Community Outreach & Organizing Manager
Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) fights discrimination and fosters equity through creative and courageous legal advocacy, education, and economic empowerment. With law firms and community allies, we provide free, life-changing legal support to individuals, families, and small businesses. Our work is organized around nine impact areas, which represent critical battlegrounds for civil rights, and address the many ways our clients and communities experience discrimination. These include economic justice, education, employment, health equity, housing justice, voting rights, immigrant rights, police accountability, and climate justice.
JOB DESCRIPTION
The vibe at LCR is bold, courageous, creative, and relentless. We are a rapid-response team that quickly mobilizes to tackle pressing problems, ensuring that those in need receive immediate and impactful legal assistance. We also believe in the power of partnership, working with organizations that share our commitment to justice. Embracing our unique approach, we are passionate about empowering individuals and communities through the law.
The Community Outreach & Organizing Manager (OM) – a community outreach liaison – will work closely with LCR’s legal team to lead policy and advocacy campaigns focused on the needs and interests of communities of color, immigrant communities, and low-income communities in Massachusetts. The OM will build community power, increase access to legal resources for civil rights, and create new community precedent that advances equity and justice.
The OM will be responsible for regularly engaging a network of more than 50 existing community partners and establishing new community relationships aligned with LCR’s litigation work. Diverse community voices and perspectives are key to identifying and addressing systemic issues of discrimination and inequity.
The OM will work collaboratively with LCR staff to ensure that the issues raised by community are addressed with education, litigation and advocacy solutions. The OM will also perform community education programming; train and mobilize grassroots leaders; create educational materials or tools; and complete other related tasks as assigned.
This position is full-time and in-person. The position will require significant flexibility for work, as needed, during the evenings and weekends. Given the nature of community-based work, the relevant duties and responsibilities cannot be performed while working from home. This position involves active in-person work:
- establishing connections with new community partners;
- deepening relationships with existing community partners;
- convening meetings and organizing events; and
- representing LCR in the community through a wide-range of outreach and engagement activities.
Additionally, the OM will come into LCR’s office in downtown Boston at least once a week for regularly scheduled staff meetings on Mondays. The OM will be expected to travel around the state, as needed, for events. The OM must have a reliable means of transportation, and travel expenses will be reimbursed by the organization.
WORK RESPONSIBILITIES
Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Community Empowerment (50% of your time)
Connecting LCR’s legal and policy work to statewide, regional, and/or national policy campaigns to develop new allies and resources, identify best practices, and mobilize client communities toward shared goals. This may include:
- designing and leading issue-based campaigns;
- formulating strategy and action plans to enact, defeat, or reform specific laws and policies;
- working with policymakers and elected officials at the local, state and/or national level; and
- monitoring local and state legislative activity and trends while supporting community-based responses.
Building capacity and power in local communities and community-based organizations to identify and challenge civil rights violations. This may include:
- building, developing, sustaining, uniting, and mobilizing coalitions around a common goal;
- providing structural and organizing support to community allies;
- conducting “know-your-rights” trainings;
- conducting leadership development trainings;
- leading capacity-building trainings;
- providing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings; and
- presenting to non-attorneys about LCR advocacy and lawsuits.
Relationship-Building (30% of your time)
Regularly identifying and building new relationships with community partners and key stakeholders in communities of color and immigrant communities for partnership and collaboration.
Maintaining relationships with our existing network of community partners and key stakeholders to build trust, mutual understanding, and effective collaboration. This may include:
- regular check-in meetings;
- active visits to client communities; and
- representing LCR at member events and other community initiatives.
Serving as a liaison between LCR’s legal staff and community organizations in relation to LCR’s impact litigation and advocacy work.
Training LCR Staff (10% of your time)
Identifying for LCR’s staff pressing legal issues facing client communities.
Training LCR legal staff on effective community engagement and outreach strategies.
Community Education (10% of your time)
Organizing and assisting in the coordination of legal clinics and community events.
Creating and updating a calendar of community events for LCR staff.
Creating and disseminating resources for community allies, including creating and updating educational presentations, outreach, and education materials.
Ensuring that key data from programs and initiatives is collected and recorded, including but not limited to attendee numbers and photos from events.
Supporting the overall functioning of LCR and its mission.
PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS:
METRICS AND OUTCOMES
On a quarterly basis, we will review your progress, focusing on the number of community partners you cultivate and the number of people who you serve. We will also consider the effectiveness and quality of these relationships and outcomes. Steady, measurable progress on a quarterly basis will ensure continued success and growth in this role.
SUCCESSFULLY BUILDING AND MOBILIZING COALITIONS
Your ability to effectively build and strategically mobilize coalitions will be an important measure of success. Engaging in meaningful community outreach and engagement that aligns with our mission will be a key aspect of this work. We will assess your success in making individual connections and collective mobilizations that advance our program goals in a strategic and impactful way.
SUCCESSFULLY ADVANCING POLICY CHANGES
Your ability to score consistent policy “wins” will be an important measure of success. This includes enacting, defeating or reforming policies in alignment with LCR’s mission and values and in ways that complement LCR’s ongoing litigation priorities.
SUCCESSFULLY REPRESENTING THE ORGANIZATION EXTERNALLY
Your ability to represent the organization at events and meetings connected to your projects will be an important measure of success. We will also look at how you apply your expertise and problem-solving skills to deliver high-quality results that reflect well on the organization and enhance our visibility.
SUCCESSFULLY SERVING AS A RESOURCE INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY
We will assess your ability to serve as a valuable resource for the organization’s attorneys and our community partners, contributing to our collaborative efforts.
QUALIFICATIONS
Applicants must be extremely hard-working, highly self-motivated, community-oriented, creative, analytical, and passionate about civil rights, racial justice, and social change. As a small but continuously growing organization, we all wear many hats and the work is often evolving, so comfort with change is a must.
Applicants must be willing to work in-person with flexibility to work outside of a typical 9-5 schedule to participate in community events and activities in the evenings and on weekends as needed. Applicants must also have the ability to travel across Massachusetts for community meetings, workshops, and activities. Applicants should be extremely well organized and fully committed to measuring their effectiveness and impact on a quarterly basis.
This position does not require a J.D. or legal training, although familiarity with advocacy strategies and current civil rights issues is a plus. An associate's or bachelor's degree would be beneficial, but we place equal importance on relevant experience, skills, and a strong commitment to champion the role.
The ideal candidate will also have:
- At least three (3) years of community organizing, base-building, or political campaign experience.
- Demonstrated ability to organize, mobilize, and inspire others.
- Demonstrated ability to shepherd coalitions or networks.
- Demonstrated ability to work successfully with people from a variety of backgrounds, especially, ethnic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.
- Strong organizational skills and high work product standards, including the ability to coordinate and prioritize multiple short- and long-term assignments and meet strict deadlines with consistent attention to detail.
- Exceptional interpersonal skills, including the ability to understand and work effectively with people from diverse backgrounds and different work styles, to work independently and collaboratively, with enthusiasm and capacity for directness in communication and for giving and receiving constructive feedback.
- The ability to independently own work as assigned, and the ability to work productively and efficiently with minimal supervision.
- Problem-solving orientation that includes thinking ahead to identify possible obstacles, searching for and proposing answers.
- Excellent writing, editing, and analytical skills.
- Computer skills, especially in word processing, creating spreadsheets, and drafting community education materials.
- Competency with Google Suite and Zoom.
- A commitment to individual and organizational learning to develop personal and inter-personal core competencies related to teamwork, communication, collaboration, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
- Language skills are strongly preferred, particularly the ability to communicate fluently in a language relevant to immigrant communities (including but not limited to Mandarin, Haitian Creole or Spanish), including the ability to speak, read, write, understand, and translate from one language to the other as needed.
Don’t meet every single requirement? If you are excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly, we still encourage you to apply! You may be the right candidate for this or other roles at our organization.
SALARY AND BENEFITS
The salary range for this position is $70,000 to $90,000. The exact compensation will be based on years of community organizing experience and whether the candidate already has relevant community relationships they can bring to LCR.
We also provide a competitive and fully comprehensive benefits package that places us in the top tier of comparable organizations locally and nationally, including generous vacation/holiday/leave policies; professional development opportunities; a sabbatical policy; and employer-paid health benefits.
Snapshot of LCR’s benefits:
- 3 weeks (15 days) of paid vacation annually.
- 2 weeks (10 days) of paid sick time annually.
- Staff receive time off for all local, state, and federal holidays (17 holidays).
- We typically close the office and give staff time off the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
- LCR covers 100% of health insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance premiums for employees (and approximately 50% of costs for dependents).
- 401K plan with an organizational match.
- Reimbursement of reasonable work-related travel expenses.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Please send your resume and cover letter specifying language skills and salary requirements to employment@lawyersforcivilrights.org. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, with a January 31, 2025 deadline.
