Project Manager

Thank you for your interest in joining the Sortition Foundation. We hope this document encourages and inspires you as you consider this opportunity.

Location: Home based. Our current team is based in the UK. We are happy to consider any applicant who can generally make meetings to match a UK time zone.

Salary: We offer a competitive salary and benefits package that considers the cost of living in the country of employment. The salary for this role will be circa £50,608.89 per year (Band B) pro rata based on our Global Salary Scale adjusted for cost of living according to your location and paid in your local currency.  As an illustration, the full-time equivalent salary in the following locations is:

• Hungary - Ft13,692,430 (HUF)

• Australia - $95,718.14 (AUD)

• UK - £50,608.89 (GBP)

Hours: 21-35 hours (3-5 days) per week. You will have some flexibility about when you work your hours, and we have some required team meeting commitments.

Contract length: Permanent

Reporting to: Convenor of UK/EU Delivery Team

Management: None

Application deadline: 09.00am (UK time) 24 February 2025. Details of how to apply at the end of this job description.

About the role

We’re looking for an experienced project manager interested in the deliberative democracy field to deliver selection and stratification services to customers, to enable the recruitment and selection of participants for deliberative democratic processes to take place at all levels of government & society. As a project manager, you will be responsible for ensuring a smooth journey for our customers and a high quality of service delivery. 

Key Responsibilities

• Liaise with clients to manage selection and stratification services for their projects, and advise them on good practice.

• Co-ordinate the design, printing and postage of invitation materials.

• Use software tools to generate addresses by lottery.

• Create web forms (using a CMS) for potential participants to register their interest.

• Create spreadsheets and back-end processes to enable selection of participants by lottery for events.

• Answer questions from people interested in taking part in processes.

• Use software to select participants by lottery.

• Coordinate with our calls teams to confirm the attendance of selected participants by phone, and replace any who drop out.

• Prepare reports for clients.

• Work closely with other members of the delivery team to support each other.

• Keep abreast of best practice in sortition and deliberative democracy in our sector.

• Participating in and contributing to a Working Group (to be decided together).

Essential skills and experience

• An ability to self-motivate, work flexibly within small teams and on your own initiative.

• Experience in managing projects independently.

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, both verbal and written, facilitating clear and effective exchanges in English.

• Confident in using spreadsheets, formulas and software tools: at least 2 years’ experience using Excel/Google Sheets in an advanced manner.

• Ability to understand demographics and statistics.

• Commitment to Sortition Foundation’s strategic goals.

• Demonstrable commitment to the values that guide the goals of the Sortition Foundation of social justice and collective wisdom and those that guide our culture: curious, caring and courageous.

Desirable skills and experience:

There are some additional roles and skill sets that we would be interested in identifying in applicants, but which do not form the core part of the project manager role and are therefore not essential. We do not expect applicants to have any or all of these desirable skills. 

• Familiarity with sortition and deliberative democracy.

• Strong networking and collaboration skills, with the ability to build and maintain professional relationships, engage diverse stakeholders, and represent the organisation at conferences and events.

• Technical sales.

• Data analysis.

• Software development, including Python, JavaScript, Google Apps Script, HTML, Liquid, and NationBuilder templates, with the ability to troubleshoot issues and optimise workflows through coding solutions.

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to integrate technology to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

The successful candidate will be highly organised, self-motivated and independent; everyone works from home with substantial freedom to choose their own hours.

Benefits:

• Holiday allowance: 40 days of annual leave including public holidays (pro rata).

• Flexible Working: Flexible hours and the option to work remotely.

• Pension Contributions: 3% employer contribution to your pension (if you’re UK-based).

• Sick Leave: 20 days of sick leave per year (pro rata).

• Social Events: Regular social events and in-person gatherings.

About the organisation

The Sortition Foundation is a not-for-profit company that exists to transform politics and upgrade democracy. We recruit people from all walks of life for citizens’ assemblies in the UK, Australia, Europe, and around the world, with clients including national governments, local governments, cultural, technology and other organisations. The surplus generated from this work funds our campaigning for the institutionalisation of these assemblies at local and regional/national level. We are structured as a workers co-operative and our core values are to be caring, courageous and curious. We have a small and growing team across the UK and Australia and a subsidiary organisation, Sortition Europe, based in Hungary.

Our Vision is that people from all walks of life make informed decisions about how we live together. Our Purpose is to build the movement for permanent, powerful citizens’ assemblies. Our strategic goals are to: 

1. Build a powerful movement for democratic renewal using citizens’ assemblies; 

2. Build the capacity and expertise to deliver citizens’ assemblies at scale;

3. Build the belief that citizens' assemblies are feasible and desirable; and 

4. Build and maintain a sustainable organisation. 

Our goals are guided by the following values: Collective Wisdom and Social Justice. Our culture is guided by the following values: Curious, Caring, and Courageous.

In the last few years, citizens’ assemblies have become commonplace in many countries (UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Poland) and spread to many more, such as France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Belgium, among others. A regional parliament in Belgium created a permanent citizens’ assembly - the first of its kind in Europe - and we are seeing local councils in the UK and Australia follow suit.

While this represents considerable success, there is still much work and campaigning to do. We want to see citizens’ assemblies become more prevalent, for them to become a permanent feature of our democracies, and we understand that for this to happen we need more people, organisations and decision makers to know about and advocate for these assemblies.

In recent years the Sortition Foundation:

• Supported nearly 200 citizens’ assemblies and other sortition events in the UK, Australia, Hungary, and elsewhere, sending hundreds of thousands of assembly invitations to households, and recruiting thousands of people for deliberative processes. Some examples include Scotland’s Climate Assembly, the Budapest Climate Assembly, a citizens’ jury on assisted dying in Jersey, the UK government’s Public Advisory Group on COVID-19, and many community panels in Australia for councils in Victoria. 

• Developed a network of democracy organisations campaigning for the institutionalisation of citizens’ assemblies; we have an ongoing campaign to replace the House of Lords with a House of Citizens, have developed and tested messaging and framing guides for communicating our campaign goals, and have laid the groundwork for this transformative democratic change.

• Reviewed and refreshed our strategy and structure to get clear on what we can hope to achieve with the resources we can wield in the best possible organisational structure.

• Grew our annual turnover dramatically, from almost zero turnover six years ago, to over £624,000 in the last financial year.

We achieved all this thanks to our growing and dedicated staff; our continued partnerships with organisations including the Electoral Reform Society, Unlock Democracy, and Involve in the UK, and DemocracyCo in Australia; our ongoing participation in the Democracy R&D International Network.

The Application Process

To apply, please complete our online application form (where you can also upload your CV). We will NOT be accepting applications via email or in any other format. The closing date for all applications is 09.00am 24 February 2025 (UK time). If you require additional time, please contact us by 20 February 2025 and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that candidates may need during the recruitment process. If there are additional options you’d like to request, please contact us. We also offer reasonable adjustments on the job.

If you would like to discuss the role or have any questions, please do email us.

Our intention is to hold interviews (virtually) during the week of 10 March 2025. We will share the interview questions with you two days prior to your interview. 

Should you be offered the role, we will ask for two references from you.

We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds. We do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status or other categories protected by law.