Advocacy & Community Engagement Manager

Minimum Starting Salary: $59,994

Job Summary: The Advocacy and Community Engagement Manager is responsible for organizational efforts to engage the Project HOME community, including residents, staff, alumni, members of the public, and people who are homeless, in advocating for policy to end street homelessness including legislative, budgetary, policy, or procedural changes especially focused on unsheltered people.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

  • Public policy, election engagement, and government relations:
    • Develop and promote an annual policy agenda together with internal and external stakeholders.
    • Manage government relations work with members of Advocacy Committee, Speakers Bureau, and key staff to meet regularly with local, state, and federal elected officials representing Project HOME sites and prepare voter guides for strategic elections.
    • Coordinate Project HOME's role in advocacy campaigns and coalitions on the local, state, and federal level; manage the Vote for Homes coalition.
    • Ensure legal compliance for advocacy, lobbying, and nonpartisan electoral efforts.
  • External affairs:
    • Communicate advocacy efforts, successes and priorities to the media and to the public in collaboration with External Communications at Project HOME, via our blog, our publications, and by inviting members of the media to cover advocacy and electoral activities.
    • Prepare responses and testimony on legislative issues, governmental funding sources, and related topics.
    • Work with Real Estate Development to support outreach related to zoning and community relations needs.
  • Community education & engagement:
    • Support the Community Education and Engagement Specialist to provide training for the Speakers' Bureau and electoral efforts, as well as other training related to advocacy; ensure that trained speakers are connected to Inspirational Meetings and Development activities as well as elected official visits.
    • Support the Community Education and Engagement Specialist to ensure that voter registration and mobilization efforts and speakers' bureau functions are aligned with policy priorities and deeper engagement of stakeholders.
    • Coordinate and oversee the work of Project HOME Advocacy Committee
  • Online campaign management:
    • Develop and implement online strategies and communications for engaging the public in advocacy efforts.
    • Create content for digital technology tools (websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.)
    • Manage 20,000-record data system for communications and advocacy purposes.
  • Other duties as assigned.

The information contained herein is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of the duties and responsibilities of the job. Management may, at its sole discretion, assign or reassign duties and responsibilities to this job at any time.

Minimum Experience:

  • B.A. degree or equivalent experience plus more than 5 years advocacy experience
  • Excellent writing skills and computer skills
  • Experience in and knowledge of homeless programs and general issues around affordable housing development, homelessness, poverty, addiction, and mental illness.
  • Working knowledge of federal, state, and local government
  • Successful experience with digital advocacy and online engagement tools such as SALSA comparable digital tool

Preferred Experience:

  • Master's degree in public policy, social work, or related fields
  • Familiarity with mission and history of Project HOME.

Core Skills:

  • Demonstrated ability to lead teams and projects.
  • Strong interpersonal skills: experience influencing and being a change agent, ability to communicate effectively across all levels of the organization
  • A combination of life and work experiences and education that demonstrates the ability to collaborate effectively with people of different backgrounds, abilities, opinions, and perceptions to achieve significant organizational change.

Physical requirements:

  • Sedentary work that primarily involves sitting/ standing.

Project HOME provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment, without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Project HOME prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type.