The Green Party’s Activism Manager leads on professionalising the tools and structures that enable our local grass roots activists to grow and organise the activist base. As Activism Manager, you will be dynamic and self-motivated, with a passion for people development and nurturing talent. You will understand the value of training and development programmes, why it’s so important that we diversify our activist base in every way and be absolutely focussed on making a big breakthrough at the 2022 and 2023 local elections.

Purpose of the role

The Green Party’s grass roots activists are motivated by a vision to transform politics to build a green and just society. Our activists primarily focus their activity on local election campaigning to get Green councillors elected who, working with local party groups, create change at the local level. The Activism Manager is at the centre of this work, creating structures to professionalise the way in which the party engages, organises, develops and utilises the skill of our party activists to play the fullest part possible in election campaigns.

 Working within the Field Team, the Activism Manager acts as a leader of a team that focusses on training, mentoring and coaching of activists across England and Wales; and providing the resources and tools to make local party organisation and effective local election campaigning doable. The postholder takes responsibility for delivering the party’s training programme to upskill and diversify the party’s grass roots activism with the ultimate goal of winning more elections.

During this one-year role, the postholder will have specific responsibility for taking the party to the next stage in developing our local activist journey, creating structures for local parties to recruit, support and encourage increased volunteer engagement - a key need identified during the consultation on our new strategic elections plan. The Activism Manager also has significant line management responsibility (currently seven direct reports).

Principal Roles and Responsibilities

Training and Development of Activists

 1.     Lead on a comprehensive programme of training and development of activists that provides a wide range of opportunities to suit all learning preferences, with the goal of creating an activist base that is the most skilled of any political party in England or Wales.

2.     Maintain a highly effective training strategy to empower activist leaders to build and develop their local parties, campaign teams and win local elections.

3.     Oversee the delivery of the party’s Campaign School, Candidate School, conference training and online training programmes.

4.     In liaison with the Local Elections Manager, manage the party’s digital activist resources to ensure there is a comprehensive offer of reference guides and self-learning tools, guides and templates.

5.     Lead the party’s local capacity building strategy for local parties to recruit and invest in their activists and link this very closely with election campaigning.

Attracting and Investing in All Talent

 6.     Lead the party’s approach to ensuring activism is attractive and appealing to every single person that shares the Green Party’s values and vision, regardless of their background or experience.

7.     Oversee the party’s approach to training, coaching and mentoring of local party activists and candidates to create an inclusive environment at the grass roots level.

8.     Gather and maintain data on the diversity of activists and candidates at all elections.

9.     Act decisively to address any under-representation in the party’s activist and candidate base, when compared with the membership base.

Improving our Electoral Performance

 10.  Take responsibility for electoral success and performance in a number of regions. Working closely with the Local Elections Manager and Constituencies Manager, co-develop and input into our strategic planning and ensure their consistent implementation.

11.  Lead and manage a team of Field Organisers and Local Party Support staff (Field staff) who provide intensive person-to-person and election campaign team coaching, mentoring and training that covers more than 290 local parties in England and Wales.

12.  Guide Field staff in working with regional or local chairs/coordinators and Field team manager colleagues in setting their objectives and priorities that reflect the strategic objectives of both the national and relevant regional or local parties.

13.  Oversee development and learning within the Field team through a programme of opportunities for staff to network and learn from one another, as well as to undertake individual formal or informal training.

Reporting and Other Responsibilities

 14.  Participate in and support selected national projects under the direction of the Head of Elections & Field Operations.

15.  Participate fully in the party’s General Election campaigns with particular responsibility for mobilisation of activists and provision of resources and training of activists.

APPLICATIONS

Applications to be submitted by 10am on Monday 4th October. Interviews will be held remotely (on Zoom) on 12th October. Please see the full job description and person specification here: https://www.greenparty.org.uk/jobs