New Jersey Advocacy Manager

The NJ Advocacy Manager is responsible for educating people about participatory democracy (PD), including participatory budgeting (PB), in New Jersey, building a network of advocates in New Jersey and managing our New Jersey Seeds program, a cohort learning program to build capacity for leaders in New Jersey to advocate for and implement participatory democracy practices in their communities. This includes building relationships with nonprofits, advocacy organizations, governmental partners and residents of New Jersey to get processes approved or expanded. This role will focus on increasing the visibility and impact of PBP’s work and services in municipal, schools, and other settings in the state of New Jersey. Work is carried out independently and in collaboration with PBP staff and Board. This is a remote position, based in New Jersey. This position is a temporary full-time position through September 2025. 

Key Responsibilities

The following are the key responsibilities and areas of focus for this role. This is not an exhaustive list of responsibilities.

NJ Seeds Management (75%)

• Coordinate the application process for the NJ Seeds program, including supporting engagement of stakeholders in dissemination of the application across the state. 
• Manage the awardee process, including creating a rubric and score card and recruiting an external committee to help score applicants. 
• Support the development and implementation of curriculum for the NJ Seeds program, including developing individualized training support based on the needs of the cohort. 
• Manage in person convenings with the cohort or partners.
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New Jersey Advocacy Support (25%)

• Support a range of stakeholders—including representatives from government agencies, school districts, and community-based organizations—in crafting general and tailored approaches to get participatory budgeting processes approved.
• Track, manage, and implement advocacy strategies and practices to launch new participatory budgeting process processes and expand existing ones. This includes running capacity building and learning events and disseminating new materials with network partners. 
• Prepare and deliver educational talks and trainings to key stakeholders who are considering participatory budgeting or are budget decision-makers. 
• Serve as a liaison between prospective partners and other PBP staff, identifying where learning or growth opportunities are present, including for participatory democracy. 
• Track and manage our partnership leads, and their needs and timelines for PBP support. 

Skills, Knowledge and Expertise

Must Haves

• Deep connections and relationships to nonprofit, government, and advocacy organizations in New Jersey. 
• Ability to work effectively and build relationships with diverse stakeholders across the state of New Jersey.
• At least three years of relevant full-time experience in project management, community engagement and/or organizing. There are no educational requirements for this position. 
• Ability to organize, prioritize, and effectively manage a dynamic area of work and partnerships, including communicating progress. 
• Willingness to participate in shared and independent decision-making that builds on creative thinking and trust in oneself and others within a collaborative and distributed leadership structure.
• Ability to hold space with and for a diversity of partners and comfortably facilitate across differences and train stakeholders on participatory practices.
• Strong analytical, interpersonal, and communication skills, both verbal and written.
• Ability to sustain respectful and constructive relationships with others in a range of contexts, with a strong community orientation. 
• Adaptable and resourceful in the face of uncertainty and changing social and political contexts. 
• Strong attention to detail, ability to work on projects independently and/or autonomously.
• Excellent computer and technical skills; ability to work across platforms and to learn new technology quickly; especially skills in Microsoft Excel and Google Suite.
• Deep commitment to PBP’s mission and passion for participatory democracy and equity, with a strong emphasis on centering community voice. Demonstrated commitment to racial equity.
• This position must be based in New Jersey. 

Benefits

Our organizational practices strive to embody our core values of community, equity, learning, participatory democracy, and transparency. We make decisions together, through team-based processes, sociocratic consent, and a commitment to building trust in our team. This means all staff are deeply engaged in the organization’s planning and decision-making. 

An ideal candidate will thrive in a collaborative environment, be ready to dream big and turn those dreams into achievable goals with a deeply committed team. Our (virtual) office culture is evolving as we quickly grow, and we invite you to build it with us! 

We invest in the professional growth and personal care of our people, including strong benefits:

• Three (3) weeks annual paid vacation, eleven (11) paid holidays, five (5) floating holidays, and a week-long paid summer and end of year org-wide closure
• Full employee coverage for health insurance (including dental and vision), flexible spending account, life insurance; option available for dependents and/or spouses/partners to join at cost.
• Retirement plan with up to 2% employer match 
• Generous Sick & Wellbeing Leave, Family Leave, and Emergency Sick Leave policies
• Professional development resources as well as work from home resources
• Schedule and work site flexibility to accommodate your life, including families, continuing education, and community leadership.
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This position is remote based in New Jersey and offers ample flex time to accommodate the need for non-traditional hours. Salary range, depending on relevant experience: $75,000 - $87,500..

PBP is an Equal Opportunity Employer, strongly committed to building a staff that represents the diversity of communities we work in. We strongly encourage applications from black, indigenous, and people of color, women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ individuals.

About Participatory Budgeting Project

For 10 years, the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) has empowered people to participate in democracy through revolutionary civics in action and seeks to collaboratively transform democracy to center community power. Our work focuses on Participatory Democracy as a practice of collective governance where we all share real decision-making power rather than just a select few. This includes our work to expand Participatory Budgeting (PB) processes that give people real power over the money that affects their lives. Through our work with PB partners in over 30 cities, we have engaged over 534,000 people in deciding how to spend over $337 million. We support partners in establishing and running PD processes in a range of settings (e.g. cities, schools, organizations) across the United States.

PBP is a newly remote first organization and is at an exciting moment of transition, growth, and change. We continue to refine how we create an organizational culture and practices that cultivate a supportive work environment. We have a Co-Executive Leadership model that accompanies our organizational and decision-making structure based on sociocracy that provides a collaborative and distributed leadership structure.

PBP is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive organization. We do this by ensuring that our hiring practices are equitable in each stage of a process. One way this shows up is by anonymizing application data when we do an initial review in an effort to reduce bias. In order to make sure the resume you share is easy for the software to read, we recommend you upload the document as a simply formatted Microsoft Word file or PDF. This will help the platform to capture your experience accurately.