Head of Campaigns By You

Closing date: Tuesday 14th January 2025 at 9am

Working arrangements: Remote working, permanent, regular or ad hoc (with frequent travel to London if not London-based) Please note that we also have approximately 3-4 team retreats per year which could be located anywhere nationally.

We have an exciting opening for someone to join our team as the Head of our Campaigns By You (CBY) team. We need a campaigns expert who understands politics, digital campaigning, platform management, partnership working and how to win both national and local grass roots campaigns.

The Head of Campaigns By You leads the CBY department, crafting plans and supporting the team to run impactful national and local campaigns launched by supporters and partner organisations, which aim to shape the country to be fair, respectful and sustainable. This role oversees the development, outreach and growth of our CBY platform to ensure that we’re giving the best possible support to petition starters and attracting a growing number of petition starters and partner organisations who share our values.

The Head of Campaigns By You must overview and lead the CBY team’s campaign outputs and the performance of the tech platform to ensure organisational health and sustainability. They manage risk, and are the escalation point for moderation decisions on what we host. They balance the CBY campaign team’s campaign portfolio to ensure that it’s engaging thousands of supporters and fundraising effectively in order to create political impact – and they lead the team to collaborate across the wider function and organisation. This is not a hands off role, you’ll be expected to lead the team by example.

Your background and experience

We are looking for someone who understands 38 Degrees, our model and our organisational culture already, and our fierce determination to change our country – campaigning to do so without fear or favour whoever is in power. You will have worked at, or with, a similar organisation to us, where our supporters are our purpose, and you’ll be ready to engage in discussions about campaigning tactics and way of working from day one.

The CBY platform is central to our mission to give people power in order to make the country fair, respectful and sustainable. You understand how to translate complex issues into everyday understandable language and you’re experienced in running digital and offline campaigns that create change in local, national, political and corporate issue areas.

You’ll have experience of working in productive and positive environments, and you’ll have insight into how teams can be set up for success in a campaigning space.

You’ll be adept and experienced at project management, understand the pressures the team face working in a fast paced reactive environment and be able to get the best of people in this context to help deliver on longer term, strategic goals alongside making the most of quick reactive opportunities.

And most of all, you will be a positive, practical person who can work with others, bringing them with you, to solve problems in a collaborative way.

About us

38 Degrees is one of the UK’s biggest campaigning communities, involving over a million supporters who campaign to make the UK a better place. We’re united by a shared vision to create a fairer and more respectful UK and a more sustainable world.

In the space of a week, millions of supporters could be campaigning on anything from protecting our NHS and stopping cuts to Universal Credit, to saving local green spaces and protecting our democracy.

38 Degrees is fiercely independent. We are primarily funded by small donations from hundreds of thousands of members of the public from all over the UK. This independence means we never have to hold ourselves back from taking on those with power and can truly listen to our supporters.

Why you’ll want to work here

The 38 Degrees culture is honest, kind, supportive, courageous, and respectful. We move fast, and frequently change plans to respond to events. We work hard but we also have fun. We regularly enjoy team away days and social hours.

Benefits include:

27 days holiday per year (plus bank holidays); Office closure between Christmas and New year; 9-day fortnight (office closed every other Friday); 4pm closure on the alternate Friday; Flexibility to work 90 days per tax year (30 day maximum per travel in any location as per approval process); One month paid sabbatical leave after 5 years of service; Employer pension contribution; 24 hour employee assistance programme; Enhanced family leave policies; Cycle to work scheme; Employer paid annual flu vaccination; Rental deposit loan; Contribution to eye tests/glasses; Learning and development budget.

Our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

We’re especially keen to hear from people who’ll bring lived experience of the issues we work on and who’ll make our team more diverse as a result. So if you’re Black, Asian or from any other minority ethnic group, if you’re disabled, LGBTQIA+, or if you’re from a working class home, your application will be especially welcome. And thanks to our flexible home working approach and network of offices, we have a staff team that is increasingly based across the UK. We’re keen to continue diversifying geographically, so that we’re rooted in our supporters’ communities.

To make sure that we are able to reach our goal of a diverse team we have equal opportunities monitoring requirements. Your application will not be complete without the equal opportunities monitoring form.

38 Degrees is committed to inclusive working practices, so during the application process we commit to:

• • Paying for childcare whilst you’re at 38 Degrees interviews or tasks
  • Paying for your travel costs to the office and back – and for overnight accommodation if you’re travelling from a long distance for an interview although at present the majority of interviews are held online using zoom.
  • Making any reasonable adjustments – for example ensuring we have a BSL interpreters organised in advance if you’d need one
  • If there anything else you’re concerned about or think we could provide, please let us know.

To be successful in your application you must meet the essential requirements for this role and answer the questions below which are part of the selection criteria. Without completion of this task your application cannot be considered.

The successful candidate must have the right to work in the UK at the time of appointment.

Application Questions (max word count: 2000 words across all questions)

1. Tell us about a digital campaign you have been part of, including what you were trying to achieve, how you developed a strategy, how you brought team members together to action the plan, and what the results you achieved.

2. 38 Degrees is a digital-first, people-powered campaigning organisation where millions of people do something small to add up to bigger political and corporate change. Tell us about a time you’ve worked with a similar model – and why you think this specific form of campaigning can make a difference in the country.

3. Alongside offering free petition technology to individual members of the public, our CBY platform enables us to partner with other organisations so that they can run campaigns on our systems. Knowing what you do about 38 Degrees and our political positioning, who do you think would be a good new partner organisation for us to approach to work with and why?

4. You’ve noticed a news story blowing up this morning about unfair conditions for delivery drivers, it’s headline news across the country. We want to get a petition live by this afternoon and ideally have someone with a personal story as the petition starter. What sort of person would make the best story teller, and how would you go about finding them and persuading them to start a petition?