Seattle Organizer

Starting Salary Range: $65,000-$70,000

Benefits include full medical, dental and vision coverage, Simple IRA match up to 3% of salary, transit pass, and generous vacation and holidays (starting at 15 days per year of vacation, plus a week off between Christmas and New Years, and 11 other paid holidays).

Position Type: Temporary (one year) full-time position; the position is hybrid, with regular in-person events and meetings. Employees must live in Washington State.

About Futurewise

Futurewise works throughout Washington state to encourage healthy, equitable and opportunity-rich communities, and to protect our most valuable farmlands, forests, and water resources through wise land use policies and practices.

We are a small but growing nonprofit, leading nationally groundbreaking policy development, advocacy and legal strategies in our field.

In the last five years, Futurewise has won major victories in the state legislature that require cities and counties to increase housing abundance and affordability, dismantle exclusionary zoning, prevent displacement, combat health disparities and environmental injustice, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and foster transit-oriented, climate resilient communities for all. These new state requirements build on Futurewise’s longstanding priorities to protect the beloved ecosystems, local food systems, and natural beauty of Washington State.

General Job Description

Now Futurewise seeks a talented and energetic organizer to lead on our work on the Seattle Comprehensive Plan and the zoning changes that will follow. Futurewise co-chairs the Complete Communities Coalition with a broad-based steering committee that identifies and advocates for shared priorities across the housing, business, environmental, and community development landscape with both inside lobbying and grassroots organizing tactics.

The Seattle Organizer will work closely with the Director of Local Advocacy and the Communications staff to lead this campaign. The Organizer will be responsible for recruiting and mobilizing grassroots supporters, cultivating volunteer leaders, coordinating with partners, and collaborating on the external advocacy strategy to advance policy goals.

This is an opportunity to work in a dynamic, inter‐disciplinary, and innovative work environment, experimenting and using your creativity to build a more sustainable and equitable future for communities in Washington State.

Position Details

Strategy Development

• Support development and implementation of local advocacy organizing strategy to maximize constituent power citywide
• Coordinate organizing strategy with lobbying and policy development
• Evaluate and adjust strategy as needed

Recruiting and Engaging Allies

• Attend coalition partner meetings
• Recruit and engage new partners and allied organizations
• Provide tools for allies to engage their members and help us identify leaders in key neighborhoods
• Create action alerts and other action opportunities for allies
• Recruit individual supporters from opponent groups

Communications (in collaboration with Communications team)

• Collaborate on compelling campaign messaging and narrative
• Collaborate with grassroots activists to share their stories in media and with council members and engage media outlets to generate coverage
• Share communications pieces and priorities with partner organizations

Mobilizing and Growing Grassroots Supporters

• Use internal and external databases (Futurewise supporters and relational organizing tools) to recruit grassroots supporters
• Build strong relationships with individual supporters and identify local community leaders to become Futurewise advocates
• Manage regular phone-banking and text-banking operations with supporters
• Help local supporters engage other organizations they are part of to bring in new partner organizations and neutralize opponents
• Assist supporters with petition gathering, letters and calls to legislators, public testimony, letters to the editor and op-eds in local news sources
• Coordinate with grant reporting

Qualifications

• At least 1 year of experience organizing through community organizations, labor, electoral campaigns or other similar efforts
• Experience building relationships and trust with people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to be strategic and creative in real-time response to changing campaign circumstances
• Flexibility to work independently and collaboratively, maintaining clear communication
• Experience with database software (such as Salsa Engage, NGPVAN, Empower), email marketing platforms (such as Salsa Engage), word processing, and social media platforms and/or ability to learn new platforms quickly
• Ability to work some nights and weekends
• Interest and familiarity with the issues of climate change, environmental justice, and housing affordability

Project Location

As a hybrid workplace, some work can be remote with the expectation of regular in-person meetings, events, and other volunteer engagement in Seattle. Employees must live in Washington State.