About GROWW:

GROWW (GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin) is an independent power organization: a vehicle for people to come together around shared values and self-interest to change systems of power over time to win the things they need.

We build power so that the people of western Wisconsin – not distant corporations, wealthy donors, or political insiders – decide the future of our communities: affordable homes, healthy land and water, healthcare we can count on, and a democracy that answers to us. 

Unlike service or advocacy organizations, our purpose is not to provide charity or “raise awareness,” but to organize members to act collectively in the public arena. GROWW is owned and governed by its dues-paying members, who take responsibility for the direction of the organization rather than acting as spectators or “volunteers.” We intentionally cultivate a culture of leadership where people take risks, hold one another accountable, and grow through action, tension, agitation, learning, and development.

About the Role:

Organizers are at the heart of GROWW. An organizer builds the relationships, develops the leaders, and runs the campaigns through which ordinary people come to see themselves as powerful and act like it. While others mobilize people to show up or provide services to individuals, organizers build a base of people who are growing in their capacity to lead and to wield collective power in the public arena.

The Northwestern Wisconsin Organizer builds GROWW’s presence in the region spanning Polk, Barron, Rusk, Burnett, Washburn, Sawyer, Douglas, Bayfield, and Ashland counties. Northwestern Wisconsin is a place of small towns, tribal nations, working forests and lakes, family businesses, and congregations that hold communities together. It is also a place of two economies. Lake homes sit empty much of the year while the people who clean them, cook in the supper clubs, and plow the roads struggle. Schools shrink and go to referendums to stay open, maternity wards close, and the nearest birthing unit or treatment program can be an hour away. Families carry the weight of addiction with little help close to home. Grocery stores are replaced by Dollar Stores. Young people leave, and those who stay grow older with fewer services around them.

At GROWW, an organizer is not an entry-level position. This role in particular calls for someone who has been tested, who can work with little structure, and who has built real relationships, developed real leaders, and learned to wield power through practice, failure, and growth.

Responsibilities

Map the Region and Identify Key Constituency (first 90 days)

• Conduct an intensive listening campaign across the region: a high volume of one-to-one meetings with residents, faith leaders, business owners, local officials, tribal community members, and leaders of existing institutions.
• Inquire into the region’s power structure: who makes the decisions that shape people’s lives (county boards, municipalities, employers, landlords, health systems, state agencies), who influences them, and where people have leverage.
• Identify where self-interest is sharpest and most shared, where leaders with followings already exist, and where a winnable fight could build lasting power.
• Bring a written recommendation for a core constituency and a first campaign to your supervising organizer and revise it through that process.
• Build relationships with existing organizations in the region, and respect the institutions and leadership already in place, including the sovereignty of tribal nations and Native-led organizing.

Build and Wield a Base

• Once a constituency is chosen, conduct a high volume of one-to-one meetings every week to identify self-interest, recruit new leaders, and deepen relationships with existing members.
• Reach people where they are: door knocking, house meetings, congregations, workplaces, community gatherings, and surveys.
• Break into new institutions and recruit leaders with followings who can expand GROWW’s base across the region.
• Demonstrate the power of your base through turnout: plan for it, work for it, and deliver.

Develop Leaders

• Carry and develop a core leadership team: people who are building their own followings and moving others into action.
• See the leadership potential in people before they see it in themselves. Make bold propositions that stretch people toward a bigger vision of who they can become.
• Coach, agitate, and support leaders as they take on increasing responsibility, moving them from followers to builders of their own teams.
• Facilitate base meetings, trainings, and leadership team meetings that build culture, develop skills, and connect people to shared purpose.
• Never do for your leaders what they can do for themselves. Distribute responsibility and help people grow into it.

Run Campaigns and Win

• Develop and execute an escalating organizing plan: one that moves from relationship building to public action to winning concrete demands from specific targets.
• Do rigorous power analysis: who has the decision-making power to make the change you want, what motivates them, and how to move them.
• Lead public actions, research meetings, and accountability sessions that build GROWW’s power in the public arena.
• Connect regional fights to county and state demands, and to GROWW campaigns elsewhere in western Wisconsin.
• Build and steward relationships with partner organizations and community institutions as part of a broader power-building strategy.
• Develop campaign narratives that connect local issue campaigns to GROWW’s shared organizational agenda, aligning messaging across efforts to build power at scale.

Sustain the Organization

• Organize money: raise funds and collect dues from members as an integrated part of your organizing.
• Maintain disciplined use of GROWW’s data systems: track 1-1s, meetings, and leadership development in EveryAction and written reports.
• Participate on the GROWW Leadership Team (GLT), a cross-campaign body of top leaders making strategic decisions about how campaigns coordinate, respond to threats, and align power toward a shared agenda.

Learning & Development

• Participate in ongoing training and political development, including Weeklong Training, advanced-level Organizer Bootcamps, Lead Organizer Cohort, and other movement-wide learning opportunities.
• Contribute to the organizing team’s monthly learning cycle: submit a written reflection on your organizing practice and participate in the monthly daylong team meeting for agitation, coaching, and strategic collaboration.

Qualifications

Required

• Strong relational capacity: the ability to build rapport with students, listen deeply, and form authentic public relationships.
• Grit and agency: initiative and follow-through, the ability to stay focused, push through obstacles, and keep moving even when the path is unclear.
• Curiosity and ego-resilience: about yourself, others, and the wider world; hunger to learn the craft of organizing. Ability to apprentice oneself, receive coaching, and grow through tension and reflection.
  
• Demonstrated community organizing experience that has been tested in practice, through a staff role at another organization, successful completion of an organizing fellowship, or equivalent.
• Proven ability to build relationships and develop leaders: you have moved people up a leadership ladder, not just mobilized them to show up and do things.
• Experience running or contributing to a campaign with escalating tactics, targets, and public actions.
• Clarity about your own self-interest and why you are in this work.
• Strong organizational discipline: you plan your work, track your relationships, debrief your actions, and hold yourself accountable.
• Has attended Weeklong Leadership Training or equivalent.
• Ability to work evenings and weekends, keep a campus schedule, and travel across western Wisconsin. Reliable vehicle required (mileage reimbursed).
• Alignment with GROWW’s mission and a clear understanding of the difference between building power and providing service.

Preferred

• Lives in northwestern Wisconsin (Polk, Barron, Rusk, Burnett, Washburn, Sawyer, Douglas, Bayfield, or Ashland counties) or has deep ties to communities in the region.
• Experience organizing in rural communities or small towns.
• Existing relationships with one or more potential constituencies, such as congregations, tribal communities, small business networks, or manufactured home residents.
• Experience in local government or county politics.
• Experience organizing hard money: dues collection, institutional relationships, or membership development.
• Clarity about their own stakes in racial and economic justice.

Compensation & Benefits:

Organizer salary range is $60,000-70,000 commensurate with experience. 

Benefits include employer contribution to health insurance for employees and their dependents; full vision and dental coverage; generous paid time off (13 holidays, 4 weeks PTO, and the week between Christmas and New Year’s, prorated for fellows); life insurance; and mileage reimbursement. We offer ongoing training opportunities in a fast-paced, dynamic, supportive, and collaborative setting.

GROWW provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. Selection for roles will be based on individual merit and qualifications alone.

How to Apply: