Digital Communications Organizer, The Patients Union

About the Patients Union

The Patients Union has a vision of a future where everyone in America has the healthcare they need, no matter who they are, where they live, what job they have or whether they have a job at all. To get there, we are building a mass membership organization that centers disabled people, poor people, Black, Indigenous and other people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, rural communities, and others who are suffering at the hands of our profit-driven system.

Right now, we are working to assemble a badass founding team of organizers, campaigners, communicators, political strategists, creatives, and infrastructure builders, to build America’s first Patients Union.

About the role

As a Digital Communications Organizer with the Patients Union, you will be responsible for building a digital communications strategy that amplifies and catalyzes our organizing work.

You’ll need hustle, heart, and an appetite to help us build something powerful from scratch. You’ll spend your days working closely with the organizers, developing and testing innovative approaches to build our membership by telling the story of people struggling to access healthcare via social media, paid ads, and email. No two weeks will be the same as we work together to build something that’s never existed before. You’ll be uplifting the on-the-ground campaign work by our members to topple the obstacles that stand in the way of them getting the healthcare they need and deserve, and creatively engaging our broadest audience in those early fights around hospital and hospital department closures, dialysis centers, medicaid cuts, and other pressing issues to build long-term power to transform our healthcare system.

Salary: $90,000

Reports to: Director of Communications

Specifically, the Digital Communications Organizer will:

• Build a social media strategy, in collaboration with the organizers and other communications staff, that grows the membership of the Patients Union and tells the story to a broad audience of the failures of a for-profit healthcare system and our power to change that;
• Create engaging and timely content for social media, paid ads, and email;
• Develop social toolkits for campaigns;
• Engage in online community spaces to tell the story of the Patients Union and help people make meaning of their experiences with our healthcare system;
• Capture content for our social media channels at in-person actions and events (may require travel up to 20% of the time);
• Draft, build, schedule, and send email communications and advise on the strategy for maintaining and growing an engaged email list that mobilizes in response to campaign and fundraising calls to action.

The Digital Communications Organizer will do this by:

• Fostering creativity and a willingness to experiment;
• Having a flexible mindset, willing to pivot as the organizing model is built and we learn what works and what doesn’t;
• Building a mass membership that acts as a power base for the work (no smoke-and-mirrors);
• Being proactive in developing workplans and accountable to keeping them;
• Making mistakes, trying things, learning, and being honest when things aren’t working;
• Being deeply committed to transforming the healthcare system using organizing, direct action, and radical solidarity.

Requirements

The Digital Communications Organizer role requires someone who has:

• Experience creating engaging content for social media, paid ads, and email;
• Experience with digital organizing or using digital communications for issue advocacy;
• Familiarity with organizing and power building as a path to social change, and ideas for how to use social media, paid ads, and email to build power;
• The ability to communicate complex policy issues in human-centered, accessible ways;
• Experience with graphic design and video production tools like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Canva, or Adobe Premiere;
• Willingness to travel when necessary to gather content (up to 20% of the time);
• A creative, flexible, proactive, learning-oriented mindset; and
• A deep commitment to transforming the healthcare system using organizing, direct action, and radical solidarity.

Other skills or experience the right person might have include:

• Direct personal experience with the failures of a for-profit healthcare system;
• Experience with digital organizing and remote work tools (we use ActionNetwork, New/Mode, MuckRack, and virtual workplace tools: Slack, Zoom, and Google Suite, and we’d welcome experience with other tools we could consider, too);
• Experience with using direction action and/or organizing strategies to build power and change systems;
• Experience with data and storytelling, research, campaigning, popular education and training, mutual aid and direct support, healthcare policy and advocacy, electoral and political strategies synced with organizing, legal strategies synced with organizing

Application process

To apply, please complete the form to submit your resume alongside answers to a few questions which will help us understand more about why you are the right person to consider for this role.

https://apply.workable.com/be-a-hero-fund/j/09AC49AEC6/

Application questions:

1. Why are you excited to support digital communications as a part of a founding team building a mass membership Patients Union?
2. What’s one social media account that you think is a model for what this role could aim to build? Why?
3. Please share a link to a social media account or post that you worked on, that you feel is a good example of using social media for social change work. What was your role in the post, and why do you think it’s a good example?
4. We are looking to build a team that includes people who can do many things, including direct action planning, organizing, press and comms, fundraising, campaigning, research, data, popular education and training, mutual aid and direct support, healthcare policy and advocacy, electoral strategies, and legal strategies. Do you have significant experience in any of these other areas you could highlight for us in a few sentences? These aren’t required for this role, so it’s OK if the answer is no.

Benefits

Our organization observes a 4-day workweek. We offer excellent benefits—fully covered premiums for healthcare, dental, and vision for employees, life insurance, long- and short-term disability, up to 80 days of paid parental leave, a 6 percent employer 401k match that begins immediately upon enrollment in the 401k plan, 20 vacation, 10 sick, and 11 holiday days per year, and more.

Working on our team

Our staff works remotely in cities and towns across the United States. Many of us have experienced first-hand the brokenness of our current healthcare system. All of us share the belief that healthcare should be a human right. And, each one of us is dedicated to using our skills and talents to make that moral imperative a reality.

To secure universal healthcare for all, we know that we must fight to dismantle the systems of oppression—racism, ableism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of injustice—that stand in the way of health and disability justice right now. Our team is one place that we are committed to continually doing this work.

We recruit, employ, compensate, and promote regardless of race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, age, disability, socio-economic status, marital status, sexual orientation, and other protected status as required by applicable law. We’re in it to win universal healthcare for all, however long it takes. Our culture of collaboration, care, and good-natured humor helps sustain us in the fight.