Founding Executive Director

Founding Executive Director

Organization
:
Civil Works |
Status
:
Full-Time |
Reports to: Board of Directors

Salary
: $,000 depending on qualifications and experience

Benefits
:
To be determined in consultation with the Board of Directors

Location:

Remote first, can be based anywhere in the United States, with periodic travel to Minnesota and elsewhere for board meetings and partner convenings.

Civil Works equips citizens with clear information, structured deliberation, and organized pathways to improve how their democracy works.

We are a nonpartisan organization focused on the structural conditions that determine whether we have fair and full arguments about what policies best serve the public interest. We do not advocate a single-issue agenda. We work to restore and improve the conditions that make responsive democracy possible.

Right now, we think those conditions are in peril.

Civil Works exists to clarify how power works, create the conditions for serious public judgment, and support durable democratic reform across four core areas: money in politics, executive power, Congress, and the judiciary.

Civil Works aspires to bridge the trust gaps that separate experts, citizens, and their government — not by simplifying things, but by clarifying them. Not by limiting conversation, but by opening it up for real deliberation about real solutions.

We are a force multiplier and a convener — a two-way conduit between the world of scholars, officials, and practitioners and the world of ordinary citizens. We seek to expand access to the best thinking about how to rebalance our democracy. We respect everyone's ability to handle the truth. We ask them to help define and/or choose solutions, not just identify problems or express opinions.

Through different kinds of programs, including deliberative democracy assemblies, we aspire to engage citizens in the process of suggesting actionable solutions to the federal government. And we will work to ensure that the right people in the federal government give those suggested solutions a fair and meaningful hearing.

We will measure success in three ways. First, by the number of citizens we engage in meaningful activities that produce practical solutions; second, by the number of practical solutions that receive a substantive hearing from public officials in the federal government; third, by the number of solutions that are enacted by legislation, regulation, or even Constitutional amendment. We want to build a movement.

We want the movement to produce serious solutions. We want some percentage of those proposed solutions to be enacted. We will measure all three of these goals.

Civil Works is preparing to launch full operations. This is a founding leadership opportunity for someone who wants to shape not just the strategy of this organization, but its soul.

The Executive Director will serve as the chief executive and public face of Civil Works, responsible for translating our mission into a functioning, financially sustainable, and nationally impactful organization. This is not a role for someone who needs a playbook. It is a role for someone who writes the playbook.

This is a nonprofit startup. That carries risk. But we have some assets to work with. We are an active Board willing and able to support a founding Executive Director with financial, social, and intellectual capital. We have an initial financial investment providing a modest runway to launch.

You will work in close partnership with the Board of Directors to set strategy, build the team, cultivate funders, develop partnerships, and lead a growing movement of citizens committed to structural democratic reform. You will combine the vision of a…