Community Associate Organizer

CONECT envisions a just Connecticut where all people have the power to live and

thrive with dignity. Our mission is to organize a broad, diverse and powerful mix of faith and community institutions to build relationships, develop leadership, dismantle oppression, take action and win concrete change on a broad range of social, racial and economic justice issues.

Position Overview

The Associate Organizer is a key member of CONECT's organizing team, responsible for building power within member institutions, developing leaders, and advancing campaigns on critical issues affecting Connecticut communities. This position requires deep commitment to the institution-based organizing model, including one-on-one relational meetings, leadership development, strategic action, and the Iron Rule: never do for others what they can do for themselves. This position champions the organizing cycle by deepening relationships throughout the organization. CONECT’s organizing is cyclical rather than linear, focused on building the capacity, ability, and willingness of ordinary people to act and bring about meaningful social change.

Primary Responsibilities

Leadership Development & Training

• Conduct extensive one-on-one relational meetings with potential and current leaders to explore values, motivations, and self-interest
• Identify, recruit, train, and mentor leaders from assigned member congregations and institutions
• Co-facilitate leadership development workshops on power analysis, public speaking,
• negotiation, research, and democratic decision-making
• Coach leaders through public actions, meetings with officials, and internal organizational processes at local and regional levels
• Build leaders' capacity to take ownership of local and regional campaigns

Organizing & Relationship Building

• Build and maintain strategic relationships with religious, civic, labor, and community leaders relevant to current assignments
• With other organizers, organize and facilitate house meetings, listening campaigns, and community assemblies
• Develop relational power across lines of race, class, faith, and geography
• Expand CONECT's membership base by recruiting new member institutions
• Maintain an organizing discipline that prioritizes deep, reciprocal relationships over transactional interactions

Campaign Development & Strategy

• Work with leaders and Lead Organizer to identify winnable issues through listening campaigns, power analyses, and issue development that moves clearly from problem to winnable issue
• Coordinate issue team leadership and research actions, regular meetings, and negotiations with decision-makers for local or regional issues
• Design strategies that build organizational power and achieve concrete victories at local or regional levels
• Track campaign progress and adapt strategy based on conditions

Institutional Development

• Strengthen the organizational capacity and anti-racist culture of CONECT
• Support assigned member institutions in their own organizing work and internal development

Public Action & Representation

• Prepare leaders for testimony, media interviews, and meetings with elected officials
• Ensure actions demonstrate organizational power and advance strategic goals

Qualities of a Successful Organizer

There are few formal qualifications for this position. The organizer’s success will depend heavily on the ability to develop relationships with local leaders. People from all backgrounds, with different sets of experiences, can accomplish this. The following qualities are shared by many successful organizers:

Critical and Creative Thinking: Not necessarily degrees, but the ability to think, reflect, communicate, challenge conventional wisdom, make judgments in complicated situations, and show flexibility.

Justice: A clear sense of what’s wrong in society, impatience in the face of that wrong, and a drive to address it.

Curiosity: This is necessary to build relationships and to learn what is important to other people.

Relationality: The ability to build deep trust with people – especially people unlike oneself, across lines of race, class, faith, etc.

Track Record: some evidence, in any context in the candidate’s life, of attempting to relate to people and to respond to situations that demand change; and some success in whatever field, career, or endeavor has occupied the individual’s time up to this point.

Willingness to Grow: Becoming a skilled organizer is a process of ongoing development,

including on-going evaluation, accountability, and mentorship

Other Important Position Requirements

• Regular evening and weekend work for meetings, actions, and events as necessary
• Travel throughout Connecticut to member institutions and organizing sites
• Periods of intense activity around campaigns and public actions
• Work in diverse settings including houses of worship, community centers, and public spaces
• Proficiency in multiple languages (particularly Spanish) highly desirable
• Some physical demands including standing for extended periods and setting up events
• Must own and operate a car

Generous health insurance & retirement benefits

English and Spanish language fluency or proficiency a plus