Community Organizer - Portland Metro

Application Guidelines:

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

A cover letter is recommended for consideration.

This position is currently hybrid.

This is a limited duration (2 years) position.

Out-of-state selected candidates will be required to relocate to the Oregon/SW Washington area within 60 days of their start date.

Who We Are:

Oregon Food Bank (OFB) believes that no one should be hungry. Our mission is to eliminate hunger and its root causes.  We believe that food and health are basic human rights for all. We know that hunger is not just an individual experience; it is also a community-wide symptom of systemic barriers to employment, education, housing and health care such as systemic racism, sexism, and cissexism. That’s why we work systemically to achieve our mission to end hunger: we foster community connections to help people access nutritious food, and we build community power and strengthen networks of support and the safety net to eliminate the root causes of hunger for good.

We build community power to dismantle systems and policies that drive hunger and poverty.

Oregon Food Bank is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we strongly encourage applications from candidates who can increase the diversity of our organization and strengthen our capacity to eliminate hunger. We believe strongly in the power of lived experience — and we actively seek individuals who have experienced hunger and its root causes to join our team. Our organization is stronger because of the leadership of people who have faced food insecurity in their own lives and/or hail from historically under-represented communities. Learn more about our commitment at oregonfoodbank.org/equity. 

Who You Are:

You care deeply about community, about people experiencing hunger and hold them in the center of all that you do. You are committed to apply equity as a process and an outcome of your work to disrupt systemic social patterns that promote hunger such as racism, sexism, and cissexism.  You have a strong affinity with OFB’s 10 Year Vision and are profoundly excited to achieve this vision for and with our community.

Position Summary:

As a Community Organizer, you will contribute to the organization’s success through building an ever growing base of community leaders and moving these leaders through increasing levels of commitment.  From recruitment, to political education, non-partisan electoral organizing to leadership development - the Community Organizer ensures that we are building political power to advance systems and policy change to end hunger and its root causes.  

Primary Responsibilities (Essential Functions):

• Build and support a community leadership team that co-creates and implements grassroots organizing strategies & tactics in support of our priority policy change campaigns.     

• Engage community members in all aspects of our statewide field organizing program, including Ending Hunger Power Nights, 1 on 1s, Leader Camps, phone banks, relational organizing and other analysis, skills building and action tactics that increase levels of commitment and leadership.  

• Lead and/or participate in programmatic elements of statewide field organizing program such as Ending Hunger Power Nights, community forums, and educational workshops and other community-building events & activities with a focus on building political power. 

• Mobilize people to actions and events through phone banking, texting, canvassing (door-to-door), & digital organizing, etc.

• Participate in co-leading organizing trainings within OFB, with our organizational partners or with community members.  

• Identify leaders who want to participate in sharing their stories and expertise in media, legislative testimony or other communications and advocacy strategies.  

• Based on capacity and as assigned, provide on the ground support to local organizing campaigns & coalitions aligned wi