What will I work on?
Last year, our campaign partners included MoveOn, Democracy for America and Everytown for Gun Safety. Our organizers turned out voters to the polls last fall to lift up Senate candidates who supported women’s health, advocated for background checks and safer gun laws that will save lives, and more. This year, we’re adding more campaigns—working with the National Education Association, Toxics Action Center and more.
You'll learn by doing
When you begin with Change Corps, you’ll receive training from some of the most influential and experienced changemakers in the country, like Bill McKibben of 350.org, Justin Ruben of MoveOn.org, Van Jones, of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and host of CNN’s Crossfire, and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood. You’ll learn the basic skills of organizing and the ins and outs of running a campaign, and get briefed on pressing political issues, including global warming, money in politics, reducing gun violence, and women’s health. At the end of the month, you’ll get your first assignment.
Over the course of the year, you’ll be planning and running grassroots campaigns, organizing town hall meetings, building powerful coalitions of groups, setting up and speaking at news conferences, lobbying lawmakers and much more. Although there is no typical day or week, you should expect to work 60 or more hours a week and a couple of weekends a month for trainings, regional meetings, conferences or campaign events. And when push comes to shove, we do whatever it takes to win, and during those times, we work closer to 80 hours a week.
You’ll direct a summer canvass office and mobilize people to take action on one of the issues you’ll work on. As a canvass director, you’re out in the field three days a week—knocking on doors or stopping people on busy street corners, and then recruiting, training, and managing a staff of 10-60 to canvass alongside you to hit your campaign goals. Canvassing, along with donor fundraising, grant fundraising and staff recruitment, represent the kind of institution-building you’ll learn as an organizer—the institution-building that allows the campaigns we work on to sustain long-term battles.
The position
You’ll work on 3-5 campaigns during the year, so you’ll be moving around quite a bit. We’ll definitely take your preferences into account, but at the end of the day we’ll ask you to go where you’re needed most.
After our three-step training program, you’ll have learned the ropes, gained invaluable hands-on experience and you’ll have made a real difference on issues you’re passionate about. Best of all, you’ll be ready to become an organizer with the types of groups we partner with. Your staff director will work with you to find the best position coming right out of the program.
The target annual compensation for this position is $26,000. Change Corps offers a competitive benefits package. We also offer an excellent training program and opportunities for advancement.
We are not accepting applications at this time.
Change Corps is an equal opportunity employer and will not discriminate against any employee or applicant on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, age, sex, handicap, pregnancy, sexual orientation, or veteran status.