Deputy Director, Partnership Development

ROLE TYPE. This is a cycle role with an end date of 11.30.2024.

APPLICATION DEADLINE. Rolling application. We will accept applications through Tuesday May 14th, but please get in your application as soon as possible.

COMPENSATION. $143,997 or $156,956, depending on experience.

About the opportunity

Vote Rev and Vote Rev Action Fund (VRAF) seek a salesperson and experienced relationship manager with deep field knowledge and expertise to (1) sell, negotiate, and finalize fee-for-service contracts with a range of progressive campaign and civic engagement ecosystem clients (focused primarily on the hard-side) and (2) execute those contracts to the highest standards. 

In this role, you will help develop pricing structure for Vote Rev’s mainstreaming work and carefully track successes and challenges to produce a suite of learnings and best practices after the cycle. You will engage hard-side clients in conversations about partnering with Vote Rev, as well as ensure that fee-for-service partner implementations of Vote Rev tactics, such as site-based vote tripling (SBVT), are executed with fidelity. You will oversee a small team to help with this work. You will work closely with and report to the Director of Partner Success, Marisa Kanof.

You should: 

• Have successful political sales experience, e.g. selling political consulting and support services or data or tech products
• Be an experienced relationship manager who can cultivate strong relationships with progressive organizations and convince them to enter into service contracts with Vote Rev to implement scaled relational turnout programs
• Have a thorough knowledge of the progressive political landscape and deep knowledge of how progressive organizations conduct electoral work; will also have first-hand experience with organizing, relational tactics, GOTV, or other campaign-specific field work
• Have excellent time management skills and be able to work independently and entrepreneurially in a remote environment with minimal supervision

Responsibilities

Sales of Vote Rev’s partner support services to hard- and soft-side groups for tactical implementation of Vote Rev tactics

• Strategy development. Help determine the organization-wide strategy around fee-for-service mainstreaming
• Sales. Prospect, conduct outreach to and secure $500k of contracts with hard- and soft-side groups for Vote Rev’s customized, hands-on support on implementing SBVT
• Sales materials creation. Develop customized sales materials across multiple mediums, tailored to each potential client, that clearly articulate the value proposition of our tactics and support services

Management and project management

• Hiring and people management. Possibly oversee the hiring and management of one to four additional staff to ensure Vote Rev clients’ success
• Client support and success. Track and execute multiple client projects concurrently and cross-functionally while following timelines, troubleshooting roadblocks, and ensuring all deadlines and deliverables are met
• Resource alignment. Help strategically allocate organizational resources and capacity in services of client success with Vote Rec tactical implementations
• Project management. Track relationship development and progress to goal in agreed-upon CRMs and goal trackers
• Donor materials creation. Work with the Director of Partner Success to provide timely updates to donors and other stakeholders about program design and performance

Requirements for the role

• A minimum of 12 years of work experience in the progressive ecosystem, with at least 4 of those year on Democratic political campaigns
• A strong network of senior-level contacts at and connectors to major campaigns and soft-side organizations in states such as AZ, GA, MI, MT, NC, NV, OH, PA, or WI
• A fearless, confident, and thoughtful approach to cold and warm outbound prospecting and enthusiasm about leveraging your own extensive network of contacts
• Demonstrated success in sales to political organizations 
• Ability to drive strategic conversations with committees, campaigns, and state tables, as demonstrated by sales, or coalition building experience
• Subject matter expertise about scaled direct voter contact programs, particularly scaled relational programs
• Familiarity with and understanding of paid canvass firms
• Demonstrated experience managing direct voter contact programs
• Demonstrated ability to guide programs to success under pressure in a dynamic situation
• Experience managing a team and supporting team members’ professional growth
• Strong writing, editing, presentation, and oral communication skills

Preferred but not required

• Experience selling consulting and/or strategic services to political organizations
• Senior-level experience on a presidential campaign
• Experience working with a CRM to manage relationships (i.e. Salesforce, Copper)
• Skillful in developing training plans and resources from scratch
• Understanding of and demonstrated past compliance with electoral firewalls
• Spanish fluency

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

Questions in lieu of cover letter

• You will be asked to answer some questions in lieu of a cover letter. Please do not submit a cover letter.

Compensation and benefits

• Compensation: $143,997 or $156,956, depending on experience.
• Benefits: Choose from a variety of 100% employer-covered vision, dental, and medical HMO or PPO plans. We also offer partially subsidized coverage for spouses and dependents. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave. 
• Paid time off: Employees accrue 1.5 days of PTO per month, up to a maximum of 18 days of PTO. All federal holidays, the week of July 1, 2024, and the week of December 23, 2024, and every Friday after election day are company holidays.

Timeline

We aim to close this application by Tuesday, May 14, 2024. Applications are reviewed as they come in, so you may be notified whether or not you are moving forward before the application closing date. If we receive a high volume of applications, we may close the application sooner than Friday, May 10, 2024. The steps in the process are:

• 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 Director of Partner Success Marisa Kanof, 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 one of the two salary levels indicated 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 findings 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. 

We expect to make an offer no later than Tuesday, May 28, with preference for a start date shortly after the offer is accepted.

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 (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, The New Yorker, and The New York Times.

Since then, we’ve designed and tested other simple and powerful tactics, including site-based vote tripling (SBVT) (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

Application Instructions

Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications will only be accepted electronically.

• OPTIONAL: Please listen to this podcast to familiarize yourself with our work, and also visit www.voterev.org/media for more resources if you are interested.
• Fill out the application form on this page.
• You will be asked to provide information about yourself, a resume, and to answer some questions in lieu of a cover letter.
• Do not submit a cover letter. 

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

Vote Rev Action Fund is committed to protecting our employees and our communities from COVID-19. Toward that goal, and in consideration of guidance released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and various public health authorities and professional organizations, Vote Rev Action Fund has implemented a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy for its employees.

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. Individuals are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after they get their second dose of a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, such as Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna, or two weeks after a single dose of the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If you received the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, you are eligible to get a booster at least 5 months after completing your primary COVID-19 vaccination series. If you received the Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine, you are eligible to get a booster at least 2 months after receiving your J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination.

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.