Policy Campaigns Manager

Position Title: Policy Campaigns Manager, Welcoming Neighbors Network

Location: Fully Remote

Reports to: Director – Welcoming Neighbors Network

Hours per week (average): 40

Overtime Status: Exempt

Salary Range: $75,000 - $90,000

Welcoming Neighbors Network (WNN) is seeking a strategic, energetic, collaborative Policy Campaigns Manager to support state and local advocates in passing ambitious pro-housing policy. 

Through coalition-building, community organizing, policy development, and grassroots lobbying, Welcoming Neighbors Network member organizations advocate to legalize abundant housing options, lower the cost of housing, reduce the displacement of marginalized communities, and ensure all Americans can find safe, stable housing that fits their needs and budgets. As a national network, WNN members come together to hone strategies, support one another, share lessons, replicate successes, avoid mistakes, and tackle challenges creatively.

Our Policy Campaigns Manager will accelerate abundant housing victories across the country – providing essential strategic and tactical support to on-the-ground advocates in states and cities experiencing housing shortages and runaway home costs.

In partnership with the Director of the Welcoming Neighbors Network coordinating team, the Policy Campaigns Manager will be the primary point of contact, adviser, and accomplice to a large portion of the state and/or local campaigns supported by WNN.

Responsibilities include:

• Establish campaigns
  • Support local members or partners to craft winning campaign plans, adopting and adapting the proven strategies from prior successful city and state efforts.
  • If no local member or partner exists in a geography with a key window of opportunity, research, identify, and build relationships with potential partners, ultimately recruiting one or more lead organizations.
  • In coordination with local leads, power map policy-makers to pinpoint priority coalition partners to recruit into campaign efforts.
  • Advise and coach local leads on how to approach key potential coalition partners.
  • Where appropriate, assist in recruiting organizations into the on-the-ground pro-housing coalition.
  • Assist local leads in coalition management (at their request/approval).
• Equip campaigns
  • Provide local campaigns with communications and messaging best practices on pro-housing policy issues.
  • Work with local leads to adapt communications and messaging best practices to their circumstances.
  • Ghost-write bespoke collateral for target localities to support their specific policy priorities.
  • Assemble and distill relevant policy research to support the case for local campaigns’ policy priorities.
• Enhance campaigns
  • Produce rapid-response written material to address time-sensitive challenges and opportunities as they arise on the ground.
  • Track down answers to questions from advocates, or from policymakers (via those advocates).
  • Ensure local leads are aware of, and prepared for potential pitfalls and possibilities before they happen.
  • Where appropriate and requested by local advocates, leverage WNN’s national network to bring in well-suited outside experts and messengers to speak to specific local audiences.
• Ensure campaign policies work
  • Maintain in-the-weeds understanding of policy proposals as they relate to similar policies around the country and agitate local leads to insist on policy details that have a proven impact on housing abundance and home cost.
  • Analyze policy proposals and proposed amendments with an eye toward their impact on housing abundance and home cost.
  • Where appropriate and approved by local leads, craft policy proposals and potential amendments.
  • Stay apprised of general best practices in the abundant housing policy space, as well as relevant new findings.
  • (Plus other related responsibilities as needed)

Qualifications:

• Zeal for our organizational goals and strategies, including 
  • Passing ambitious pro-housing policy in communities across the country
  • Supporting local advocates to run powerful campaigns, 
  • Cultivating strong, creative, trusting coalitions, and 
  • Working with a diverse array of partners behind the scenes to accomplish our objectives.
• Dedication to building an inclusive, empowering organization that leans into collaboration, plays well with others, and values outcomes over credit.
• Commitment to racial and social equity, inclusion, and empowerment, inside our organization and in our work with partners and collaborators.
• Strong interpersonal abilities, with a willingness to cross boundaries and work with diverse people, including with unlikely allies
• Passion for building winning policy campaigns, rooted in tangible examples of successful campaign approaches both inside and outside of pro-housing policy
• Strong understanding of housing policy, with a specific focus on zoning, land use, and other regulatory factors that influence the ease or difficulty of building new workforce and affordable housing options
• Extraordinary writing skills, including the ability to turn around high-quality written content quickly
• Ability to code-switch (at least in your writing) between rhetoric that appeals to the left, center, and right
• Exceptional attention to detail, super organized, great time management, systems-thinking
• Calm under pressure and a commitment to kindness and respect
• Dynamic problem solving skills
• Comfortable with technology & ability to quickly learn to use new tech tools
• (Preferred but not necessary) Experience working on pro-housing campaigns, particularly those that have achieved meaningful policy change

Pay and benefits: This is a full-time, remote work position that offers flexibility in terms of hours and days. When it is safe to do so, regular travel will likely be necessary for this position. The salary range is $75,000 - $90,000 (depending on experience), with a comprehensive benefits package that includes 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision insurance for employees (and their families). Employees are able to enroll in 401k retirement plan and are eligible for a 3% automatic contribution and up to a 3% employer match on 401k contributions. Employees are also eligible for pre-tax transportation benefits. Employees will receive up to 180 hours of annual vacation time (accrued at 5 hours per pay period), 80 hours of health leave, up to 2 days of casual leave, and 20 hours of volunteer leave annually. Employees will also receive 13 paid holidays throughout the calendar year. Employees are eligible for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave after 90 days of employment.

About Welcoming Neighbors Network:

The Welcoming Neighbors Network (WNN) is a confederated network of independent, place-based organizations using proven, inclusive, alliance-building campaign strategies to enact zoning and other housing policy changes that will: 

• Enable fast-growing states and metros to grow more freely and fairly, without seeing the housing crises that plague places like the California Bay Area,
• Create more integrated communities with high social capital and other determinants of a healthy civil society, and
• Reduce the sprawl that socially isolates Americans, robs families of quality time, and destroys open spaces. 

The Welcoming Neighbors Network is a hub for local pro-housing groups and leaders to connect with one another across state lines. The Network documents and shares organizational and campaign resources, based on the successes and learning from across the membership. WNN also helps on-the-ground members and partners build capacity and power by providing access to their national relationships and economies of scale.  

WNN facilitates collaboration and peer-support of network members across the country and targets resources to maximize campaign impact. We embrace incremental victories on the way to transformative goals and we incorporate a wide variety of allies to navigate different political contexts to achieve policy goals. 

Welcoming Neighbors Network commits to building an organization that empowers the leadership of directly impacted communities, especially Black, Indigenous, Asian American, Latine, immigrant, and low-income or working class communities.  WNN prioritizes policy priorities that improve social and economic outcomes for historically oppressed communities, especially communities of color.

Hiring Statement

Welcoming Neighbors Network is a subproject of Social and Economic Strategies Center, a project of Hopewell Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity that incubates new and innovative public-interest projects and grant-making programs. Hopewell is committed to attracting, developing and retaining exceptional people, and to creating a work environment that is dynamic, rewarding and enables each of us to realize our potential. Hopewell’s work environment is safe and open to all employees and partners, respecting the full spectrum of race, color, religious creed, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, political affiliation, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, and all other classifications protected by law in the locality and/or state in which you are working.

To center the safety and well-being of its employees, Hopewell Fund requires that any employee who is required to conduct in-person activities for their job must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 within four weeks of their start date.  This position may require candidates to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.  Accommodations may be sought and approved in accordance with the law by contacting human resources at HR@hopewellfund.org. 

How to Apply

To apply, please submit a resume and cover letter to info@welcomingneighbors.us. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis and the position will be considered open until filled. Priority will be given to applications received by Sunday, September 10th.