Reports to: Senior Manager of Campus Organizing

About us: 

As the JVP family of organizations, we are growing, developing and mobilizing a powerful grassroots, multiracial base of Jews toward Palestinian freedom and the end of Israeli apartheid and occupation.

About you:

A committed and passionate organizer, you thrive on building relationships and developing leaders. You are deeply invested in growing and developing the leadership of Jewish students as part of progressive movements working towards Palestinian freedom and collective liberation. 

About the role:

The student organizer will build, sustain, and strengthen JVP student organizing across the country, cultivating the student people power that takes strategic action and advances JVP strategy on campus. This includes supporting existing chapters & coaching existing leaders to organize effectively, as well as developing new chapters & student leaders. This may include support around navigating local partnerships; building effective decision-making, group structure, and group culture; finding the most effective paths to action, including interpreting national strategies for their local context; absorbing new people effectively; and more. This is relational work rooted in core organizing practices of basebuilding, leadership development, and strategic action. 

Duties include: 

• Serving as a primary point of contact and organizing support with JVP student leaders and student chapters (currently 35+ groups), including limited support of emerging/potential chapters.

• Developing student leadership through individual & group coaching, as well as through intentional training. This includes connecting students to existing JVP. trainings/resources and non-JVP trainings/resources, as well as identifying needs for JVP student-specific trainings/resources and supporting them to happen, in coordination with their supervisor and other staff.

• Building and maintaining the containers for effective communication and coordination with student chapters at scale; this may include problem-solving and innovating to meet the needs of the program. 

• Integrating and connecting student chapters into broader organizational systems and opportunities; this includes maintaining data on student chapters, recruiting students for trainings & calls, and overall working with other staff to de-silo students from JVP as a whole.

• Conveying and building buy-in around JVP organizational positions, strategies, messaging, and approaches with student leaders, with the support of broader organizational materials, tools, and calls as well as the Senior Campus Strategist.

• Assessing skills, leadership potential, and organizational alignment of individual leaders and individual chapters to inform organizational prioritization as well as recruitment (for example, being able to identify and recruit students best-suited to media work, talking to Congress, or taking leadership to support other student chapters). 

• Mobilizing student chapters effectively in rapid response moments (including navigating backlash) as well as long-term campaigns in ways that grow their base and develop leadership.

• Identifying and recruiting students for key roles that advance JVP’s broader strategies (e.g. media work, speaking with Congress).

• Periodic travel to visit student chapters, for member gatherings, and for JVP’s annual staff retreat.

• Fundraising responsibilities during JVP bi-annual fundraising campaigns that all staff share. 

• Other duties as assigned.

JVP is a union workplace, and this role is part of our staff bargaining unit.

Skills and qualities we are looking for:

• Relational and communicative: Understands that organizing is fundamentally built on relationships, and orients to the work in that way. Has enthusiasm for meeting and engaging with people, builds authentic relationships across lines of difference, and communicates effectively with others (both verbally and written).

• Develops leaders: Able to successfully develop leadership of Jewish college students, and in particular Jews from marginalized communities. Holds an organizing orientation where being a leader means developing other leaders, and effectively supports organizers’ growth through coaching, training, support, and feedback. Recognizes ways that race and other identities (including their own) intersect in the work, especially in Jewish communities, and is able to build leadership of Black Jews, Indigenous Jews, Jews of Color and Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews, as well as anti-racist leadership of white & Ashkenazi Jews.

• Strategic and curious: Able to focus on top-line goals in the work and how we get there. Can grasp the subtleties of complex issues, identify patterns, hold nuance and balance conflicting priorities. Approaches challenges with curiosity. Has some understanding of the broader political landscape and what it will take to win.

• Foundational organizing skills: Has foundational organizing skills to build power, build groups, and support campaigns. Has an orientation towards building power and shifting power. Works collaboratively and effectively with groups, including facilitation. Can effectively support groups to: create organizing goals, focus their energies in strategic ways, and take strategic action. Has some campaign organizing experience, meaning harnessing collective & strategic action towards a target, in relationship to longer-term goals.

• Aligned with JVP strategy: Aligned with and rooted in JVP’s values, overall political analysis, and strategy -- including a commitment to building Jewish anti-Zionist community on campuses as part of the movement for Palestinian & collective liberation. Able to support the building of Jewish anti-Zionist analysis, culture and ritual. Rooted in values of justice for all people, and works to express those values in their work & organizing approach, including in forging connections across movements.

Please note: As part of JVP’s commitment to equity and transparency, we have a no negotiation policy. Salary negotiations can introduce bias and perpetuate wage inequality.

Our Job Application Process: 

We aim to be transparent and efficient in our hiring process. Each question you will be asked throughout our hiring process ties directly back to one of the skills and experiences listed above. In each stage, you will be asked to provide examples of these skills and experiences or how you would draw on your experience to handle a scenario commonly found at JVP. Our typical hiring process includes: 

• Job application: You will not be asked to submit a cover letter. Instead, the application consists of several questions related to the role you are applying for. Your answers will be assessed anonymously by the hiring committee, based on the skills outlined above. You may be required to upload a CV or resume. The hiring committee will not look at your CV/resume or any identifying information until you have been invited to a first round interview, and will make those initial decisions based on your answers to the initial set of questions. 

• 25 min video interview: usually with the hiring manager and staff members you would work with on a regular basis

• Written work assessment, responding to a scenario commonly found on the job.

• 50 min video interview: May be the same group of staff or a slightly larger group as the first interview 

• Reference check

Depending on logistics and scheduling, our hiring process generally takes about 4-5 weeks from the job closing to a job offer. We let candidates know after each step in the process, once we’ve made a decision, whether they are moving forward to the next stage or not, so candidates know the status of their application. 

People of color, Sephardi and/or Mizrahi applicants, people with disabilities, and transgender or gender non-conforming applicants strongly encouraged to apply.

Jewish Voice for Peace opposes anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, and anti-Arab bigotry and oppression. JVP does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, age, ethnicity, religion, national origin, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, sex, marital status, disability, or status as a U.S. veteran.

Benefits of working at JVP: 

• A four day, 32 hour work week for bargaining unit staff (except during rapid response, when all staff work a five day, 40 hour week)

• Up to 16 accumulated vacation days per year

• Up to 12 sick days per year

• Paid time off for political education and anti-racist training

• 17 paid holidays (9 floating and 8 federal)

• Health, vision, and dental insurance with premiums currently paid by JVP, and 15% of family benefits to be paid by JVP

• A supplemental health fund for trans and gender nonconforming staff

• Leave without pay, bereavement, parental leave and medical leave

• Flexible Spending benefit

• 1% of salary paid into 401k by JVP

JVP is committed to providing flexible work arrangements that suit the needs of our staff. All our positions are remote and based in the United States.