Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK) Campaign Manager

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Job Title: Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK) Campaign Manager
Department: Program
Location: Washington, D.C. preferred 
Reports to: Director, Sierra Club Outdoors for All | Founder and Chair, Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK)
Supervises: OAK Intern, OAK program staff

Context: At the Sierra Club, we believe in the power of togetherness. Together, we remain committed to the fight for a healthy climate built on a foundation of environmental, racial, economic, and gender justice – a future where all people benefit from a healthy, thriving planet and a direct connection to nature. As the climate crisis and deeply entrenched systemic racism all fuel inequity, we will continue to fight for a bold, transformational agenda that recognizes the interconnectedness between our planet, our humanity, and our democracy. By recognizing that our destinies are tied, we continue to name that all things are fundamentally connected, and the overlap between ecology, race, gender, and representative government will move to either advance our collective humanity or to oppress it.

Sierra Club is comprised of staff across the country and a network of local chapters that support our grassroots engagement. We are also proud to be a unionized employer, with two labor unions representing more than half of our employees.

Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign seeks to advance a just, equitable, and inclusive movement that ensures access to the outdoors for all people. The campaign works to advance outdoor equity through several national and local projects including the Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK), a national strategic partnership of over 100 organizations and businesses working together to expand equitable access to the outdoors for children, youth, and families.

Scope: The OAK Campaign Manager is responsible for the management, planning, coordination, and implementation of, as well as securing financial resources, for the Outdoors Alliance for Kids. The Manager embodies and represents the Sierra Club’s commitment to equity, justice, and inclusion in all areas of work. In coordination with Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All Campaign Director, cultivates new and maintains existing donors, manages the development of funding proposals and reports, develops campaign strategies, priorities, and benchmarks, and manages the implementation of all OAK activities. Overall project management responsibility for the Outdoors Alliance for Kids (OAK), and the advancement of the alliance’s strategic policy, programmatic, and equity priorities. Leads highly collaborative and inclusive planning and implementation processes, ensuring OAK members have meaningful opportunities to contribute their strengths and expertise in pursuit of common goals. Leads all OAK action team, working group, and membership meetings and calls, and supports OAK’s steering committee. Recruits new members, builds transformational partnerships, and tracks OAK’s progress. Drives coordination between Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign, federal policy, communications, digital strategies, chapters and outings groups and OAK partners to advance goals and achieve impact.

Job activities include but are not limited to:

  • Applies equity, inclusion and justice values to all alliance activities. Actively works to pivot away from white supremacist culture and behaviour towards racial equity at the individual and interpersonal levels, and ensures OAK member organizations have shared commitments to equity. Operationalizes the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing in all partnership and collaborative activity. Models best practices to foster a welcoming and inclusive environment, striving to ensure a variety of perspectives, individuals, and organizations are welcomed, valued, and supported to participate in OAK meetings and activities, particularly at the leadership level. Ensures campaign strategies and outcomes advance justice and equity.
  • Manages, plans, carries out, and evaluates all aspects of the Outdoors Alliance for Kids project. Supervises program employees, including OAK interns. Supports staff development, oversees work plan implementation, conducts performance evaluations, hiring, and training.
  • In collaboration with OAK’s steering committee, advisors, and membership, refines OAK’s vision, goals, and sets long-term and annual goals, outcomes, and strategies to advance the vision at the national, state, and local levels. Oversees the implementation of the strategic campaign plan by developing clear timelines and roles for OAK members and Sierra Club capacities, effectively delegating across the partnership. Inspires participation outside direct lines of management. Utilizes action teams and working groups to move shared work forward.
    • Responsible for collaboratively developing and implementing OAK’s annual policy priorities. In coordination with OAK’s federal policy action team and Sierra Club’s federal policy team, identifies legislative, budget, and administrative priorities on an annual basis, coordinates meetings, lobby days, and materials development, including fact sheets, one-pagers, letters of support, and maintains an annual policy priorities and federal appropriations tracker for OAK.
    • Reestablishes OAK’s state and local action team to coordinate, support, and amplify state and local policy efforts of OAK members.
    • Leads collaborative planning and implementation of OAK’s major events, meetings, and projects.
  • Supports OAK’s steering committee and develops a growing and increasingly diverse membership base. Recruits, maintains, supports and coordinates alliance members. Develops personal relationships with current and new partners, and recruits new OAK members with an emphasis on expanding representation from Black, Indigenous and People of Color, LGBTQIA+, disability, and youth communities in OAK’s leadership and membership. Maintains clear and up-to-date contact information for partners, and regularly reaches out to advance shared work. Responsible for maintaining partner list-servs and other communication and collaboration tools.
  • Coordinates across Sierra Club capacities and with OAK members to advance OAK’s priorities. Works with Sierra Club’s Outdoors for All campaign, including federal policy, communications, digital strategies, chapters, and outings, to ensure OAK’s campaign plans effectively bring Sierra Club’s strengths in campaigning, government relations, communications, grassroots organizing, and outings to the table to secure concrete victories for OAK. Maps OAK member assets and creates the systems for OAK member organizations to effectively lend their unique strengths and assets to support shared work and reach collective impact.
    • Working with Sierra Club’s communications and digital strategies teams, develops comprehensive communications and grassroots engagement strategies to support OAK’s overarching goals. Elevates the voices and perspectives of OAK members, advisors, and youth participants as outspoken champions for outdoor equity, raising the visibility of OAK leaders. Develops action alerts and digital organizing assets to effectively engage grassroots activists in OAK campaigns. Develops outreach and communication materials for OAK. Responsible for coordinating development of OAK’s newsletter and social media content; maintains and updates OAK’s website with support from team members.
    • Working with Sierra Club’s Chapters and Outings groups, and OAK member state and local affiliates, effectively build power and engage advocates at the state and local levels.
  • Working with the Outdoors for All Campaign Director, ensures overall fiscal health for OAK:
    • Manages program fundraising. This includes developing grant funding proposals, cultivating and maintaining funder relationships, and updating funders on recent activities, in coordination with the Advancement team.
    • Responsible for soliciting OAK member in-kind and annual contributions.
    • Oversees OAK budget. This includes managing an operational budget and tracking expenses in coordination with the Operations team, ensuring alignment with campaign objectives, equity priorities, and funding realities.
  • Represents OAK to decision-makers, government agencies, the media, strategic allies, and the general public. Serves as the primary point of contact for OAK members and general inquiries.
  • Introduces creative ideas and approaches for consideration.
  • Performs miscellaneous duties as assigned

The successful candidate must have the following skills and experience: 

  • Operationalizing Equity. You model effective equity analysis and practice and demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of how group dynamics impact supervisory relationships, organizational culture, partnerships, campaigns, and coalition work. Your decision-making is consistent, intentional, and committed to creating equitable outcomes at all levels. You have led high-performing and leaderful teams across group identities. You intervene when challenging group dynamics play out, in ways that build understanding, trust, and deeper self-awareness of team members.
  • Interpersonal & Communication Skills. Demonstrated ability to engage, inspire, and maintain strong transformational partnerships around shared values, purpose, and goals. Experience building transformational and mutually beneficial partnerships at the organizational level, and ability to inspire people towards action, particularly outside of any formal management chain. Strong communication skills, ability to bring people along, through written and oral communications. Emotional intelligence and resilience, ability to engage in courageous conversations, particularly across identities, and tend to impact. Thrives in a feedback environment, both giving and receiving feedback.
  • Compassionate Staff Manager Skills & Experience. Experience managing and supporting staff to succeed in their work and develop professionally. Demonstrated ability giving and receiving feedback and mentoring individuals. Direct communication and the ability to balance professional skill development with compassionate forms of accountability. Highly developed resiliency and self-care skills. Awareness of your personal self-care needs and a track record of actively attending to them to ensure resilience and endurance are important for long term success. Track record of developing just relationships with direct reports and peers.
  • Project Management & Collaboration. Extensive experience with project management, from conception through implementation. Demonstrated ability to co-develop and advance project plans with a team, and keep projects and partnerships organized through document development, email communication, etc. Ability to plan and facilitate meetings and to navigate group dynamics and conflict. Ability to set and honor deadlines and help others fulfill their roles in a project through strong project coordination, prioritization, and communication. Highly collaborative and motivated by team work, with the ability to work independently and generate unique contributions to collective work. Flexible to meet the needs of an ever-changing landscape.
  • Policy Advocacy. Commitment to and knowledge of federal policy and government relations, experience advocating on federal legislative and administrative issues, research and campaign organizing, press relations and public speaking. Experience and knowledge of the national legislative process.
  • Critical Thinker & Thought Leader. Provide thought leadership, regularly generating ideas that will advance the vision and goals of OAK; ability to navigate an ever changing landscape and effectively problem-solve while keeping the big picture in mind.

The strongest candidates will also demonstrate the following experience, skills and competencies:

  • Knowledge of justice, environmental/conservation, health and wellness, youth and/or outdoors movements.
  • Fundraising experience.

Compensation and Benefits

The salary for this position is $85,000 – 90,000 non-negotiable depending on region.

The Sierra Club offers a competitive salary package commensurate with skills and experience plus excellent benefits that include medical, dental, and vision coverage, and a retirement savings 401(k) plan.

This is a category 3 exempt, non-represented, supervisory/managerial position.

Sierra Club is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization. Sierra Club employees are not eligible to participate in the Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program.

Sierra Club values the expertise and talents of foreign nationals. Sierra Club sponsors both nonimmigrant and immigrant visas when certain criteria are met, based on immigration laws and organizational needs. Such sponsorship is at the discretion of the Department Head and Sierra Club Human Resources in consultation with the employee’s manager. The Sierra Club cannot guarantee the approval of a visa petition. The Sierra Club is an equal opportunity employer committed to workforce diversity.

To Apply – Click here to apply

This position does not have an undergraduate education requirement. If you choose to include your education history, please remove your schools from your resume. You may leave your degree (e.g., “B.A. Philosophy”), but please remove any undergraduate and graduate school names.

This anonymous process is aimed at opening this opportunity to more candidates, reviewing applicants on performance assessments and mitigating bias in the decision-making process.

Lastly, we are intentionally not asking for a cover letter, so please do not send one in with your application.

Explore, enjoy and protect the planet.

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