Role Profile
Role: Activism Operations (Activism Impact Coordinator) / Home Team Activism Department/Cymru/Northern IrelandPurpose of role: To maintain and extend Friends of the Earth’s activism in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, delivering maximum impact for the campaigns package while supporting and building a sustainable network of activists for now and the future as defined in the Engagement Programme and Activism strategy. / Reports to: Senior Activism Coordinator (Activism Impact Team Manager/Activism Development Team Manager), Director of Cymru, Director of Northern Ireland
Required to:
Deliver outcomes:
Responsible for achieving projectoutcomes contributing to Activism objectives, the Activism aim and related aims, coordinating with others internally and externally.
Use an understanding of the needs and interests of activists to inspire and support effective campaigning on Friends of the Earth’s agenda.
Take responsibility for delivering small and larger project objectives that may involve a project team, acting as manager to the members of the project team with respect to project work and ensuring planning, budgeting (if needed), monitoring, internal communications and reporting on the project in accordance with Project Management Guidelines.
Tomanage the financial resources of the team/programme/project/area of work; preparing regular financial forecasts for the activities; managing expenditure to obtain best value for money for Friends of the Earth and in accordance with Friends of the Earth's financial policies and procedures.
Develop others:
Develop ways for involving people with different skills and interests in campaign work with particular use of capacity building approaches.
Support less experienced team members. Recruit volunteers including intern or placement students and government-sponsored trainee schemes; and to train, supervise and review their work.
May manage the work of other staff or consultants.
Train, support and develop colleagues and activists incapacity building approachesfor activism on the campaigns package and on local campaigns.
Facilitate effective networking between activists to maximise opportunities for activists to support each other with their own expertise and knowledge.
Build relationships:
Responsible for monitoring and maintaining a consistent relationship between Friends of the Earth and its activist networks, in accordance with the licensing agreement for this relationship .
Ensure effective communication and coordination between own teams and the work of other teams and the Friends of the Earth network, including local and international groups.
Champion the experience, abilities, needs and campaign interests of activists and help tofacilitate their voice in influencing policy, resource allocation and the strategic plan.
Negotiate and develop alliances with other organisations to build sectoralstrength in activism and campaigning.
Ideas and solutions:
Apply negotiation and problem-solving skills to resolve tensions between individuals and within campaign groups to maintain and increase their effectiveness.
Learn and pioneer new capacity building solutions andactivism tactics and approaches, to engage activists in Friends of the Earth’s campaigns; and share this best practice with staff, activists and sector as appropriate.
Help to ensure activists can access available knowledge from within Friends of the Earth for their own local campaigning work.
Adapts activism plans and tactics to rapidly changing external circumstances wherever possible.
Work with staff and activists to identify opportunities and conflicts arising between aims and to develop approaches that maximise and overcome these respectively, achieving maximum impact across Friends of the Earth’s different aims.
Contribute to annual review process as necessary to evaluate work, learn and replan work for the next periodand feed in to horizon scanning processes. / Expertise:
Needs to have:
Experience of working with activists, as individuals and/or within campaign or community groups and an understanding of how activists operate, their needs and the constraints they face.
Experience of communicating effectively and building strongrelationships with people from a variety of backgrounds and with different needs, both individually and in groups.
Experience of developing skills and confidence in others using a range of approaches at a distance and face to face.
Project management skills and experience.
Experience of volunteer management.
See also role specific skills below.
Focus of expertise:
Applying experience in capacity building to develop Friends of the Earth’s activism networks and to maximise Friends of the Earth’s activism and campaign effectiveness.
Focus of development:
Gain knowledge across Friends of the Earth’s main campaigning priorities and their opportunities for effective grassroots campaigning.
Extend and optimise synergies between Friends of the Earth’s grassrootscampaign presence (in new and existing areas) and Friends of the Earth’s priorities.
Developing structures to best support and develop grassroots campaigners and teams
Developing local campaigner alliances beyond the Friends of the Earth local groups’ network.
Developing organisational and administrative skills further such as budgetand people management skills.
Career stage: Specialist Levels:1 – 6, reference at 4
Other essential requirement for role-holder:
Ability to travel and work during some weekday evenings and weekends.
FRIENDS OF THE EARTH – SUPPORTING DOCUMENT
PURPOSE OF ROLELocated in the Activism Impact team, you’ll be at the heart of helping to shape the people-powered focus of Friends of the Earth’s big campaigns. You’ll help design our activism for maximum real world change whilst ensuring that the tactics we use help engage big numbers of people, broaden and diversify our grassroots and build our movement organisation, deepening their engagement.
You’ll be happy in a rapid response situation, but also familiar with setting long term campaign activism plans, and tracking, analysing and reporting activity.
You'll be keen to learn, a fantastic collaborator, as happy working face-to-face as online, confident trialling new approaches, and a great communicator. With campaign nous you’ll know a good campaign strategy when you see one, and be able to design activism strategies to suit – supporting grassroots leaders to organise communities and campaigns, driving mass mobilisation at critical moments or deepening supporters’ action with us.
The Activism Impact team works alongside the Community Activism team in the Activism Department. The Activism Department is part of the Engagement Directorate.
KEY RESPONSIBILITES & TASKS
Strategic insight for campaigns
You’ll be able to fully contribute to campaign plans, helping to plan and deliver the people-power elements of our big campaigns to ensure they get the right results in the real world, make our supporters feel involved, build our grassroots and feel creative, enjoyable and important.
Project management
Solid project and process management is critical for success. You will be responsible for managing your workload in conjunction with your line manager and need to be able to prioritise, estimating the volume and complexity of your work.
Supporter experience
As we strive to create a unified experience for supporters across our channels, you will be a great communicator on and offline.
- Digital mobilising: Confident using digital mobilisation for campaigns, you’ll build brilliant email, web and social approaches that involve people and contribute to creating real world change.
- Digital Organising: You’ll find opportunities to pilot digital organising techniques, combining our grassroots power with digital tools to help our communities to campaign better, with more reach.
- Community Activism: You'll help find new ways to engage people in communities in our big campaigns that reach new people and get them involved. You'll also help empower, inspire and support our existing local groups to take part in campaigns in ways that genuinely resonate in their communities but critically add up to more than local change.
Collaboration and skill-sharing
We don’t work on our own here. You’ll work in close collaboration with others to devise tactics and plans for campaigns that match our campaign and movement-building objectives.
Be aware of and follow Friend of the Earth policies and procedures, with particular attention to Risk Management, Equality, Diversity & Inclusion, and our values. You will be required to attend training as necessary and update own CPD record.
PERSON SPECIFICATION (essential shortlisting criteria)
Mobilisation and activism
- Experience of helping to design campaigns that use people-power to drive change, using a variety of tactics.
- Experience of working directly with activists, delivering training and running workshops
- Demonstrable understanding of key campaign mobilisation and activism concepts including organising and mobilising, and power analysis and theory of change.
- Ability to identify activism objectives and subsequent strategies and tactics for major campaigns.
- Deliver project outcomes guided by the organisation’s activism and mobilisation strategy, taking responsibility for delivering project objectives that may involve a project team, acting as manager to the members of the project team with respect to project work, planning, budgeting, monitoring, internal communications and reporting.
- Identify and champion activism and mobilisation needs and opportunities when working in cross organisational teams.
PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES (assessed at the interview)
- Ability to work on own initiative, as part of a team, and build working relationships with colleagues and external parties
- Enthusiastic approach to work and a desire to achieve real, lasting change
- A commitment to the values and work of Friends of the Earth
- Sound understanding of trends and developments in activism in the UK and beyond
Date approved / August 2015
Date reviewed / n/a