Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing

ABOUT COLOR OF CHANGE

Color Of Change is the nation's largest online racial justice organization. We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by millions of members, we campaign on issues of criminal justice, economic justice, voter freedom, big tech, and culture change and work to move decision-makers in corporations and governments to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America. Visit www.colorofchange.org to learn more

ROLE SUMMARY

Reporting directly to the Chief of Campaigns, the Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing will lead a team of motivated campaigners and organizers to run winning campaigns and grow our people power to achieve victories across the criminal legal system, media, the tech sector, democracy, and economic justice, and civil rights issues in other pressing areas, as needed.

The Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing must bring a deep understanding of the needs and systems required to run ambitious, effective, strategic campaigns with activities potentially ranging across our c3, c4, and PAC entities. The right person for this role must also bring a deep commitment to racial justice and the amplification of people power. An understanding of the basic tenets of community organizing is a must.

The Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing must have excellent written and verbal communication skills. They must be flexible and agile while also strengthening systems that improve efficiency and quality of work within the Chief of Campaign’s office and across the organization.

This role is for a goal-oriented, experienced leader who takes pride in leading, developing, and winning campaigns, and building community power to better position the organization to gain real-world victories for Black people. Because Black people don’t just experience injustice is different from a traditional 9-5 and will require some work on evenings and weekends.

Be able to customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment in performing your job duties, and be comfortable in working under general supervision.

RESPONSIBILITIES: To succeed as a Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing, we’ve identified these core areas of expectation.

Campaigns

• Generate Campaigns. Build a team that operates like an idea fountain – constantly flowing campaign ideas. Some will be decent, some downright horrible, and some will change the game. Each campaign should be flexible and dynamic enough to change with the news cycle or our opposition – but also thoughtful enough to fit into an integrated, long-term, community organizing strategy.
• Strategize. Develop and implement winning campaign strategies. Lead the campaign team members by designing and implementing team-level goals. Direct the development of program strategy for the short, medium, and long term, with robust theories of change and clear vision, using proven and experimental online and offline tactics.

Organizing

• Organize. Own the development and execution of the COC organizing program, including building coalitions and identifying strategic partnerships to advance COC’s priority areas and build people power around key campaigns. Own the intake, engagement, and development of members and supervise the development of membership events and trainings to build power and grow our brand.
• Strategize. Contribute to COC’s thoughts, leadership, and public strategies for increasing Black organizing power, including designing and overseeing the execution of in-person and online training and other capacity-building and leadership development tactics in alignment with the overall COC Organizing strategy.
• Mobilize. Build opportunities for our members to take strategic action in response to injustice, and connect these rapid response moments to the broader organizing and member engagement strategies.

Strategic Planning

• Live in the 24/7 news cycle. Monitor political and social events for their potential to become campaigns, and help foster a “news junkie” culture at Color Of Change.
• Iterate. Constantly revise your plans in response to real-world developments. Flexibility is your middle name.
• Manage people and projects. Oversee a team of full-time staffers and external consultants, build relationships with movement partners, and provide leadership development to your team.
• Evaluate. Is it working? Rigorously analyze data, report on the impact of our campaigns, and learn, learn, learn.

Communications

• Write. Similar to a news editor, the Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing will be responsible for motivating and guiding their team to create powerful, persuasive, and engaging emails, op-eds, text messages, press releases, etc., under a deadline in partnership with COC’s communications team. If the pen is mightier than the sword, your pen must be mighty indeed.
• Make headlines. Have the skills and instincts to be newsworthy and generate press coverage to create leverage to win.
• Sum it up. Quickly synthesize information and communicate it to multiple audiences – members, staff, allies, etc.
• Conscious, not colorblind. Despite the trendiness of terms like “colorblind,” “personal responsibility,” and “post-racial,” you understand that Black people face systemic barriers to opportunity, and you’re up for the challenge of re-educating the masses.
• Speak Publicly. Be an effective public ambassador for Color Of Change. Whether it's for external partners and stakeholders, media, funders, and/or members, the person is capable of presenting a strong personal narrative of their relationship to this work, as well as talking about the vision and work of Color Of Change in a way that is aligned with organizational work.

Management

• Foster a strong, healthy team culture. You have proven experience building and maintaining a healthy, creative, and thoughtful team culture. You receive 5-star reviews from your current managers.
• Experience leading large teams. You’ve led teams (5+ people) to internal and external success. You have experience managing managers and providing support and structure for your teams to do their best work.
• A people-first mentality. You understand that our teams are only as strong as the people on them. You can manage staff to achieve program and campaign goals and develop their leadership through practice.
• Emotional intelligence. You know it’s not what you say but how you say it. You believe in thoughtful communication and radical candor.
• Innovate. Experiment with creative ways of leveraging technology to make good things happen and know-how to measure what "good" means. Consult with Color Of Change’s Technology Team and other external tech consultants to build online tools for our members.
• Use our tools. Build a team that effectively uses our suite of online organizing tools (ActionKit, NewMode, ActBlue, etc.) to stage email blasts, landing pages, petition pages, donation pages, etc. Use tools like VAN, Catalyst, etc. Basic familiarity with HTML and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• Be able to customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment in performing your job duties, and be comfortable in working under general supervision.
• This position description outlines the general nature of duties for this role; and other duties as may be assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS

The Senior Director is an exceptional writer with a nose for strategy and policy who is creative, entrepreneurial, detail-oriented, flexible, and cares deeply about social justice. They should be comfortable juggling multiple tasks, thrive in a fast-paced environment, and not be afraid to talk about systemic racism. Most of all, they should have a knack for campaigning: the ability to spot a moment, the willingness to go after any target, write strong copy under a deadline, and be determined to keep pushing, even in the face of long odds. Specific qualifications include:

• At least 10+ years of experience in digital, policy advocacy, and/or communications campaigns.
• Professional experience in communications, online advocacy, and campaigning.
• Experience managing a team.
• Excellent writing and research skills in a relevant setting.
• Experience running corporate accountability campaigns.
• Deep expertise in both online and offline campaigning, organizing, and grassroots mobilization
• Experience in analyzing legislative bills, developing and researching policy solutions, and designing effective advocacy and campaign strategies to influence outcomes.
• Experience leveraging campaign data platforms and tools; familiarity with paid communications channels, including traditional advertising (TV, radio, print, etc.), digital advertising (Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, YouTube, Spotify, Google, etc.), and direct mail.
• Initiative and ability to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced work environment.
• Strong organizational skills, follow-through, and flexibility around changing priorities and deadlines; ability to work on several campaigns simultaneously.
• Capacity to work effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds and conflict-resolution styles.
• The ability to manage a complex workload and work under tight deadlines.
• High comfort level with the use of various technology tools.
• Experience working on racial justice issues is a bonus for expertise in media justice, tech accountability, or economic justice.
• A high level of dependability and commitment to racial justice.
• Be able to customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment in performing your job duties, and be comfortable in working under general supervision.

MORE INFORMATION

Location: New York, NY or Washington, DC

Workstyle: Hybrid

FLSA Status: Exempt

Employees Report to this Position: Yes

Job Classification: Non-Bargaining Unit

Reporting Structure: This role reports to the Chief of Campaigns

COMPENSATION

The salary for the Senior Director of Campaigns and Organizing position is $132,400 - $139,000 per year. This is a full-time, exempt position. Color Of Change also offers a competitive benefits package.

WORKING ENVIRONMENT

Working at Color Of Change (COC), you should be prepared to work remotely and/or in the assigned office location when hired. This position requires working core hours, Monday - Friday, on a laptop for most of the work day and additional time as required by job duties. We are not offering U.S. visa sponsorship for this role.

Color Of Change is an equal-opportunity employer. Color Of Change prohibits unlawful discrimination against any employee or applicant for employment based on race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, age, national origin, genetic characteristics, disability, status as a special disabled veteran or veteran, marital status, sexual orientation, sexual identity or any other basis prohibited by law.