Campaign Organizer- Oelwein

Campaign Organizer

Location and Timeline: We are hiring a full-time Campaign Organizer to begin by August 16th and continue through the end of the year. The locations are Waterloo, Mason City, Burlington, Dubuque, Oelwein, Maquoketa, Newton, Keokuk, Marshalltown, Muscatine, Ottumwa, Fort Dodge, and Sioux City, Iowa. This will expand over the program, so if you are an Iowan who lives further away, please still apply!

Who We Are: The Outreach Team is the national engine of campaigners and organizers powering the progressive movement. With an on-the-ground presence in communities all across the country, our world-class team runs successful civic engagement campaigns to build a future that's fairer, healthier, safer, and more peaceful for everyone.

General Overview: Organizers will be charged with recruiting, training, and working with a team of volunteers in key counties in Iowa to drive basebuilding in a massive push for corporate polluter accountability. Campaign Organizers will engage constituents around corporate accountability, health care, big ag, affordability, and action opportunities. The Organizer will start by building and recruiting a team of supporters and volunteers around canvassing and petitions. From there, Organizers will continue to engage volunteers through a series of campaign events and actions. In the fall, Organizers will help drive signees to electoral work and results. At the end of the campaign, Organizers will debrief with volunteers and community contacts to share information for how to stay involved with corporate accountability action in their communities.

What You'll Do:

• Recruit and Train a Community of Volunteer Activists
  • Call and text supporters and recruit them into grassroots actions.
  • Identify new supporters and volunteers by knocking doors, gathering petitions, flyering, and conducting in-field recruitment efforts in the community and on local campuses
  • Run grassroots skills trainings to develop effective campaigners among volunteers.
  • Keep meticulous track of a volunteer list so that no potential volunteer falls through the cracks.
  • Represent the campaign through participation in community spaces and events, while engaging and uplifting coalition and partner organizations.
• Generate Campaign Actions
  • Gather over a thousand petitions from the community in support of key campaign issues
  • Generate hundreds of additional actions targeting key Members of Congress with a particular focus on social media posts, phone calls, postcards, and photo petitions.
  • Recruit and train volunteers to generate more petitions and volunteer engagement at events.
  • Recruit and engage with community leaders, organizational partners, and VIPs to build meaningful relationships while generating new supporters, volunteers, and event attendees.
• Register voters in key Iowa districts
  • Generate hundreds of new voter registrations in key Iowa counties
  • Maintain strong QC systems for ensuring compliance with VR laws and rules
• Organize High-Volume Visibility Events
  • Organize and execute exciting, high-visibility in-person events demonstrating support for climate, jobs, and justice.
  • Educate community members about historical climate investments and the urgency of continued actions.
  • Nail 100% of all messaging and legal requirements and ensure that volunteers do the same.
• Manage Digital Campaign, Data Management, and Reporting Tools
  • Demonstrate public support by recruiting volunteers to post on their own social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
  • Use peer-to-peer texting services and relational organizing tools to communicate with community members.
  • Send timely and compelling email campaigns to recruit activists to campaign activities.
  • Track every interaction with detailed notes in order to report numbers daily and write weekly reports on the results of the campaign.

Who You Are & Keys to Success (the must-haves): To be successful in this job, you will excel in these areas:

• Relationship Building: You develop and maintain strong, collaborative relationships with a diverse group of local and statewide community members. You are attentive and empathetic to the communities we serve, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, gender, or ability, and can identify shared values across communities for collective growth. You can build authentic relationships through authenticity and reliability, continuously uplifting others and their goals. You are comfortable and experienced in public speaking to a group about environmental, jobs, health care issues and climate change.
• Inclusive and Collaborative Leadership: You approach leadership with a "power with" mindset that recognizes the impact power hierarchies have in different settings. You can learn from others, see and hear other perspectives, and step in or step back as necessary. You are reliable and accountable, always transparent about your abilities, capacities, and expectations. You honor the time and commitments of others while inspiring them to meet goals.
• Commitment to Equity and Inclusion: You have a proven ability to develop meaningful connections with diverse communities, including a wide range of community organizations, community leaders, and community members. You work with the community and within the workplace to identify areas of improvement for a more equitable environment. You take continued action and efforts to improve your REI knowledge, skills, and tools.
• Drive to Achieve Results: You have experience accomplishing ambitious goals and getting results, even when there are obstacles. You have the experience or ability to plan backwards to meet multiple goals timely and effectively. When there are unexpected changes, you bounce back and adjust quickly, learning and improving from any mistakes.
• Must be able to drive, have a valid drivers license, and also you will need to meet our driver authorization standards Skills and Experiences we Expect of all Outreach Team employees:
• Commitment to equity and justice, with an agreement to our North Star (below).
• Experience bringing a lens of inclusivity to all of your interactions with colleagues and community members.
• Passion for the role that your work plays in creating change in the world.
• Kindness and consideration for others.
• Drive to work collaboratively: learning from others; stepping-in or stepping-back when needed.
• Transparency: comfort admitting what you do and don't know, your capacity, and abilities.
• Task management: Able to adapt to the evolving needs of a project. Able to tackle big-picture projects and break them down into smaller pieces.
• Organized and efficient: Experience or demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects or goals at once in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment.
• Acute attention to detail: Track interactions and tasks with detailed notes. Plans ahead for roadblocks and bounces back quickly when problems arise.
• Effective communication skills (written or spoken) that are clear, concise and honest.
• Comfortable and excited to speak about the campaign publicly.
• Coach and learning mentality: successful experience or willingness to learn new things and pick up new skills on the job. Able to learn from mistakes and try again.
• Understanding of how your words and actions affect others, including an awareness of power language and communication accessibility.
• Ability to work weekends and weekday evenings, occasional holidays.

Nice-to-Haves, but Not Required:

• Organizing experience within or around Iowa.
• Experience working for nonprofits and issue campaigns.
• Data Management and Evaluation Experience: Experience working with various data management systems and tools, mainly Google Suite.
• Experience with Relevant Campaign Tools and Technologies: VAN, Action Network, ThruText, MailChimp, eCRMs like EveryAction, or social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram).
• Event or Project Planning & Management, Implementation or Evaluation.
• Knowledge or previous experience working on this issue is a plus, but not required.

If you were here right now, you would be:

• Recruiting, training and developing activist leaders in your community to collect supporter petitions, educate others on key campaign issues, and recruit constituents to in-district events and actions.
• Planning and executing events around corporate accountability, climate action, and health care including, but not limited to: door knocking, phonebanking, petitioning, visibility events, educational events, and more.
• Developing relationships with community and campus leaders on corporate accountability, health care, and justice for collaborative recruitment, event planning, and power building.
• Engaging and expanding our support network through public visibility actions, voter outreach, and relationship-building.