Associate Director of Organizing

Core Responsibilities

• Membership Strategy, Systems & Impact: Operationalize and strengthen Essie’s membership strategy in alignment with the Director of Organizing Programs, ensuring that systems, data, and partnerships drive growth, retention, and impact.
• Operationalize and strengthen Essie’s membership strategy in alignment with the Director of Organizing Programs, ensuring that systems, data, and partnerships drive growth, retention, and impact.
• Strengthen organizing systems, member data infrastructure, and tracking tools, supporting an organizing strategy that empowers the development of an increased number of member leaders.
• Translate the organization-wide member strategy into clear systems, plans, and team execution, while supporting the development and coordination of membership engagement approaches across campaigns and programmatic work.
• Assess Essie's base's strengths, gaps, and growth opportunities; develop strategies to deepen engagement and retention.
• Develop and manage impact metrics for organizing work, including member activation, leadership pipeline, retention, and political engagement benchmarks.
• Strengthen feedback loops between organizing data, political strategy, and campaign direction.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of member engagement strategies, develop new standards and metrics, and design interventions to orient to outcomes.
• Member Engagement, Leadership Development & Training: Design and implement new and priority organizing/power-building trainings to develop skills within membership and staff that facilitate member leadership.
• Partner with the Director of Organizing Programs to identify training needs in response to evolving member strategy, campaign priorities, and base assessment findings.
• Design and implement and/or support the design of new and priority organizing/power-building trainings to develop skills within membership and staff that facilitate member leadership.
• Support the cultivation of practices that build a politically sharp, deeply relational, and accountable membership culture, reinforcing shared standards and collective power.
• Program Coordination, Membership Structure & Team Leadership: Serve as a systems-oriented and relational leader within the Membership & Organizing Team.
• Serve as the strategic driver of Essie’s Oakland and Bay Area-wide organizing and contribute political leadership in the landscape.
• Lead pilot projects to test and deepen Essie’s constituency-building theory and practice.
• Drive strong execution of Essie’s membership structure and political development strategy.
• Lead the ongoing activation and implementation of Essie’s Membership Structure, ensuring fidelity in votes, elections, leadership appointments, and decision-making processes.
• Partner with the Director of Organizing Programs to shape strategic goals, priorities, and annual work plans, while coordinating team execution toward clearly defined organizing outcomes and metrics and supervising staff to support performance, growth, and retention.
• Manage cross-functional project teams of staff to advance high-priority organizing initiatives.
• Directly manage 1-3 staff members.

  Qualifications

  • 5–7 years of experience in organizing, ideally in distributed, networked, or chapter-based models.
  • Experience in program design, implementation, and evaluation, including developing metrics and using data to inform strategy.
  • Skilled in facilitating workshops, trainings, or popular education sessions.
  • Experience managing staff, preferably leading a team directly, with an emphasis on coaching and development (does not need to include managing managers).
  • Ability to support colleagues and members with direct experience of incarceration with empathy and accountability.
  • Track record as a collaborative leader who excels in managing multiple projects and is comfortable working in a fast-paced work environment.
  • Impeccable attention to detail and effective writing, editing, and verbal communication skills.
  • Adept with Mac operating systems, Google Suite, and MS Office Suite (especially Excel, Powerpoint and Word).
  • Commitment to the beliefs and values of Essie with a demonstrated passion for progressive politics, specifically in gender justice, race justice, and ending mass incarceration.

  Qualities

  • Experienced movement leader. Developing directly impacted leadership to usher in a fair and free future is your life’s work. From years of dedicated practice as a movement leader, you’ve developed an analysis of what’s needed for transformative social change to occur and in existing liberation movements. You think constantly about how change happens and how that shows up in the people you organize, mentor, and manage. You have a refined ability to make sense of what feels confusing, and bring people along with you.
  • Discernment and honesty we can trust. You are a thoughtful team member who acts in alignment with your integrity and is unfailingly trustworthy. You earn rather than demand the trust of people by listening and making decisions thoughtfully.
  • Develops and facilitates leadership. You lead by example, operating with a high bar for performance. Both visible and behind the scenes, you have a commitment to thoroughness, rigor, and integrity in your work. You regularly make substantive recommendations for internal structural changes to support collaboration or aligned work. Identifies and resources specific opportunities for growth for members of the team. Skillfully selects and employs the right tools among coaching, counseling, co-creation, and autonomy with debriefing to advance the leadership of others.
  • Facilitates Complex Spaces - Can lead our base and staff, strongly connected to values and goals, through collective meeting processes. Responds ably as a facilitator in extremely difficult moments.
  • Deep Partnership & Active Solidarity - Develops relationships of respect and mutual support with partners that can withstand field tension, complexity, and high-stakes moments. Regularly connects with peers at other organizations about shared work and interests. Is known by those outside Essie to follow through on commitments and values. Sought after for input and approval by partners.