Job Description: Citizen Action of Wisconsin Movement Politics Director

Objective: Citizen Action of Wisconsin seeks a dynamic and socially committed person to join our management team and lead an innovative electoral and multi-issue membership organizing program. This is a full time (40-50 hrs/week) salaried permanent position located in in either Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha, or Brown Counties.  If not in Milwaukee, a minimum of 1 day per week travel to Milwaukee will be required, otherwise, this is remote/work from home position. Some evenings and weekends required, as well as semi-frequent in-state travel and occasional out-of-state travel. Applicant must have solid electoral campaign experience, and be fluent in, as well as be able to read and write both Spanish and English.

Description of Work: This position reports to the Deputy Director, and the successful applicant will work to launch an exciting new Movement Politics pilot within our Organizing Co-ops across the state that fully integrates candidate recruitment, training, and support for those candidates into our staff and member driven electoral and issue campaigns.  The Movement Politics Director will work in collaboration with other staff and managers to create a Latino/a/x centric candidate recruitment and training program, and oversee and work with the Latino/a/x centric Co-op organizer to recruit member candidates, offer training and support to those candidates, mobilize co-op members to work on candidate campaigns and practice co-governance with sitting elected officials at the local, state, and federal level.  The Movement Politics Director will work together with member-leaders and Citizen Action staff to advance diverse issue, legislative, and electoral campaigns that have real impact on our communities and make large scale changes in Wisconsin to open up opportunity for all. More information about Citizen Action of Wisconsin Organizing Cooperatives and issues can be found here.

Organizational Background: Citizen Action of Wisconsin is an issue focused non-profit organization committed to achieving anti-oppressive, economic, and environmental justice. We are dedicated to achieving a Wisconsin and an America where every human being has an equal opportunity to live a meaningful and fulfilling life. Citizen Action of Wisconsin brings together thousands of activists and allied groups across Wisconsin to deepen democratic participation and create an issue environment that advances a progressive public policy agenda.

In late 2017, Citizen Action adopted a cutting edge 8 year issue agenda that was written by hundreds of members across the state. Most fundamentally, we believe that issues matter. It is through transformative issues that capture the public imagination and reveal the dissonance between our nation’s ideals and its economic, social and environmental realities that average people see their stake in the public sphere and are motivated to participate in their democracy and fight for meaningful and lasting change.

Citizen Action is spearheading the development of innovative new grassroots organizing techniques, and seeks candidates who are interested in embracing new dynamic approaches. More information on current Citizen Action of Wisconsin programs can be found at citizenactionwi.org.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Work to build and lead/co-lead a new coalition of organizations who serve Latino/a/x Wisconsinites as a vehicle for building statewide power around issues that impact all Wisconsinites including Healthcare for All, The Green New Deal. Economic Justice, Family Farms, Environment and Water, Racial Justice, Gender Justice, Fair Maps and other issues our members care about.
• Work with Citizen Action management and staff to design, implement, and lead candidate recruitment drives, candidate training in English and Spanish, and foster, manage, and maintain Coordinated and Independent Expenditure relationships.
• Embrace Citizen Action’s Management Culture and Accountability Structure and manage 2-5 organizing staff and/or field organizers and staff in implementation of issue, legislative, and electoral campaigns.
• Coordinate program and logistics for public events, mobilizations and other grassroots and civic engagement activity.
• Participate in small and large dollar fundraising in collaboration with Citizen Action staff.
• In collaboration with management, assist with large donor relations, funding proposals, and reporting.
• Conduct interim and post program reporting on progress to goals and program evaluation
• Participate in a meaningful way as a part of the Management and Strategy team to contribute to the success of the organization as a whole.
• Translate written materials including flyers, lit, emails, issue education and training materials, voter engagement materials, etc.from English to Spanish.

Specific Responsibilities also include

• Embrace and effectively utilize new communications technology, working within Citizen Action’s cutting-edge social networking and web technology programs to augment on-the ground organizing.
• Help organize coalitions and networks of members to advance critical issues of local importance in tandem with Citizen Action staff together with a wide range of prospective allies.
• Work in a focused way to advance strategic goals, and provide timely weekly reporting of organizing progress.
• Integrate Citizen Action’s values-based communication into all organizing work.

Desired Experience:

• Experience in labor, community, political or faith-based organizing, experience with or a strong interest in learning relational organizing as well as a commitment to working on racial justice issues,  working with communities of color, and with a multicultural base of individuals.
• Experience with large and/or small dollar fundraising.
• Experience working with a broad array of organizations in a coalition on issues of social and economic justice.
• Experience managing program and field staff to achieve goals
• Experience with long term and short term strategic campaign planning

Required Qualifications:

• Philosophical commitment to progressive values of economic, gender, racial, anti-oppressive, and environmental justice and equity along with health care freedom for everyone in Wisconsin and America.
• A minimum 1 year of cumulative experience in managing volunteers and/or staff
• Experience training either staff or volunteers to implement tactical or leadership aspects of political campaigns.
• Experience with designing and implementing strategic legislative and electoral issue campaigns.
• Experience working with a broad array of organizations in a coalition on issues of social and economic justice.
• Ability to understand public policy issues and translate them into organizing issues that motivate average people to act.
• Strong creative strategic thinking skills and willingness to innovate in fast moving issue campaigns and meet deadlines.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including ability to produce effective flyers, email alerts, coalition reports, blogs, effective social media posts, and coherent, strategic, and trackable written campaign plans, and use email and google suite.
• Excellent listening, interpersonal and problem solving skills, strong personal time management skills, organization skills, and the ability to work under pressure, and the ability to resolve conflicts while maintaining effective relationships.
• Intermediate computer skills including email, composing documents, designing flyers, working with databases, and social networking (Familiarity with EveryAction/VAN, GoogleDocs, Google Analytics, Hootsuite, as well as managing Facebook pages and/or Twitter accounts).
• Ability to undertake periodic travel in Wisconsin and occasionally out-of-state.

Salary and Benefits:  This is a full-time position which includes health care, dental and employer-matched 401K, life insurance, disability insurance, cell phone allowance, and other benefits.  Some weekend and evening hours required. Base salary rate is $51,200.00 annually, and is negotiable upon offer of employment based on experience and qualifications.

Application Process:  E-mail cover letter and résumé to Angelique Rogers (Organizing Director) at angelique.rogers@citizenactionwi.org.  Please, no calls or in-person inquiries.