3/6/23 APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED:::::::::::::::::::::::: MANAGING DIRECTOR
Date posted: January 9th 2023
Type: 1099 contract, renewing annually, estimating this work will take 32 hours per week
Location: Fully remote with occasional travel for US-based retreats
Compensation: $80,000 annually
Support and Supervision: The Managing Director will meet regularly for support and supervision with an external paid coach. Once an Advisory Body is active, supervision will be with a member of that team, alongside support from an external paid coach. In addition, the three co-directors will meet together regularly to support and accompany each other in moving the work forward.
To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter detailing why you want to do the job and how your experience and skills are a match for this role to tzedeklab@gmail.com with “Managing Director Application” in the subject line.
OVERVIEW
Tzedek Lab is a national multiracial network of political education trainers, organizers, spiritual leaders, and cultural workers, Jews and allies, established to build collective competency to better politicize, transform, and inspire the Jewish community into collective action against racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy. Tzedek Lab exists to support our 318 member-practitioners across the US, Canada, with some outside Turtle Island, bringing the diverse Jewish communities that we are connected to a stronger sense of belonging and safety, more support, and encouragement to take bold action for justice.
Our sustaining activities include national and regional convenings, regular full network calls for spiritual care and cross-pollination, ongoing building and deepening of one-on-one relationships, racial/ethnic identity-based caucus groups, bi-monthly calls for communities of practice, and member-initiated working groups around topics of relevance to our mission.
Read more about our Purpose, Outcomes, Guiding Principles, and Components here.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Tzedek Lab is hiring a Managing Director whose role is to shape our day-to-day organizational rhythms, develop and maintain systems for efficient and liberatory work, and lead on ensuring the financial health and wellness of the project. This is a new role.
This is the perfect position for a culture and structure-loving, people-centered, detail-oriented, highly collaborative individual who is excited about building cross-class, pro-Black, anti-ableist equitable systems and culture at a mission-driven and member-driven organization.
Since its inception in 2018, Tzedek Lab has been growing slowly but surely to support and strengthen a Jewish left based in the US. The network’s member-practitioners have self-organized with basic support from a small staff team, and it is time to grow the capacity of the staff team in order to strengthen the network, its members, and the communities they lead.
What is needed now is someone with the skills and readiness to make the project sustainable financially, to anchor our vision and strategy within a social movement infrastructure of this nature - a network, tend to the wellness of our organizational systems, and lead on envisioning and embodying a culture of participatory governance.
Tzedek Lab is unique because it is a network and thus an evolving organism which means that this and all staff roles have the potential to evolve to meet the needs of the network’s members. A person will be successful in this role when they can find the possibilities in the gray areas, and can bring the combination of an organizer’s mindset with attention to leadership development and following the lead and interests of members along with a readiness for taking responsibility for the whole and encouraging individuals, other staff and members, to take responsibility for parts.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Tzedek Lab is in a time of transition and growth and we are building an energetic and visionary leadership team that can use an equity and racial justice based lens and community organizing approach to all that we do and help take our work to the next level. The Managing Director will shepherd our growing co-director staff team, fundraise and manage the budget, build structures for staff support and participatory governance, develop systems for day-to-day workflow and annual planning, collaboration, and implementation, take the lead on organizing our biannual Network Gathering, and support emergence in the network.
Specific areas of work:
Resource mobilization
Take responsibility for the financial wellness and thriving of Tzedek Lab with shared labor from the other co-directors on fundraising
Lead fundraising: Manage grants, Cultivate relationships with existing and new supporters
Build and facilitate Fundraising Team of members which takes responsibility for the annual member fundraising drive
Organizational wellbeing
Lead and support the staff team, support the team in building and implementing plans and systems, and develop benchmarks for staff success.
Develop systems for financial health and sustainability.
Build and manage the budget.
Liaise with our fiscal sponsor.
Tend to the wellness of the staff, including staff lifecycle (eg. hiring, onboarding, staff retention), professional development, and growing our benefits offerings.
Build structures within the network that ensure alignment between member-practitioners and staff and that provide ongoing backing and support to staff
Discern what support is needed regarding governance, staff support, and the connectedness of staff and members. .
Organize a group for the purpose of being the support and advisory team for the staff team.
Integrate tools and approaches that have surfaced in the network so far as well as your vision and the support of the staff team to build this advisory body.
Caucus & Kabal (community of practice) support
Be the lead organizer for 1-3 of the smaller communities of practice and identity-based caucuses that resonate and align for you. There are currently seven core groups that the staff team will collectively hold. Our dream is for the Managing Director to hold our BIJOCSM Caucus, with the other two staff splitting the other caucuses and kabals, allowing the Managing Director to focus on uplifting and supporting our BIJOCSM members and bringing that work (more) to the center of Tzedek Lab.
Lead Network Gathering organizer
Organize and implement a regular gathering for all Tzedek Lab members which we call Network Gatherings. This will be a full staff team project along with a team of member-leaders that you will lead. We’ve been holding Network Gatherings once every two years.
Encourage and support smaller member meet-ups (regional/location, topic/project, or identity-based gatherings etc)
Support emergence
Tzedek Lab activities and direction is discerned by the energies, capacities and needs of members. Attuning to the members, in their different places, roles, and identities, is what makes it possible to identify ripe places for conversation, collaboration, and network activity.
Collaborate with fellow staff on projects collectively determined including grants and fundraising campaigns.
WHO WE ARE SEEKING
Skills & Experiences
The candidate must have:
Knowledge of financial management practices, institutional fundraising practices, individual fundraising practices.
Experience developing human resources policies and the readiness to navigate complex bureaucratic systems.
Experience developing the leadership of Jews of Color, Indigenous Jews, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews or People of the Global Majority/ People of Color.
Highly relational style and also ability to set a high bar for performance and implementation of goals.
Technologically savvy.
Clear verbal and written communication skills.
Adept skills in giving and receiving direct feedback.
Systems-level thinking.
Capacity for and interest in democratically held work and decision-making
Experience in accomplishing projects independently, with collaborators, and through developing participant leadership.
Capacity to maintain resilience alongside humility when confronted with critique.
Compassionate and strong efficient management experience: Proven effectiveness directly supervising managing others, working together in a model of power-sharing that supports their growth.
Experience in leading strategic planning and goal-setting, both short-term and long term and holding a significant role in running operationally effective organizations.
Grounding in the Jewish social justice community and/or social movement work.
Additionally, an ideal candidate may also have:
Facilitation skills: Experience building agendas and holding and moving groups of different sizes and identities through challenging, energizing, and meaningful topics both in person and on zoom.
Experience building effective volunteer teams.
Comfort in a team environment, and experience working in both a lead and support role.
Ability to bring a combination of optimism and realism about the political moment we’re in and the possibility to change it through relationships, experimentation, political analysis, cultural work, and spiritual leadership.
Strong preference for someone who has experience operating and leading in an organization that holds a network of members.
Commitments & Values
Commitment to dismantling classism, racism, sexism, ableism, and antisemitism in our network and beyond. Rooted in a commitment to understanding how classism, ableism, sexism, racism, and antisemitism impact organization structures and interpersonal dynamics.
Committed to organizing based on emergent strategy, relational organizing, and relational culture, and/or committed to learning about and deepening in these approaches.
Committed to the Black and Indigenous led movement landscape and fighting for Black liberation.
Committed to the goodness and worthiness of all Jews. With that, being willing to engage with all Jews, understanding that working with Jews associated with establishment organizations is a key component in bringing our communities towards justice.
Committed to Palestinian liberation and to supporting nuanced action around Israel/Palestine with intention, appropriate urgency, and strategy.
Committed to interrupting patterns of anti-Black racism and all forms of racism
Committed to interrupting patterns of Ashkenazi and white Jewish normativity and bringing the reality of who Jews are in all Jewish and movement spaces.
Committed to grounding in social movement history and Jewish traditions.
Committed to and excited about ongoing learning, experimentation, and creative disruption of the status quo.
Passionate about building a “leaderful” organization.
Passionate about Tzedek Lab’s mission and purpose!
WORK ENVIRONMENT
Tzedek Lab uses a network weaving model to increase connection and collaboration between members who are integrating our intersectional political analysis into multiple arenas from direct action campaigns and political education and organizational change work, to leading spiritual communities and movement organizations and organizing cultural projects that interrupt assimilation and dominance of white supremacy culture. We are growing a team where each person holds a portfolio of responsibilities towards increasing role clarity and support for staff. The work environment is remote and currently occurs on Zoom, Google suite, and email. Effective collaboration between staff, and between network members and staff is core and critical. We currently embody and continue to strive for a decentralized leadership model that encourages strong participation and direction from network members to shape Tzedek Lab spaces and projects.
The work environment has a combination of flexibility and structure. Staff members can set their own “office hours” and schedule, alongside working with members to set regular small group calls. This model intentionally allows for multiple life commitments towards welcoming parents, those caring for elders, those managing disabilities, participation in movement and other community spaces, and people to bring their whole selves to this role. Tzedek Lab is fiscally sponsored by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Community Inc.
How to Apply:
Please submit a resume and cover letter detailing why you want to do the job and how your experience and skills are a match for this role to tzedeklab@gmail.com with “Managing Director Application” in the subject line. Interviews will take place in February. Start date is flexible, anticipating Spring.
Below is our anticipated hiring process for this role:
● First interview with 1-2 members of our hiring team, March 6-17
● Take-home exercise followed by group interview March 17-April 4
● Reference checks after the group interview
● Offers made to finalists week of April 17, with flexible start date in the late Spring
Frequently cited statistics show that women and structurally marginalized and/or underrepresented groups apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. Tzedek Lab encourages you to apply and break that statistic, as no one ever meets 100% of the qualifications. If you do not have all of these qualifications but think you could still be a good fit for this role, we encourage you to apply and look forward to your application.
For this and all roles with Tzedek Lab, people of color, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, women and gender nonconforming people, people with disabilities, immigrants, LGBTQIA+, and people who live or have lived in poverty are strongly encouraged to apply.