The North Carolina Conservation Network is seeking candidates for the position of Public Outreach Organizer. The NC Conservation Network is a statewide network of approximately 100 environmental, health, and environmental justice organizations. The NC Conservation Network directly advocates for equitable and sustainable solutions for our environment and public health.

The Public Outreach Organizer is a new position that will play a critical role in NC Conservation Network’s work. The ideal candidate will coordinate our on the ground efforts to organize activists and leaders, most likely in key local campaigns across North Carolina. The Organizer will help local groups coordinate campaigns (focused on county commissions, city councils, etc) and strengthen these campaigns by mobilizing the NC Conservation Network’s activists and coordinating with our allies. Typical tactics utilized would be coordinating letters to the editor, emails/phone calls to decision makers, meetings with elected officials, and hosting media events. In addition, the Public Outreach Organizer will mobilize our activists and allies to influence state and national issues (through emails, letters, meetings, etc) as needed.

Applicants should be excited about building an effective and long lasting citizen movement for healthy communities, clean air, clean water, and sustainable living in North Carolina. Ideal candidates will be excited about public speaking and able to connect with wide range of audiences, including business leaders and health professionals, under-represented communities, policy leaders, and especially passionate volunteers.

While our primary mode of communication with activists and the public is through email and online petitions, the Public Outreach Organizer will be more focused on building strong relationships and actions offline. The Organizer will recruit, engage, and train a strong set of “offline” citizen activists and leaders, especially to develop local leaders.

The Organizer will also work with our staff to increase the number of activists subscribing to our online action alerts through a variety of tactics including tabling and attendance at events across the state, networking, social media, online petition campaigns, and locally sponsored events.

Primary Responsibilities

• Organize to Win Campaigns: engage and mobilize our activist list of 20,000 North Carolinians to win campaigns, such as a passing a pro-transit referendum in a county, defeating an effort to weaken clean water rules in a city council vote, or generating hundreds of calls into a state legislator’s office from constituents in their district before a critical vote.
• Coordinate activists to attend offline events: lead event planning and recruitment for volunteer phone banks, event tabling, lobby days, media events, town hall forums, and public comment hearings.
• Strengthen leadership in our movement: recruit and train activists to become local leaders. Use a variety of online and offline tactics to recruit new activists, build excellent relationships with them, and turn them into strong leaders in their communities.
• Create action alerts and campaigns around key state and local environmental and public health issues: collaborate with our organizing and policy staff as well as allied organizations to create action alerts, events, and campaigns including online action alerts, postcards, petitions, phone calls, letters to the editor, and more.
• Facilitate organizing activist outreach to policymakers: work to generate emails, calls, and other communications with legislators and local elected officials on the top North Carolina environmental and public health issues.

Ideal Skills and Experience

• BA/BS, preferably in political science, public policy, communications or environmental studies/science.
• Understanding of the key components of citizen advocacy, state level nonprofits, politics, policy-makers, and media – especially in North Carolina.
• Very strong communication, networking, and public speaking skills.
• Strong writing skills and a creative thinker.
• Experience managing, engaging, and motivating volunteers and activists.
• An ability to work with a diverse cross-section of people across North Carolina.
• Comfort with technology and database management.
• Comfort working non-traditional hours, including occasional weekends and evenings.
• Willingness to travel across North Carolina on somewhat regular basis.

 Preferred

• 2-7 years of issue advocacy and organizing experience, preferably in North Carolina.
• Good knowledge of North Carolina politics and non-partisan issue advocacy.
• Experience and comfort with training and mobilizing diverse groups and individuals to advocate for good public policy.