Higher Ed Campaign Director

Job Overview

The Higher Education Campaign Director will work with organizers and other staff to organize and mobilize Debt Collective members around our two big goals: student debt cancellation and free college. The Campaign Director will establish systems and strategies to support each organizer and to further develop Debt Collective coordinated, member-led, organizing efforts. The Campaign Director will create and facilitate leadership development opportunities for member-leaders, including a new Fellowship program that will launch in the coming months, as well as develop systems to track and monitor member engagement.

Job Duties

• Build on the Debt Collective’s strong track record of securing significant student debt cancellation and popularizing the idea of free college to develop and execute strategic higher education campaign plans in coordination with staff organizers.
• Develop a member-focused plan to onboard and engage student debtors and their allies in the fight for free college and the broader Debt Collective agenda.
• Facilitate a member leadership Fellowship cohort to expand Debt Collective membership and develop strategies to successfully engage debtors to become future member leaders
• Work with other Directors to advance the Debt Collective’s overall mission of debt abolition.
• Support organizer development and use of membership engagement tracking systems (EveryAction, Google Sheets, etc) to identify strong and weak organizing spots on each campaign, with the goal of continually identifying and developing strong member-leaders, and develop systems for follow-up with members.
• Manage and supervise staff organizers in creating weekly work plans to execute strategic campaign plans; conduct regular meetings to debrief the work that was completed.
• In coordination with the rest of the team, develop raps, campaign materials, and database and tracking systems for strategic campaigns.
• Identify professional and personal growth goals and trainings, fellowships, staff coaching, etc. for staff and member organizers
• In partnership with the Higher Ed Policy Director, the Campaign Director will identify research, policy development, advocacy, and evaluation needs
• Train and manage staff to develop leadership skills and oversee less experienced team members.
• Continue to cultivate coalitional work with higher education labor unions, advocacy groups, college students, alumni, and parents.

Job Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years as a labor or community organizer
• Minimum of 2 years as a lead organizer, supervising staff
• Experience leading at least one successful campaign from start to finish
• Candidates must understand structure-based organizing and know how to do, or be enthusiastic about doing, structure-based organizing inside or outside of a workplace context
• Candidates must be self-directed and have excellent organizational skills; must be able to manage supervising multiple organizers working on different campaigns
• Excellent communications skills

Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of student debt, how it works, and the processes and systems that govern it
• Experience working in coalitions, especially within higher ed advocacy landscape

Organizational Overview

The Debt Collective, the first and only debtors’ union in the country, approaches debt as leverage to build mass economic power, from the bottom up.

The combination of stagnating wages, increased costs of living, and diminishing social services have meant that millions of people must borrow money to afford basic provisions, such as housing, education, utilities, health care.

The Debt Collective organizes debtors at multiple scales and via multiple modalities. Our student debt work over the last decade has combined direct action; small retreats with the nation's first student debt strikers; media training; legal interventions; and online-to-offline organizing. Housing and medical debt work are building campaigns at municipal, statewide and national levels that are set to scale in the coming years. We are looking for an organizing director who can steer and support these campaigns. We build power with rigorous research, digital debt dispute tools, public education campaigns, legal advocacy, political coalitions with elected officials, high-impact media, in-protest actions and building a strong base of members. To date, our efforts have won the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of debt across student loans, medical costs, court fines and fees, and payday loans.

The Debt Collective has a generous benefits package.