Labor and Community Job Opportunities, Opportunities

TESA Seeks Development and Communications Coordinator

The TESA Collective (The Toolbox for Education and Social Action) is a worker-owned cooperative that creates educational resources, games, and programs for social and economic change.

We’ve helped dozens of organizations and movements nationwide achieve their mission by developing social justice-based education tools and efforts. We’ve worked on issues ranging from building the cooperative movement, immigrant rights, anti-war efforts, environmental justice, and more. See a sample of our work with clients here.

Our other main effort is creating tools for social and economic change in house. This includes Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, Loud & Proud, and our most recent game, Rise Up: The Game of People & Power. Other products include teaching guides and a documentary.

Our current worker-owner, David, is transitioning out of TESA; and another worker-owner, Darya, who currently heads up our communications, is transitioning into our services department.

ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Grants: Many of our clients are nonprofits, and we often work with them to help them write grants for projects that they have hired us for or that we are collaborating on. In addition, TESA has nonprofit sponsors for specific programs that we initiate and run in house. This includes new product and program development. This position will be responsible for building a grant program, managing a grant calendar, finding new grants for TESA to apply to, coordinating the writing and application of grants, and working with our clients to develop their grants. This position will also be responsible for brainstorming which TESA projects could make for good grant matches.
  • Crowdfunding: TESA has run a number of crowdfunding initiatives in the past, our most recent being a Kickstarter for Rise Up: The Game of People & Power. We intend to increase this to at least a yearly effort going forward for our products. This position will be responsible for helping to design, implement, and carry out our crowdfunding initiatives. These will primarily be for our products and games.
  • Supporting Sales: This position will support in the sales of TESA’s products. This will happen through outreach to individuals, organizations, social media, advertisements, and so on.
  • Social media, email newsletter, press releases, media relations, and digital outreach:TESA uses digital communications  to sell our products, share news, update people about our work, get them involved in creating our resources, fundraise for our projects, and more. This position will manage our social media, a regular email newsletter, send occasional press releases, and occasionally pitch stories to media.
  • Occasional article and blog writing: One of TESA’s significant communications strategies in the past has been writing for media outlets and regularly updating our own blog. You can read a sample article and check out our blog. We’re looking for someone who can help us expand upon this strategy and who is interested in writing.

ABOUT WORKER-OWNERSHIP

This position is for a worker-ownership track at TESA. After eight months of working at TESA, the person filling this position will be eligible to become a member of the collective (a worker-owner).

  • Members get one equal share in the ownership of the collective and have one equal vote in its governance.
  • Members equitably share the benefits in the good times and share the burden in the hard times. The collective members equitably share profits at the end of the year.

After eight months, you and the rest of the collective will decide if you should become a worker-owner. If all parties agree, you will become an equal owner of the business.

We govern TESA on a consensus basis while empowering individual positions to oversee their operations. This position will have the opportunity to grow and expand. This position is for you if you want to work in an environment where you are encouraged to bring up your own ideas and see them through.

QUALIFICATIONS

  • Deep passion for social and economic change
  • Success with either grant writing, crowdfunding, or preferably both
  • Ability to work within a collective, a good collaborator, and self-motivated
  • Significant self-accountability
  • Computer skills
  • Strong writing
  • Previous communications experience
  • Able to juggle more than one project at a time
  • Connections to movements are considered a plus
  • Graphic design skills are considered a plus, but not essential

HOURS AND PAY

TESA defines full-time as 30 hours a week (though we sometimes work over this), given our dedication to ensuring that collective members have the ability to lead happy, healthy, well-rested lives outside of work. We are looking for someone who will start part-time at 20 hours a week but we are hopeful this position will grow into full time. The starting pay is $21.25 USD an hour. If you become a worker-owner after eight months, the pay increases to  is $23.75 USD an hour. Once this position becomes a worker-owner, they will also receive an equitable share of the collective’s profits alongside the rest of the members.

BENEFITS

  • Two-weeks paid vacation
  • 10 paid holiday days (your choice of when they are used)
  • Two unpaid weeks off at the end of December through the start of January
  • A flexible work schedule
  • Work remotely

LOCATION

Applicants can live in either the US or Canada. This is a work-from-home or shared office job, which means there is no required location. The other collective members of TESA are based in Western Massachusetts, Chicago, and Montreal, so proximity to those locations will be considered a plus, but not a necessity. We meet over video conference weekly and typically hold one in-person retreat a year.

This is not a contractor position—it is an employee position on a worker-owner track. However, we are open to discussing that if it is a candidate’s preference.

TO APPLY

We will be accepting applications through August 31. Two rounds of interviews will begin near the end of August or start of September. The ideal start date is October 3, with some flexibility.

Interested applicants should send a resume, cover letter, writing sample, and two references as soon as possible, but no later than 5 pm ET on August 31. Please send the materials as a single PDF document to contact@toolboxfored.org. The writing sample can be a link. The title of your e-mail should be “Development and Communications Coordinator – Your Last Name”. Please include your name in the file name. You can make out the cover letter to the Hiring Committee. No phone calls please.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis—early submissions are encouraged.

You can also email contact@toolboxfored.org with any questions. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

TESA does not and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, age, ancestry, disability, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of our activities or operations. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all collective members. We strongly encourage women, LGBTQ, and people of color to apply.