We’re Hiring: Community Organizer

UPDATE: This position has been filled. Thank you to all who applied.

Join our team at Move Minnesota!

Open Position: Community Organizer

Reports To: Director of Communications and Organizing

Key Collaborative Relationships: Senior Community Organizer, Executive Director, and Policy and Research Director

Job Type: Full-time, 40 hours per week, non-exempt.

Salary & Compensation: $40,000-$46,000 annual salary. Competitive benefits package includes health and dental insurance, HSA or FSA savings plan, retirement plan, paid time off, short-term and long-term disability, life insurance, bus pass and commuter benefits, and flexible work environment.

Organization Summary

Move Minnesota is a leader in the movement for an equitable and sustainable transportation system that puts people first. We are passionate about connecting communities, ending the climate crisis, expanding access to jobs and resources, and improving daily life for Minnesotans of all ages, races, incomes, and abilities. We connect people to transit where the system works well, and fight hard to ensure it works for everyone.

Move Minnesota is based in Saint Paul, MN. Our team is collaborative, hard-working, mission-driven, and fun. We create change through advocacy, organizing, coalition building, policy leadership, and education. This position is currently a remote-only position, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a return to in-person work likely in Fall 2021.

Embedding equity in organizational practices is a core value at our organization. Move Minnesota works to offer culturally inclusive services, materials, resources, and programs. We value the strengths offered through different backgrounds and perspectives. Move Minnesota is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Position Summary

Move Minnesota is seeking a Community Organizer who will strategically grow and engage grassroots advocates to create a just and sustainable transit system in the Twin Cities metro. This position will focus on on-the-ground base building and mobilizing, volunteer coordination, and digital organizing. Relationship building and effective messaging are essential to the role.

This staff member will join a growing organizing and advocacy team at Move Minnesota. They will work collaboratively to achieve short term wins with an eye to bigger picture movement-building and transformative change. The Community Organizer will help to advance multiple advocacy campaigns and initiatives at local, regional, and state levels. The ideal candidate will bring an understanding of the role of organizing, issue advocacy, and narrative in creating systems change, and interest in influencing decision-makers and the public.

This position will work in close partnership with the Director of Communications and Organizing and the Senior Community Organizer, as well as our Executive Director, Policy and Research Director, and broader staff team.

Duties and Responsibilities

Grassroots Base-Building and Mobilizing

• Work collaboratively and strategically to build and mobilize an active grassroots base of supporters.
• Organize and staff phone banks, transit canvasses, door knocks, community events, and other outreach activities.
• Assist team in co-creating, staffing, and supporting advocacy actions and hosted events.
• Write phone bank and outreach scripts, manage dialer, pull and manage lists.
• Coordinate constituent meetings, advocate testimony, and turnout at relevant hearings and meetings.
• Build direct connections with community members, including local transit riders and BIPOC residents who are most impacted by today’s unjust transportation system, and bring them into our work.
• Actively partner with communications staff to communicate transit benefits, needs, and policy positions to organizational supporters, decision-makers, and community. Help ensure community perspectives and learnings inform the work of Move Minnesota’s full staff team.
• Record and update advocate information in the database as needed.

Volunteer Engagement

• Recruit, train, and develop volunteers.
• Organize and manage volunteer teams and volunteer activities aligned to organization’s advocacy goals and initiatives and our commitment to building and engaging a racially, ethnically, and economically diverse movement.
• Establish and maintain effective systems and standard practices for volunteer orientation, engagement, and appreciation.

Digital Organizing

• In consultation with the Director of Communications and Organizing, write, produce, and share online actions, action alert emails, and text alerts.
• Facilitate grassroots storytelling aligned to campaigns, amplifying personal experiences to inform and advance narrative change and policy change.

• Support advocacy social media presence especially as aligned to campaign focus, including by live tweeting hearings and other actions as directed.
• Contribute to organizational messaging and updates on key campaigns and initiatives.
• Amplify key intersectional issues and values at the core of Move Minnesota’s work, particularly among transit, racial justice, social justice, and climate change.

General

• In collaboration with staff and volunteers, advances the organization’s continued work to integrate racial justice frameworks into its internal operations and external programming.
• Carries out other duties and responsibilities as directed by the Director of Communications and Organizing.
• Adheres to organizational values: equity, integrity, elevating voices, excellence, transparency, and stewardship.

Position Qualifications

Minimum

• Experienced and highly motivated to create positive change through organizing and advocacy. Excited to build an active grassroots movement for just and sustainable transportation.
• Committed to social and racial justice. Experienced in cross-cultural collaboration, including an understanding of how intersectional lived experiences change the way people and systems interact.
• Skills and enthusiasm for building and maintaining positive relationships with community members, advocates, volunteers, partners, and decision-makers.
• Proactive in planning and implementation of short-term and long-term organizing strategies. Able to respond and adapt quickly to external shifts in opportunities and timelines as needed to maximize impact.
• Able to successfully grow and mobilize supporters across multiple campaigns and initiatives concurrently.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Adept at creating compelling people-centered and values-centered messaging.
• Knowledge of transit, walking, biking, rolling, and shared mobility as modes of transportation, and sensitivity to the way transportation issues affect people’s lives and communities.
• Able to contribute to a collaborative team environment.
• Able to engage in strategic thinking, and to work in a growth-mindset environment focused on experimentation and learning.
• Experienced and comfortable with digital platforms.
• 2+ years of community organizing, issue advocacy, or closely related work experience.

Preferred

• Direct experience organizing in BIPOC communities.
• Direct experience coordinating volunteers.

Location

This position is housed at the Move Minnesota office in Saint Paul, Minnesota, although Move Minnesota is currently working remotely due to the coronavirus. The office is one block from the METRO Green Line’s Raymond Ave Station and easy to reach on Metro Transit bus routes 16, 63, 67, and 87. Indoor bike parking and a private changing room are available. The building where our office is located has one floor (no stairs) and multi-stall restrooms.