We are looking for a Vice President of States to join our team at Common Cause. This is a senior leadership role that will work in collaboration with the Senior Vice President of States and our other Vice Presidents of States to oversee and support our State Director to manage their teams and lead advocacy efforts in their states, ensuring alignment between state-level and national priorities, fostering collaboration across states and teams, and driving impact across the organization.

This is an exciting opportunity to use your deep understanding of policy advocacy, team management, and organizational change management to guide our state teams to reach their goals.

This is a full-time role reporting to the Senior Vice President, States;this role is remote anywhere within the lower 48 United States, with an expectation to travel up to a week per month. We hope our new Vice President, States will start in December.

Responsibilities

Manage State Directors

• Manage and support State Directors across several states to ensure that those teams meet or exceed their programmatic, financial, and operational goals

• Collaboratively setting goals to ensure alignment between state, programmatic, and operational priorities

• Guide state teams to develop proactive and responsive strategies based on the political landscape of their state

• Build and maintain strong and trusting relationships with state teams

• Ensure sustainability and efficiency of state budgets and resource allocation, and work with State Directors and other teams to implement system and process improvements as needed

• Lead professional development and coaching efforts to strengthen state teams, including management under our collective bargaining agreement, differentiating for needs across our organization

• Support State Directors’ career progression and retention at Common Cause, and drive succession planning to ensure sustainability

Serve as an external representative and advocate for our states’ work

• Represent Common Cause externally, building relationships with donors, policymakers, and coalition partners to strengthen the organization's influence and impact.

• Speak to the media about our work as needed

• Collaborate with teams across the organization to promote the work in our states, including developing public-facing materials and written communications

• Work closely with our Development team to ensure alignment of states’ strategy with development activities

• Support state teams to meet their fundraising goals to maintain and grow our effectiveness and solvency; this may include drafting grants and other written fundraising materials, ensuring accuracy in grant reporting, and supporting states with other fundraising activities

Strategic Leadership

• Lead change initiatives across the organization to help ensure alignment between state, program, and operations team priorities

• Ensure collaboration, responsiveness, and accountability between state, program and operations teams.

• Build expertise in democracy and electoral policy to be able to support various states with their work

• Collaborate with organizational leadership to share state-level insights that shape Common Cause’s overall strategy

• A strong commitment to Common Cause’s nonpartisan mission and to advancing racial equity through our national agenda
• A commitment to equity in the goals of your work and in how you work with others
• Ability to quickly build rapport, trust, and credibility with multiple stakeholders with diverse interests
• Ability to navigate organizational and power dynamics, leverage relationships, and influence others to adopt changes to meet common goals
• Ability to respectfully navigate conflict while maintaining your values
• Ability to compel action through both written and verbal communication, including distilling complex concepts for a broad audience
• Innovative and strategic thinking skills, with the ability to navigate through ambiguity to achieve goals
• Ability to manage and meet deadlines for multiple short- and long-term priorities at once, with high attention to detail; strong organization skills, and an ability to manage your time independently
• A resourceful approach to problem-solving
• Openness to giving and receiving feedback; aware of your own strengths and areas for growth
• Familiarity with office productivity tools including Microsoft Office, Slack, and Zoom

• Have led successful state-level or national issue-based advocacy campaigns; and ideally you have experience with strategic direction setting for grassroots organizing
• Demonstrated experience with the legislative process in at least one state, including policy research and analysis, policy development, legislative drafting, legislative advocacy and lobbying, communications, and policy implementation
• Demonstrates knowledge of unique aspects of the political dynamic in at least one state, including decision-makers, partners, and funders – ideally, you have existing relationships with these people and organizations
• Have managed a team, and ideally you have managed other managers, and coached and trained mid-level and senior staff to develop skills
• A track record of working collaboratively with others, and have managed coalitions or groups with diverse interests to achieve a goal
• Track record of leading organization-wide change initiatives
• Ability to travel up to a week per month for site visits, conferences, team and/or all staff retreats
• Willing to have a social media presence on behalf of Common Cause, including being tagged on posts and creating content on behalf of the organization (as needed, Common Cause will provide accounts for staff members to use)
• Per our nonpartisan policy, Common Cause staff members may not currently be in elected office (or running for office); on the Steering Committee or Finance Committee for any political candidate; or affiliated with the leadership of a political party

• This position is classified as supervisory and therefore not included in the union-represented collective bargaining unit
• Common Cause is unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of an employment visa at this time; please note that if hired, you will be asked to produce documentation for authorization to work in the US

Common Cause is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applicants of any race, creed, color, religion, ethnicity, national origin, income class, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran status, or marital status, as well as applicants who have been previously incarcerated.

Common Cause (501(c)(4)) and Common Cause Education Fund (501(c)(3)) are nonpartisan, nonprofit grassroots affiliate organizations dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create an open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.

Founded in 1970 and headquartered in Washington, DC, Common Cause has members and supporters living in every congressional district in the United States, and offices in 23 states around the country.