is a driving force behind Aotearoa New Zealand’s high-growth startups and innovators. From our base in Ōtautahi Christchurch, we equip founders across the motu with advisory support, expert mentorship, a vibrant community, and strategic connections to help them validate markets, gain traction, raise capital, and grow globally.

We deliver startup incubation, acceleration and capability programmes for ambitious founders, including support for women founders, clean-energy innovators, and early-stage entrepreneurs. We also work alongside government, tertiary institutions, investors, corporate partners and other ecosystem organisations to create better pathways for founders to succeed.

Through community events, workshops, founder programmes and flagship conferences, Ministry of Awesome brings together the people, knowledge and opportunities that help startups move forward.

Why our work matters

High-growth startups create jobs, productivity and new solutions to local and global challenges. Ministry of Awesome exists to help founders build ambitious, scalable ventures that can contribute to a resilient, innovative and future-focused Aotearoa economy.

We lower barriers for emerging founders by making practical support, trusted advice, peer networks and valuable connections more accessible. This helps ensure that strong ideas can become globally competitive businesses, regardless of whether a founder already has established networks, experience or access to capital.

Our community and events create the relationships, practical learning and visibility founders need to progress faster, access new opportunities and sustain momentum through the challenges of building a startup.

About the Role

As our Community & Events Coordinator, you'll play a key role in ensuring our office space operates smoothly while supporting a vibrant community of founders, partners, and tenants. You'll coordinate events, manage day-to-day operations, and help create positive experiences for everyone who visits our space or joins us online.

This role offers a mix of people interaction and behind-the-scenes coordination, making it ideal for someone who enjoys both connecting with others and keeping operations running efficiently.

What You'll Be Doing

Community & Office Coordination

• Be the first point of contact for tenants, community members, and visitors.
• Support tenant onboarding and respond to day-to-day enquiries.
• Maintain a welcoming, organised, and functional workspace.
• Manage meeting room bookings and building access.
• Keep the office well stocked by monitoring and replenishing supplies.
• Troubleshoot operational issues and coordinate repairs with contractors, landlords, and suppliers.
• Support office security, including lock-up and alarm procedures.

Event Coordination

• Coordinate community events from planning through to delivery.
• Manage event logistics, runsheets, registrations, suppliers, catering, and follow-up.
• Work closely with internal teams to deliver exceptional attendee experiences.
• Coordinate speakers, venues, ticketing, and event budgets.
• Provide on-the-ground support during events to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Operations & Administration

• Manage event calendars and operational schedules.
• Support internal communications and help ensure community members feel supported.
• Maintain Google Drive, shared folders, and internal systems.
• Assist with onboarding new tenants and team members.
• Provide general administrative and operational support across the organisation.

About You

You'll thrive in this role if you are:

• Highly organised with excellent attention to detail.
• Calm under pressure and able to juggle multiple priorities.
• A proactive problem solver who enjoys finding practical solutions.
• Friendly, approachable, and confident building relationships with a wide range of people.
• Comfortable working independently while collaborating with a broader team.
• Customer-focused with a positive and professional attitude.

Skills & Experience

We're looking for someone with:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Strong organisational and time management skills.
• Confidence managing multiple projects simultaneously.
• Experience in office administration, events, hospitality, operations, community coordination, or customer service (preferred).
• Experience using Google Workspace and shared digital systems. Familiarity with project management or CRM tools is an advantage.

How this role is critical

The Community Events Coordinator sits at the heart of Ministry of Awesome’s day-to-day operations and community experience. This role helps ensure that our spaces are welcoming and well run, our systems are organised, and founders, tenants, partners and team members feel supported and connected.

Through coordinating office administration, onboarding, shared systems and operational activity, the role provides the reliable backbone that enables the wider team to focus on delivering high-impact founder support and programmes.

The role also helps deliver the events that bring our community to life, including Coffee & Jam, founder workshops, partner activations and major conferences such as Electrify Aotearoa. By coordinating speakers, ticketing, venues, catering, budgets, runsheets and attendee experience, this person creates professional, valuable experiences where founders, investors and partners can learn, connect and build meaningful relationships.

Ultimately, the Community Events Coordinator is central to delivering our founder-first promise. They ensure the practical details, physical environment and community touchpoints are consistently excellent, enabling Ministry of Awesome to deliver high-quality support and strengthen Aotearoa’s startup ecosystem.