Location: Preferably Brooklyn, NY, but we’re open to remote candidates within the US
Target Start Date: March 4, 2019
Salary Range: $50,000 to $65,000 per year, depending on experience (salary band given for Brooklyn; remote salaries will vary by cost-of-living adjustment)
Benefits: Vision, dental, & medical insurance; 403(b) retirement savings plan; generous vacation policy; parental leave; long-term disability; employee assistance program
Level: Entry or junior, based on applicant’s experience

ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW

At Democracy Works, we believe voting should fit the way we live. To that end, we build technology for voters and election administrators that simplifies the process to ensure that no voter should ever have to miss an election. Our team is reaching for a moonshot goal of 80 percent voter turnout. Since 2010, we have laid the groundwork to reach this goal, helping voters connect to a more modernized election system through the institutions they interact with in their daily lives.

TurboVote, our first service, helps voters register, stay registered, and cast a ballot in every election, from municipal to national. Our six-millionth voter signed up for TurboVote in 2018 thanks to the largest college, nonprofit, and corporate voter engagement coalition in the country, including more than 300 campuses, companies like Starbucks, Univision, Facebook, Google, Snapchat, and dozens more. Our work also includes the Voting Information Project, whose polling-place data received 123 million impressions in 2016 and Ballot Scout, which tracks absentee ballots through the mail, providing transparency in the vote-by-mail process and making it easier to follow up when things go awry.

The Democracy Works Voter Engagement Department partners with organizations to promote civic participation through the strategic use of TurboVote and our data products. The person filling this position, as a member of the higher education team within the Voter Engagement department, will lead outreach to colleges and universities.

POSITION OVERVIEW

As campus outreach lead, you will sustain and grow the TurboVote higher education partnerships program. You will be responsible for renewing contracts with existing higher education partners and bringing on new partners by generating leads, carrying those leads through necessary follow up tasks, and formalizing partnerships with signed contracts.

In this role, you will build relationships with key stakeholders at colleges and universities, as well as with fellow nonprofit organizations that support civic engagement at colleges and universities. You’ll become an expert in the world of higher education and cultivate a passion for promoting civic engagement. Also, you will persistently navigate the bureaucracy of external organizations.

Your job will include:

• carrying leads through pre-defined stages, each stage comprised of specific tasks that lead to a signed contract (this requires many hours of phone and email communication)
• attending relevant conferences and meetings; identifying speaking opportunities, and promoting the TurboVote program at those events
• diligently collecting and entering data into a constituent management system (a database) so that relationships can be tracked and actively managed
• collaborating with other organizations interested in increasing student voting to pursue shared goals
• developing, piloting, and evaluating new strategies to increase leads and grow our program while also refining current strategies that have proven successful
• supporting our higher education implementation team, when needed, to ensure partners have the best possible experience using TurboVote

You are:

• self-motivated in achieving goals, particularly goals lacking prescribed steps to success.
• a master of persuasion.
• diligent in your follow-up and in chasing an opportunity over time.
• enthusiastic about cold outreach and making new friends.
• comfortable with oral and written communication in a variety of settings, including phone presence, email outreach, and conference presentations.
• personally invested in the goal of increasing student voter turnout.

You have:

• experience making cold calls, tracking down decision-makers, and researching leads.
• a proven track record of meeting or exceeding individual goals.
• familiarity with higher education, government, large corporations, or another cautious, deliberate institutional culture.
• experience in nonprofit partnerships, business development, or junior account management roles (preferred, but not necessary).
• have worked with CRM tools (we use Insightly) or databases (preferred, but not necessary).

PHYSICAL DEMANDS

This position requires regular, daily use of a computer and phone. Domestic travel to approximately 6-10 conferences per year should be expected.

To apply, send a resume and brief, informal introduction to Shakhed at work@democracy.works with the subject “Will organize for democracy.” Please include how you found this job listing. We also encourage all applicants to state their pronouns when applying for any job opening at Democracy Works. From there, we’ll send you a short practical exercise designed to test some of your problem-solving skills, which we’ll anonymize and then evaluate in a blind review. Candidates with strong responses to the practical exercise will go through interview rounds (up to three) with different members of our team who interact closely with this position. We’ll ask for references from our top finalist(s), then make an offer.

Democracy Works is committed to diversity and inclusion in everything we do and aspires to have a team that’s representative of the voters we serve. When hiring, we practice proactive outreach to top talent that’s underrepresented in our sector (including Latino, Black, AAPI, and Indigenous candidates). We conduct an anonymized skills evaluation, to reduce implicit bias and resume-dependency in our process. We’re a woman- and gay-founded startup, and promote an inclusive culture that stands against racism, sexism, homophobia, and ableism (to name a few). To be explicit, we strongly encourage applicants of all races, ethnicities, political party associations, religions (or lack thereof), national origins, sexual orientations, genders, sexes, ages, abilities, and branches of military service.

Feel free to contact work@democracy.works if you have any questions about our commitment to inclusion or about general hiring practices, or if you need an accommodation for a medical condition during the hiring process. Democracy Works posts all current career opportunities at democracy.works/careers.