Senior Child Care Organizing Coordinator

Senior Child Care Organizing Coordinator

Organization: The Action Lab

Reports to: Director of Evaluation & Learning

Status: Full-time, beginning 2026

Location: Based in New York City, hybrid in-person and remote

About The Action Lab

The Action Lab is a strategy center for social movements that sparks political and personal liberation. We provide rigorous and joyful spaces for organizers, leaders and artists to learn, to create, and to strengthen our capacity to win. Situated on 26 acres in Ossining, New York, The Action Lab serves as both a physical home and a community of action anchored in relationship, rigor, and solidarity.

We foster cross-discipline, cross-movement approaches to enable us to lift out of the immediate, imagine our way decades into the future, expand our conception of what's possible and build the connective tissue and collective muscle needed to drive towards that vision. To realize freedom and dignity for all, The Action Lab generates opportunities to rejuvenate, to dream, to build community, to learn, to create, to innovate, and to take courageous action.

The New York Organizing for Child Care Change (NYOCCC) Initiative

The NYOCCC initiative brings together base-building organizations, labor unions, and worker centers across New York State to build the collective power of childcare workers and transform the industry from the ground up. This initiative will:

• Build organizing infrastructure among home-based and subsidy-dependent providers
• Support joint labor-community organizing with provider labor unions
• Equip providers, parents and organizers with training and technical assistance to improve list-building and organizing tools
• Create a collaborative statewide organizing table with sharp strategy, rigor and joyful cultural practices to deliver and sustain the wins of a powerful organizing drive

Partner organizations of The Action Lab on this initiative include New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Alliance for Quality Education (AQE), Citizen Action of New York, Las Doñas, Cornell ILR Worker Institute and commitment from unions representing providers across New York state.

The Role

The NYOCCC Coordinator is the operational spine of this statewide organizing effort. You'll coordinate across regions and organizations, translate coalition strategy into concrete campaign plans, and ensure local organizers have what they need to win. This isn't a convening role - it's an organizing job that requires you to drive toward measurable membership growth, campaign escalation, and strategic wins in a compressed timeline.

You'll work directly with organizers building membership bases in family childcare homes and leading workplace organizing drives across New York City, Capital Region, Hudson Valley, and Western New York. Your job is to create the conditions for those organizers to succeed: coordinating training and leadership development, facilitating strategic alignment, tracking what's working, and pushing the pace when momentum stalls.

Family childcare providers, predominantly women of color, immigrants, and low-income workers, care for our state's most vulnerable children while working in conditions of systematic neglect and economic precarity. This moment demands both strategic coordination and relentless field discipline. We need someone who can hold the complexity of multi-site campaigns while keeping focus on what wins: organized workers, escalating actions, and measurable shifts in power.

Who we are looking for!

Who we are looking for:

• You build power through organizing. You've led membership drives, workplace campaigns, or community organizations, and you know how to move people from conversation to action while coordinating work across partners and geographies.
• You're strategically disciplined. You distinguish activity from progress, facilitate real decisions that surface tensions and produce hard calls, and escalate campaigns at the right moments while holding teams to benchmarks.
• You understand care work organizing. You know the challenges of organizing immigrant workers, low-wage workers, and decentralized workforces like family childcare providers, and why care work requires both workplace organizing and policy fights.
• You build trust and hold rigor with joy. You work effectively across unions, community groups, and worker centers with different approaches, maintaining high standards while creating spaces where people want to organize together for the long haul.

Core Responsibilities

Campaign Coordination & Strategy Implementation

• Serve as day-to-day lead for NYOCCC organizing operations across all sites
• Translate Steering Committee strategy into actionable campaign plans with clear benchmarks and timelines
• Coordinate multi-site mobilizations, actions, and public narrative moments including quarterly rallies, legislative testimony, and lobby days during state budget cycles
• Track membership growth, organizing conversations, and campaign milestones across sites; identify what's working and what needs adjustment
• Lead regular campaign tables with field organizers to assess progress, troubleshoot barriers, and adapt tactics
• Support coordination of key mobilizations to Albany and coalition actions at critical campaign moments

Field Support & Organizer Development

• Provide direct strategic support to local organizers leading membership drives and workplace campaigns
• Coordinate training and capacity-building with partners
• Facilitate peer learning across organizing sites; help teams learn from each other's wins and losses
• Support organizers in developing worker leaders and building accountable membership structures including CCAP parent-provider leadership teams
• Help local teams navigate organizational challenges and maintain campaign discipline
• Connect organizers to The Action Lab's broader training cohorts and political education offerings

Coalition Management & Communications

• Staff the NYOCCC Steering Committee; prepare agendas, manage meeting flow, and ensure follow-through on decisions
• Maintain clear communication lines between The Action Lab leadership, Steering Committee, and field teams
• Coordinate with host organizations including NYCC, AQE, Citizen Action, Early Childhood Educators on the Move, Las Doñas, Cornell Worker Institute, workplace unions, and community-based partners
• Manage shared data systems, campaign calendars, and coordination tools
• Represent NYOCCC in external partner meetings and strategic conversations as needed
• Support coordination of bi-annual statewide convenings and quarterly provider gatherings at The Action Lab spaces

Political & Strategic Analysis

• Monitor the political landscape for childcare policy and funding opportunities, particularly during state legislative sessions and budget cycles
• Connect local campaign dynamics to statewide narrative and policy objectives
• Support participatory evaluation processes to track progress and inform strategic iteration

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years of organizing experience in labor, worker center, or community organizing contexts
• Demonstrated success leading or coordinating multi-site campaigns or coalition organizing efforts
• Deep understanding of worker organizing fundamentals: membership structure, leadership development, campaign escalation, and power analysis
• Experience working with immigrant communities, low-wage workers, or care sector workers
• Proven ability to manage complex projects with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities
• Strong facilitation skills and experience staffing leadership bodies or coordinating committees
• Fluency in digital organizing tools, database management, and campaign tracking systems
• Willingness to travel for work across New York State

Strongly Preferred

• Direct experience organizing childcare workers, early educators, or other care sector workers
• Background in worker organizing and/ or immigrant communities
• Bilingual Spanish/English
• Experience with popular education and political education curriculum development
• Familiarity with New York's childcare policy landscape and funding structures
• Experience working in joint labor-community organizing contexts

What We Offer

Competitive compensation commensurate with experience. The Action Lab is committed to equitable compensation and supporting organizers to sustain long-term movement work. Salary will be offered in accordance with The Action Lab’s salary scale and will be between $85,000 - $110,000.

Full benefits package including health insurance, retirement contributions, and generous time off.

Access to The Action Lab's infrastructure and community, including our 26-acre Strategy Retreat Center, training programs, cultural strategy offerings, and a powerful network of organizers, artists, and movement leaders working across disciplines and geographies.

Professional development opportunities through The Action Lab's training cohorts, coaching programs, and connections to national and international movement builders.

A commitment to organizing culture that values rigor, relationships, political education, embodied leadership practices, and the creativity needed to build the world we deserve.

The Action Lab is an equal opportunity employer committed to building diverse teams and centering the leadership of those most impacted by injustice. We strongly encourage applications from people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and people from working-class backgrounds.

Why Now: The Critical Moment for Childcare Organizing

New York stands at a turning point. Federal relief dollars that temporarily supported childcare providers, especially those serving our most at-need families are vanishing, putting recent policy gains and tens of thousands of families at risk. At the same time, unprecedented momentum is building: energized providers, shifting union dynamics, and a massive spotlight on universal childcare through the New York mayoral race and emerging political platforms.

But without investment in deep organizing infrastructure, marginalized providers will be left out. Black, Brown, immigrant, and rural workers. A majority women of color in the workforce living close to the poverty line remain largely invisible in legislative chambers and public media. This is our moment to act: to seed and scale organizing infrastructure that is durable and responsive, building a provider-led path to universal child care that raises wages, improves working conditions for home-based and center-based early childhood educators, and ensures equitable access to child care for all families.

• Health Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Retirement Plan Contribution and Match
• Paid Time Off
• Sick & Safe Leave
• Maternity/Paternity Leave
• Remote Work Options
• Professional Development Opportunities
• FSA Program and Contribution
• Life Insurance
• Disability Insurance

Bilingual Spanish/English