3 Campaign officer jobs in Cambridge

The Organisation

The Centre for Progressive Change (CPC) builds  campaigns for national policy and legislative change in the UK. Our focus is on making progressive gains that improve the lives of and redistribute power to low and middle-income communities. We want the UK to be a place where everyone has financial stability, where people are treated as equals and are free to be who they are without persecution, and where we look after our environment. 

To achieve this vision, we build proactive campaigns for progressive legislative change and carry out research through our campaigns on what works when trying to create change at scale.

Our Values

1. We are strategic. We focus on working with communities to find the most effective routes to progressive gains. We are pragmatic and work with those that will strengthen communities and take us closer to progressive gains, including cross-party.

1. We focus on being impactful. We are not wedded to one way of creating change and create strategies for our campaigns based on the available research on the current context. We test to see what is working and make changes to our campaigns to reflect what we are learning. To succeed we need high-performing teams, so we help each other succeed by giving each other honest feedback on our performance. We work in ways that increase our performance.

1. We are here to serve low and middle-income communities. We believe that lasting change comes when communities affected by a problem are at the heart of winning the solution. Our campaigns aim to improve the lives of low and middle income communities, and support them with the skills, knowledge, and resources to enable them to lead the campaigns for that change 

We are in an exciting phase as an organisation. Following our legislative wins we secured through our Safe Sick Pay campaign, we are capitalising on further reforms, and are significantly scaling the organisation. As part of this, we are growing our on-the-ground campaigning team, including currently hiring these new eight Campaign Officers to deepen our presence and impact in the regions. 

Our Campaigns

CPC runs two campaigns at a time, both decided on by low-income and marginalised communities across the UK, and rooted in our mission to improve the lives of low- and middle- income communities. Following the success of our Safe Sick Pay Campaign securing four legislative changes to Statutory Sick Pay into the Employment Rights Act (more below), the campaign is now entering its second phase.

Our second campaign will be focused on climate change. This will start with a ‘listening campaign’ in 2027 of low- and middle-income communities to see what they want to see change at a national policy and legislative level on climate. From there we will build a broad cross-party alliance across the UK and launch a campaign to bring legislative change to counter climate change and protect the wellbeing of vulnerable communities.

The Campaigns Officers will work across both campaigns, alongside the rest of the campaign team.

Safe Sick Pay

Over the last 3.5 years we built our first campaign, Safe Sick Pay, aimed at changing Statutory Sick Pay legislation. In that time we have: built an alliance of 150 national organisations that have been calling for change; supported community organising efforts in 74 constituencies and mobilised thousands of activists across the country to contact their MP; landed hundreds of media stories including supporting workers to tell their story; gained the support of over 180 cross-party MPs & Peers for reform and supported them to raise this in Parliament; met with Ministers to discuss the need for sick pay reform; and coordinated national days of action.

Through our campaigning work, and that of our national partners, we successfully secure into legislation, through the Employment Rights Act:

1. That all employees will be eligible for Statutory Sick Pay - 1.3 million employees were not eligible because they didn’t earn enough with their employer;

2. That sick pay will be paid from the first day of illness, rather than day 4;

3. That the lowest-paid 1 million employees will receive 80% of their wages as sick pay; and

4. That a Fair Work Agency will be established to ensure Statutory Sick Pay legislation is enforced, alongside other work rights. 

These changes came into effect in April. Together they have improved the Statutory Sick Pay of 10 million employees in the UK.

Next, we are focused on the final national policy change that was initially decided by low-income and marginalised communities: to see an increase in the rate of Statutory Sick Pay to at least 80% of the National Living Wage. This effort is being driven by our new Safe Sick Pay Campaign Director, Jack Madden, who has over 15 years experience in campaigning and community organising, including as the former Head of Campaigns-Organising at Shelter. There he was integral in the campaign for the Renters’ Reform Act. 

The Team

We are a team of six people punching well above our weight. Our team consists of: the Director and founder - Amanda Walters; our Operations Director - Hattie Gryspeerdt; our Safe Sick Pay Campaign Director - Jack Madden; our Comms Lead - Andy May; our Senior Advocacy Officer - Aurelio Petrucci; and our Senior Campaigns Officer - Jamie Walls. 

We have an Advisory Group made up of campaigning experts who have won significant change in the UK or the US, including Kate Bell (TUC), George Gabriel (The Dad Shift), James Starkie (No Time to Wait), Richard Darlington (Aid Alliance), Matt Zarb-Cousin (Clean Up Gambling), Stephen Lerner (Justice for Janitors) and Roxana Tynan (LA for a New Economy).

We are governed by a Company Board that is ultimately responsible for the governance and direction of the organisation. The Board is made up of campaigners, organisers, finance experts and people with lived experience. 

We have an office in Waterloo, London - just across the river from the Houses of Parliament' where some of the team are based. We also have some of our team located around the country who are based-remotely.

The Role

We are looking for eight Regional Campaigns Officers to join our interdisciplinary team. The new Campaign Officers will ideally start at the same time in mid-March, and be inducted together into CPC, our ways of working, our current campaign on sick pay, and the skills and tools necessary to be able to start working in your local region.

Each Campaigns Officer will be responsible for progressing the campaigns in their region. They will bring more MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) (once they’re selected ahead of the next general election) on board through a mix of community organising, advocacy, press, digital mobilising and business engagement. 

Job Responsibilities

You will:

1. Map power to identify and build relationships with key organisations and individuals in your region to work together to reach our campaign goals.

2. From that mapping, build local and regional teams that bring together civil society organisations and people with lived experience, and support and coordinate them so that they are effectively campaigning together on our two campaigns.

3. Train these local and regional teams in effective campaigning and community organising and support them to develop a localised strategy to move the issue forward with local politicians. Foster the team's interconnectedness, community standing, and collective leadership.

4. Run 'listening campaigns' within your region to understand the key issues around sick pay, climate change and housing, and the changes in these areas that low- and middle-income communities want to see. Listen to people yourself, both online and in-person via surveys, interviews, focus groups and events, as well as train and support civil society organisations to listen to their members.

5. Support the local and regional groups you build to engage in the decision-making processes of our campaigns, and to strategise and plan locally on the actions they want to take within the campaigns’ parameters.

6. Support the local and regional groups to take the actions that the strategy agrees upon, including meeting with the MP and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, gathering support locally and running local press actions.

7. Hold advocacy meetings and build relationships with the local MPs, Prospective Parliamentary Candidates, and other key decision makers in the region across political parties, and persuade them to actively support the policy changes we are campaigning for.

8. Use online digital tools to mobilise constituents in your local area to take action, and provide resources and training so that local activists can take action.

9. Take proactive campaign actions yourself to support the campaign strategy, such as business engagement or doing local press interviews. 

10. Work closely and communicate effectively with the Campaign Directors, Campaign Officers and others in the campaign team to ensure our local, regional and national strategies are aligned and progressing to achieve our campaign goals.

11. Keep our systems and programmes up to date to ensure information is shared and can be evaluated as part of the overall campaign.

12. Raise grant funding to the equivalent amount of £50,000 towards salary and on-costs. Support and training will be provided to enable this.

These responsibilities will change according to each campaign's strategy and as the political context changes. The key markers of success are whether we are building power locally and in the region, and deploying that power effectively so that it is leading towards active increased support in Parliament for our legislative changes.

Skills, Experience and Qualities 

We are open to candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds and encourage candidates to apply even if they don’t have experience of campaigning or community organising. We value lived experience of the issues we’re campaigning on.

Requirements

We are looking for candidates with the following competencies and attributes:

1. Relational: able to build relationships with a wide variety of people – everyone from low-income migrant workers, to journalists, to MPs and CEOs. 

2. Tenacious: proactive, confident and driven in owning and achieving the regional goals, good problem solver to overcome barriers, and good skills at self-directed work.

3. Strategic and pragmatic: takes the most direct and effective route to achieving our campaign goals.

4. Persuasive: able to bring people on board and to adapt the framing according to the interests of the other person, including through public speaking and presentations.

5. Lead from behind: able to motivate people to take action together, to build and coordinate teams, and to encourage and support others to take a lead. 

6. Cross-party: able to build working relationships with individuals across the political spectrum - from the Green Party to Reform UK.

7. Team player: collaborative, has open communication, is invested in peer-learning and support, is able to pull together as a team and get behind organisation decisions, and is comfortable giving and receiving feedback.

8. Organised: able to plan, research, work to deadlines, capture information and keep our systems up to date.

9. Flexible & fast: can adapt quickly to changes in the political environment and campaign priorities and focus, and able to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment, including going above and beyond normal working hours during key periods. 

10. Eager to learn: eager to learn and grow, and can incorporate what learning into practice quickly. 

11. Digital proficiency: digitally proficient and quick to learn new digital tools.

12. A commitment to the Centre for Progressive Change’s strategy, values and culture.

Desired (not required)

1. Good knowledge and links within their local region.

2. Driving license and a vehicle.

3. Community organising experience.

4. Campaigning experience.

How we work

We work in sprints, working for 6-7 weeks and then taking time off during the Parliamentary recesses. We offer 40-days of annual leave (including bank holidays) to be predominantly taken during Parliament recess periods.

This work will involve evening and weekend work. It will also involve travel around your region on three to four days  a week, and elsewhere in the UK when necessary. 

How to apply

We are holding a webinar on Thursday 26th November to provide candidates with more information about the role, and answer any questions you may have. Please keep an eye on our Linkedin page to sign up.

To apply please download and fill in the application form on the website and emai it to us (all instructions are on the website). Please specify the region of England you are based in and applying for in the subject line of your application, e.g North West England Campaigns Officer Application. 

We require a candidate to live in the region in which they are covering, or have plans to move there. The  deadline to submit your application form is Friday 11th December at 9am. 

Those shortlisted will be invited to a first interview between Tuesday 5th and Friday 8th  January online. A second interview will be held, for successful applicants, between Tuesday 19th and Friday 22nd January  in person at our offices in Waterloo. We will reimburse any travel costs for this interview.

We acknowledge that people from a number of communities are underrepresented in our team and we’re committed to addressing this. If you believe you would bring greater diversity to our team, we’re keen to hear from you and would encourage you to apply. 

Unfortunately, we do not yet have the resources to sponsor a work visa, so you will need to have the right to work in the UK to apply.