Vote Rev: Program Director, Voter Contact Innovations
Job Post
Operations
United States · Remote
Posted on Jun 1, 2024
Vote Rev: Program Director, Voter Contact Innovations
Location
Remote
Salary
$167,300 / Yearly
Company
Vote Rev
Department
Organizing
Employer Type
Non-Profit
Application Link
Application Instructions
Apply here: https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/voterev/jobs/4040621008?gh_src=98a8baab8us
Application Link
https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/voterev/jobs/4040621008?gh_src=98a8baab8us
Job Description
**LOCATION**. Remote, with some travel required
**COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS**. $167,300 annually, with generous medical, dental, and vision
**ROLE TYPE**. This is a cycle-role with an end date of 12/31/24.
**About the opportunity**
Vote Rev has an incredibly powerful relational mobilization tactic that could lead to millions of voters being activated this fall, resulting in what could be the largest relational voter contact program in history. The Program Director of Voter Contact Innovations will report to the Director of Partner Success and work closely with the Directors of Research and Operations to develop and execute a voter contact program that scales Vote’s Revs proven scalable relational turnout program, [site-based vote tripling](https://vimeo.com/930880259?share=copy), and pilots another promising site-based relational turnout tactic.
The main program that will be run by the Program Director is a tactic we call ‘site-based vote tripling’ (SBVT), where canvassers go to high traffic locations like grocery store parking lots or college campuses during Early Vote and on Election Day and ask passersby to text five or more friends on the spot. When implemented according to best practices on college campuses, SBVT produces between 30 and 50 voter contacts per canvasser-hour. A 2022 randomized controlled trial (the gold standard in testing) proved that this tactic boosts turnout.
The Program Director will oversee a program with an estimated budget of $10m-$40m, operating in up to seven states, and using multiple vendors. Success looks like deploying thousands of paid canvassers across the country to engage in high-fidelity SBVT implementations that net thousands of votes across the country.
We aim to make an offer this role by no later than June 14, to enable the new hire to begin the week of June 17 to take part in hiring and program development in advance of a dry run in the Wisconsin primary (August 13), where canvassing could begin as early as the week of July 8. However, there will be uncertainty about the size of the program even until September, since fundraising will still be underway. Given the uncertainties, we aim to (1) decide on the flexibly scalable program design at the latest by July 31st, (2) dedicate the first portion of funds raised to hiring a team to work with the Program Director and paying their salaries through November 30, 2024, and (3) decide on the final budget and scale of the program by October 7th. If the program is not feasible or possible, Vote Rev will work with the new hire to transition the role to a different one within the team that advances Vote Rev’s mission and aligns with the Program Director’s interests and experiences. The organization will fulfill its commitment to employment until December 31, 2024.
**Note:** We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns to apply.
**Responsibilities**
_Program design_
- Work with the Director of Partner Success, the Director of Research and the senior leadership team to scale SBVT, and/or pair SBVT scaling with another high-impact relational turnout tactic.
- Support the Research Team in determining which method of evaluation, if any, is the best fit and most feasible: a quasi-experiment, mixed methods approach, or a “gold standard” randomized controlled trial
- Design a program to deploy canvassers across several states
- Run small dry-runs in state primaries to pinpoint the larger program’s scope, costs, best practices, and failure points
- Work with the Director of Operations and Vote Rev’s legal counsel to develop systems for risk management
- Create and oversee the program budget and adapt depending on funds secured
- Design and implement strong systems to detect and prevent canvasser fraud
_Fundraising momentum and buy-in_
- Work with the Executive Director and Senior Development Manager to harness fundraising momentum for the program and build buy-in among our donors
- Regularly prepare and present to our donors and stakeholders on program design, performance, outputs, and findings
_Management_
- Possibly recruit, hire, and manage a 3 - 9 person team, depending on the scope of the project
- Engage in regular check-ins and feedback sessions with direct reports and your supervisor, the Director of Partner Success
- Manage a $10m-$40m budget
- Vet, contract with, oversee the training of, and monitor the progress of paid canvass firms
- Manage and ensure program health through appropriate resource allocation, prioritization and focus, and identify key areas for improvement throughout the cycle
- Set a tone of engaged coaching and leadership for all direct reports, creating a positive, cohesive team environment focused on success and professional growth
- Collaborate with the Partner Success and Research teams to ensure that best practices are applied
_Documentation and learnings_
- Report out regularly to the Department Heads on program performance and outputs
- Document all aspects of the program, from planning and execution to wind down
- Develop and present a retrospective report at the end of the year
**Who we're looking for**
- A minimum of 8 years of work experience in Democratic political campaigns
- At least one year of Campaign Management experience on a federal or statewide race OR at least one year of experience in a leadership role (such as an Organizing Director, or other role hiring or supervising a team) on a statewide campaign or independent expenditure program
- Subject matter expertise about today’s voter engagement tactics, such as canvassing, phone banking, and voter registration
- Multiple cycles of experience experience working with paid canvass firms running large scale programs
- Experience managing a budget and overseeing the scaling of a program with complex logistics
- Demonstrated ability to guide a program to success under pressure in a dynamic situation
**Reasons to love this role**
- Your work will support the culmination of years of a unique blend of field work, design, and behavioral science research. Vote Rev can mainstream the tactics that could be the margin of victory in key races in 2024, and this work will play a vital role in that!
- Ability to make a difference in the 2024 election while still maintaining work-life balance.
**Compensation and benefits**
- **Compensation**: $167,300
- **Paid time off**: All federal holidays. Each employee accrues 1.5 days of PTO each month (up to 18 days). The period of September 4, 2024 - November 6, 2024 is considered a vacation blackout period, and time off will only be approved for emergencies. Employees will still have regular weekends off, and after the Election Day all employees will have every Friday off, and December 23-31 (so Thursday, December 19 will be the last working day of the year).
- **Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental benefits**: our medical plan option covers you with a generous PPO plan with a $1,000 deductible at no cost to you. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave
**Timeline**
This application is rolling, and we encourage interested applicants to apply as soon as possible. We intend to close this application by June 5, 2024, but it could close earlier pending application volume.
We expect to make an offer to a candidate no later than June 14, 2024, and would like to be the start date as soon as possible after the offer is made. The hiring process consists of the following steps. At each step, some applicants will be removed from consideration and notified if they are not moving forward:
- **Resume and application questionnaire screen:** This step is to establish the baseline for candidates we will advance through the process.
- **Phone interview:** This will be a more in-depth conversation with a member of the Vote Rev team, and might include answering scenario-based questions.
- **Case study:** An at-home assignment that you are expected to take less than 2 hours to complete. This gives us a chance to see how you think and see an example work product.
- **Final interview:** At least two and no more than four applicants will be called back for a set of final-round interviews with the Hiring Manager, Deputy Executive Director Ryan Cohen, and other members of the Vote Rev team. You should plan to reserve up to three hours of your time during business hours for this final round, if you advance to this step.
- **References:** We will ask for three professional and personal references for our top one or two candidates to learn more about working with them before extending an offer.
- **Job offer:** We provide our best and final offer in terms of compensation, which will be within the salary band shown in the job description. We base our offer on the number of years of relevant work experience and where that fits within our internal salary leveling system. We do not negotiate salary or other benefits due to research finding that introducing opportunities to negotiate results in pay disparities that are not correlated with competency. While the start date is somewhat negotiable, we have a strong preference for candidates who can start as soon as possible.
**About the organization**
Vote Rev is a PAC that designs and quickly mainstreams field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win. Its sister organization, Vote Rev Action Fund (VRAF), works with and for nonprofits that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities. The two organizations design prototypes of new voter and civic engagement tactics, refine early-stage but promising ideas, and then stress test those ideas, subjecting them to randomized controlled trials. Through this work, they develop new tactics to mobilize hard-to-reach voters and boost turnout. Vote Rev and Vote Rev Action Fund – with a shared staffing structure where each team member dedicates a portion of their time to each entity – support progressive campaigns and nonprofit organizations, respectively, to help them implement these tactics at scale through end-to-end support services.
In 2020 (when we were known as “VoteTripling.org”), Vote Rev and VRAF released [polling place vote tripling](https://vimeo.com/672071745?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=163930602) (PPVT) — an in-person relational voter engagement tactic — and trained dozens of partners on it, including the Biden-Harris campaign. Vote Rev’s partners' 94,000 canvasser-hours of PPVT produced 1,100,000 friend-to-friend reminders to vote – 5x as many as the official Biden campaign app! PPVT was featured in [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/28/daily-202-amid-coronavirus-democrats-look-new-ways-juice-turnout-among-irregular-voters/), [The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-vote-tripling-project-is-betting-that-non-voters-will-vote-if-a-friend-asks-them-to), and [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/voter-turnout-2020-election.html).
Since then, we’ve designed and tested other simple and powerful tactics, including [site-based vote tripling (SBVT)](https://vimeo.com/930880259?share=copy) (formerly known as high-traffic on-the-spot (HTOTS) relational turnout), an in-person, second-generation PPVT done at non-polling place high-traffic sites. In 2022, campaigns and allied organizations using PPVT and SBVT produced 450K relational reminders — and during the 2022 Georgia Senate Runoff, VRAF ran a lightning-fast randomized trial of SBVT that proved its effectiveness at boosting turnout and mobilizing hard-to-reach voters.
In 2024, we’ll boost over ten thousand net votes through Vote Rev’s work mainstreaming these tactics to Democratic campaigns and allied organizations, and VRAF’s work mainstreaming them to nonpartisan civic engagement organizations!
Vote Rev and VRAF are based in Los Angeles, CA, with an additional office in downtown Brooklyn, NY, and employees nationwide. We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns and voter engagement nonprofits to apply.
Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.
**Requirements for the organization**
- Commitment to the mission of the organization to design and quickly mainstream field-tested voter engagement innovations that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities
- Commitment to understand and actively oppose racism and promote equity
- Commitment to working with and for teams of diverse individuals, and, to reducing disparities in whose voice is heard in the electoral space
- Demonstrated awareness of one’s own cultural identity and ability to build relationships and collaborate across lines of difference
**Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. **
Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.
**MANDATORY COVID-19 VACCINATION POLICY**
All employees must be fully vaccinated and boosted (once eligible) for COVID-19 as a term and condition of employment at Vote Rev Action Fund unless an exemption or deferral has been approved.
New employees must be fully vaccinated before their start date unless an exemption due to a medical condition or a sincerely held religious belief or practice is granted.
**COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS**. $167,300 annually, with generous medical, dental, and vision
**ROLE TYPE**. This is a cycle-role with an end date of 12/31/24.
**About the opportunity**
Vote Rev has an incredibly powerful relational mobilization tactic that could lead to millions of voters being activated this fall, resulting in what could be the largest relational voter contact program in history. The Program Director of Voter Contact Innovations will report to the Director of Partner Success and work closely with the Directors of Research and Operations to develop and execute a voter contact program that scales Vote’s Revs proven scalable relational turnout program, [site-based vote tripling](https://vimeo.com/930880259?share=copy), and pilots another promising site-based relational turnout tactic.
The main program that will be run by the Program Director is a tactic we call ‘site-based vote tripling’ (SBVT), where canvassers go to high traffic locations like grocery store parking lots or college campuses during Early Vote and on Election Day and ask passersby to text five or more friends on the spot. When implemented according to best practices on college campuses, SBVT produces between 30 and 50 voter contacts per canvasser-hour. A 2022 randomized controlled trial (the gold standard in testing) proved that this tactic boosts turnout.
The Program Director will oversee a program with an estimated budget of $10m-$40m, operating in up to seven states, and using multiple vendors. Success looks like deploying thousands of paid canvassers across the country to engage in high-fidelity SBVT implementations that net thousands of votes across the country.
We aim to make an offer this role by no later than June 14, to enable the new hire to begin the week of June 17 to take part in hiring and program development in advance of a dry run in the Wisconsin primary (August 13), where canvassing could begin as early as the week of July 8. However, there will be uncertainty about the size of the program even until September, since fundraising will still be underway. Given the uncertainties, we aim to (1) decide on the flexibly scalable program design at the latest by July 31st, (2) dedicate the first portion of funds raised to hiring a team to work with the Program Director and paying their salaries through November 30, 2024, and (3) decide on the final budget and scale of the program by October 7th. If the program is not feasible or possible, Vote Rev will work with the new hire to transition the role to a different one within the team that advances Vote Rev’s mission and aligns with the Program Director’s interests and experiences. The organization will fulfill its commitment to employment until December 31, 2024.
**Note:** We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns to apply.
**Responsibilities**
_Program design_
- Work with the Director of Partner Success, the Director of Research and the senior leadership team to scale SBVT, and/or pair SBVT scaling with another high-impact relational turnout tactic.
- Support the Research Team in determining which method of evaluation, if any, is the best fit and most feasible: a quasi-experiment, mixed methods approach, or a “gold standard” randomized controlled trial
- Design a program to deploy canvassers across several states
- Run small dry-runs in state primaries to pinpoint the larger program’s scope, costs, best practices, and failure points
- Work with the Director of Operations and Vote Rev’s legal counsel to develop systems for risk management
- Create and oversee the program budget and adapt depending on funds secured
- Design and implement strong systems to detect and prevent canvasser fraud
_Fundraising momentum and buy-in_
- Work with the Executive Director and Senior Development Manager to harness fundraising momentum for the program and build buy-in among our donors
- Regularly prepare and present to our donors and stakeholders on program design, performance, outputs, and findings
_Management_
- Possibly recruit, hire, and manage a 3 - 9 person team, depending on the scope of the project
- Engage in regular check-ins and feedback sessions with direct reports and your supervisor, the Director of Partner Success
- Manage a $10m-$40m budget
- Vet, contract with, oversee the training of, and monitor the progress of paid canvass firms
- Manage and ensure program health through appropriate resource allocation, prioritization and focus, and identify key areas for improvement throughout the cycle
- Set a tone of engaged coaching and leadership for all direct reports, creating a positive, cohesive team environment focused on success and professional growth
- Collaborate with the Partner Success and Research teams to ensure that best practices are applied
_Documentation and learnings_
- Report out regularly to the Department Heads on program performance and outputs
- Document all aspects of the program, from planning and execution to wind down
- Develop and present a retrospective report at the end of the year
**Who we're looking for**
- A minimum of 8 years of work experience in Democratic political campaigns
- At least one year of Campaign Management experience on a federal or statewide race OR at least one year of experience in a leadership role (such as an Organizing Director, or other role hiring or supervising a team) on a statewide campaign or independent expenditure program
- Subject matter expertise about today’s voter engagement tactics, such as canvassing, phone banking, and voter registration
- Multiple cycles of experience experience working with paid canvass firms running large scale programs
- Experience managing a budget and overseeing the scaling of a program with complex logistics
- Demonstrated ability to guide a program to success under pressure in a dynamic situation
**Reasons to love this role**
- Your work will support the culmination of years of a unique blend of field work, design, and behavioral science research. Vote Rev can mainstream the tactics that could be the margin of victory in key races in 2024, and this work will play a vital role in that!
- Ability to make a difference in the 2024 election while still maintaining work-life balance.
**Compensation and benefits**
- **Compensation**: $167,300
- **Paid time off**: All federal holidays. Each employee accrues 1.5 days of PTO each month (up to 18 days). The period of September 4, 2024 - November 6, 2024 is considered a vacation blackout period, and time off will only be approved for emergencies. Employees will still have regular weekends off, and after the Election Day all employees will have every Friday off, and December 23-31 (so Thursday, December 19 will be the last working day of the year).
- **Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental benefits**: our medical plan option covers you with a generous PPO plan with a $1,000 deductible at no cost to you. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave
**Timeline**
This application is rolling, and we encourage interested applicants to apply as soon as possible. We intend to close this application by June 5, 2024, but it could close earlier pending application volume.
We expect to make an offer to a candidate no later than June 14, 2024, and would like to be the start date as soon as possible after the offer is made. The hiring process consists of the following steps. At each step, some applicants will be removed from consideration and notified if they are not moving forward:
- **Resume and application questionnaire screen:** This step is to establish the baseline for candidates we will advance through the process.
- **Phone interview:** This will be a more in-depth conversation with a member of the Vote Rev team, and might include answering scenario-based questions.
- **Case study:** An at-home assignment that you are expected to take less than 2 hours to complete. This gives us a chance to see how you think and see an example work product.
- **Final interview:** At least two and no more than four applicants will be called back for a set of final-round interviews with the Hiring Manager, Deputy Executive Director Ryan Cohen, and other members of the Vote Rev team. You should plan to reserve up to three hours of your time during business hours for this final round, if you advance to this step.
- **References:** We will ask for three professional and personal references for our top one or two candidates to learn more about working with them before extending an offer.
- **Job offer:** We provide our best and final offer in terms of compensation, which will be within the salary band shown in the job description. We base our offer on the number of years of relevant work experience and where that fits within our internal salary leveling system. We do not negotiate salary or other benefits due to research finding that introducing opportunities to negotiate results in pay disparities that are not correlated with competency. While the start date is somewhat negotiable, we have a strong preference for candidates who can start as soon as possible.
**About the organization**
Vote Rev is a PAC that designs and quickly mainstreams field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win. Its sister organization, Vote Rev Action Fund (VRAF), works with and for nonprofits that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities. The two organizations design prototypes of new voter and civic engagement tactics, refine early-stage but promising ideas, and then stress test those ideas, subjecting them to randomized controlled trials. Through this work, they develop new tactics to mobilize hard-to-reach voters and boost turnout. Vote Rev and Vote Rev Action Fund – with a shared staffing structure where each team member dedicates a portion of their time to each entity – support progressive campaigns and nonprofit organizations, respectively, to help them implement these tactics at scale through end-to-end support services.
In 2020 (when we were known as “VoteTripling.org”), Vote Rev and VRAF released [polling place vote tripling](https://vimeo.com/672071745?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=163930602) (PPVT) — an in-person relational voter engagement tactic — and trained dozens of partners on it, including the Biden-Harris campaign. Vote Rev’s partners' 94,000 canvasser-hours of PPVT produced 1,100,000 friend-to-friend reminders to vote – 5x as many as the official Biden campaign app! PPVT was featured in [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/28/daily-202-amid-coronavirus-democrats-look-new-ways-juice-turnout-among-irregular-voters/), [The New Yorker](https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-vote-tripling-project-is-betting-that-non-voters-will-vote-if-a-friend-asks-them-to), and [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/voter-turnout-2020-election.html).
Since then, we’ve designed and tested other simple and powerful tactics, including [site-based vote tripling (SBVT)](https://vimeo.com/930880259?share=copy) (formerly known as high-traffic on-the-spot (HTOTS) relational turnout), an in-person, second-generation PPVT done at non-polling place high-traffic sites. In 2022, campaigns and allied organizations using PPVT and SBVT produced 450K relational reminders — and during the 2022 Georgia Senate Runoff, VRAF ran a lightning-fast randomized trial of SBVT that proved its effectiveness at boosting turnout and mobilizing hard-to-reach voters.
In 2024, we’ll boost over ten thousand net votes through Vote Rev’s work mainstreaming these tactics to Democratic campaigns and allied organizations, and VRAF’s work mainstreaming them to nonpartisan civic engagement organizations!
Vote Rev and VRAF are based in Los Angeles, CA, with an additional office in downtown Brooklyn, NY, and employees nationwide. We are dedicated to creating an organization that reflects the diversity of the country we serve. We strongly encourage women, people of color, and others who are underrepresented in campaigns and voter engagement nonprofits to apply.
Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.
**Requirements for the organization**
- Commitment to the mission of the organization to design and quickly mainstream field-tested voter engagement innovations that amplify the power of historically disenfranchised communities
- Commitment to understand and actively oppose racism and promote equity
- Commitment to working with and for teams of diverse individuals, and, to reducing disparities in whose voice is heard in the electoral space
- Demonstrated awareness of one’s own cultural identity and ability to build relationships and collaborate across lines of difference
**Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. **
Given campaign finance restrictions, candidates for this position must possess valid work authorizations, and cannot be foreign nationals. This means that we are legally prohibited from hiring anyone for this position who is not a US citizen, lawful permanent resident (green card holder), or DACA recipient. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.
**MANDATORY COVID-19 VACCINATION POLICY**
All employees must be fully vaccinated and boosted (once eligible) for COVID-19 as a term and condition of employment at Vote Rev Action Fund unless an exemption or deferral has been approved.
New employees must be fully vaccinated before their start date unless an exemption due to a medical condition or a sincerely held religious belief or practice is granted.