Supporter Manager – we are no longer accepting applications for this role.
DEADLINE: 17/07/2022
About Open Cages
We are a British registered charity which helps animals, particularly farmed animals, as effectively as possible. To help us achieve our goal we use scientific evidence and careful reasoning. While relatively new, we are part of Anima International – an international group with decades of experience in helping animals.
We are impact oriented and use various tools to create change in the world. We work on a range of activities specifically aimed at ending intensive farming practices, ending farmed animal suffering, and reducing the numbers of animals killed for food. We are mainly known for our undercover investigations exposing horrific abuse of animals hidden behind the walls of factory farms. Our public campaign actions put pressure on food businesses, Governments and educate the British public on the reality of the food industry.
In Open Cages we won’t stop until we end animal suffering and we would like to invite you to join us and help us achieve this goal.
What do you gain by working in Open Cages?
- Meaningful work – you will help build a world free from animal suffering.
- Time – you will be able to focus full time on helping animals.
- High degree of flexibility – the work is almost totally remote and you will organise your working hours and workflow yourself.
- Trust – we expect you to make mistakes as a given and learn from them.
- Autonomy – you will experience freedom and independence in your decision-making.
- Transparency – you will have access to the work and decisions of others.
- Honest work culture – you will know what your colleagues are doing and what they really think.
- Knowledge – you will learn and receive support from people who have been fighting for animals for many years.
- Opportunity to grow – you will learn every day and be encouraged to experiment beyond your skill set.
- Transparently set compensation – you will receive compensation for your activism. Our compensation model is based on a transparent algorithm. The salary depends on the location in which you live (we encourage you to translate amounts provided here to get a basic understanding of how much this is in your context). The base salary then gets further modified by factors like your experience. For example, currently you get a 7% increase for each year worked with us and 3% for each year of relevant experience. Our base salary pre tax is around 31,800 GBP.
- Ability to influence the organisation – we encourage our people to openly speak their mind and thus you will be able to impact what kind of organisation we are.
- A laugh – activism can be dark at times, we think that having a fun atmosphere is key to balance this.
What does Open Cages gain from your work?
We’re looking to hire a Supporter Manager to help ensure Open Cages has the resources and supporter base needed to win campaigns. You will help us develop into a larger and more powerful organisation capable of fighting for animals long into the future.
Through marketing and fundraising you will help us inspire supporters and donors to join us on our mission – these are the people who build Open Cages with us. By managing relationships with donors you will help us maintain our invaluable community without whom our campaigns would be powerless.
This is not only a fundraising role: you will join Open Cages leadership in its early stages of formation. You will have the opportunity not only to learn and grow in your role but also take ownership of and shape the future of the organisation as one of its first employees. Finally, you will help us create and maintain a strong organisational culture based on effectiveness, autonomy and critical thinking.
No experience is required for this role. We are mostly interested in finding smart, hard working people with values aligned to ours. Experience can be gained and knowledge can be learned.
What do we require from you?
- Strong belief in the mission of our organisation.
- High time flexibility. Just like we offer a high degree of flexibility in terms of working hours, we need you to be flexible as well. You have to be ready to work custom hours (40h / a week) to be available for time zone differences, non-employed activists and unexpected events.
- Not being an asshole. We expect you to treat others with respect, decency and compassion – even the occasional adversaries.
- High activism work ethics. We are doers – activism is our passion and one of the main motivations in life. To fit our culture, you have to be a person that is proactive and enjoys work.
- Growth mindset. Nobody knows how to fix the world, so we need you to keep learning. We constantly strive to be better at our activism, but also as people.
- A fit for a high-feedback culture. You have to be able to thrive in a culture focused on psychological safety by constantly giving and receiving honest and direct feedback, as well as speaking up when something isn’t right.
- Consequentialism. You have to care for the results of our work, but in a long-term perspective. While we are impact oriented, we avoid breaking principles and we think about second- and third-order effects of our actions.
- Ability to reason and communicate your thinking. Evidence-based approach, intellectual humility and the ability to share your mind with others is a necessary quality in our organisation.
- Fluency in English. Reading and writing.
- High time flexibility. Ready to work custom hours to be available for unexpected events and non-employed activists.
- No experience of leadership required. Your values and work ethic are most important to us.
- Residency – or intent to live – in the UK. We will consider applicants from outside the UK who have an intention or interest to live permanently in the UK. Note that we cannot promise legal or financial support in moving to the UK, but we may consider it for the right candidate.
What will you do?
- Communicate with supporters: you will help build, nurture and inspire our community of supporters by writing newsletters, emails, and articles, making phone calls, face to face meetings, writing physical letters & working with social media. It will be your job to help gain and maintain trust between the organisation and its supporters.
- Design & implement marketing campaigns: you will create advertising campaigns (digital and print) that motivate the public to join us on our mission. You will persuade people to take important actions for animals, like becoming regular donors or writing to politicians.
- Measure, test & optimise: you will work with Google Spreadsheets, Google Analytics and various tools to help analyse our effectiveness through data and constantly strive to discover how our marketing, communications and supporter experiences could be improved.
- Build culture – you will help build and reinforce our culture, so we never lose what makes up the strength of Open Cages.
- Embrace reality – you will make it your mission to understand the world as it is rather than as you would like it to be.
- Manage activists – you will manage and work with teams of both employed and voluntary activists.
- Experience irritation – you will worry that we are not doing better and use this frustration to improve our organisation.
- Question ideas – you will question common knowledge, especially your own ideas, so that our results are always as good as they can be.
- Optimise your performance – you will continuously deepen your knowledge – both about particular areas of animal advocacy and about how the world works – and enjoy this process.
- Prioritise action – you will act even when there is no sufficient data.
- Abandon projects – you will change your objectives when it makes sense, no matter the time already invested.
- Respect and trust others – you will be there for others and trust their intention, no matter the differences, you will support them when they succeed and when they fail.
- Seek information independently – you will be responsible for acting very independently which will require you to obtain and verify data.
- Make mistakes – you will embrace your mistakes without being ashamed with the desire to learn from them.
Do you think you are not fit for this role and it’s too challenging?
You may be thinking that this role would be interesting for you, but you won’t make the cut.
We encourage you not to worry and fill out the application nonetheless, especially if you meet our requirements (even on a basic level) and you think this position could bring you a lot of joy. Leave the judgment about your competence to us. You may even learn something useful along the way. ?
Remember to sign up and attend our webinars regarding this recruitment process to see that maybe you should give it a try.
What will help you go through the recruitment process successfully?
- Familiarity with Effective Altruism principles.
- Studying our recommended materials list (see below).
- Attending the webinars about recruitment that we are hosting (see below).
- Good knowledge of and strong interest in the issues addressed by Open Cages.
- Knowledge of social networks.
- Mastery of Google tools (Gmail, Sheets, Slides, Drive.)
- Knowledge of or interest in psychology.
- Good communication and interpersonal skills.
- Knowledge of marketing (with a focus on digital.)
- Attention to visual aesthetics.
- Creative and emotive writing skills.
List of materials that will help you get this job
PLEASE NOTE! To help you progress through the stages in our recruitment process, we have prepared a list of materials. They will be especially useful for those who do not meet our requirements or lack either experience in activism or role-specific expertise, but we encourage all candidates to read them.
Webinars for those interested
We will be hosting webinars run by our staff so you can learn what it’s like to work in our organisation and also what this role will entail. It’s a perfect place to ask questions and meet us!
Click on the link below to join (webinars will be hosted on Zoom video conferencing platform). We will post links to recordings for people who couldn’t attend, so you can revisit this page later on to watch them.
Want to ask us questions beforehand that we will answer during webinars? Use this form: https://anima-international.typeform.com/ask-a-question
Webinar schedule:
Click on the links to register for the webinars.
1. Connor Jackson, CEO & Founder, Open Cages (UK) – Overview of the role-specific responsibilities – Supporter Manager and Campaign Manager – presented by Connor Jackson
Learn what you will do, what is required in the specific role and what impact you will have for animals. This webinar should help you decide whether this job will suit your needs. 28/06/2022, 7PM BST
2. Magda Łapińska, Digital Marketing Manager, Open Cages (Poland) and Connor Jackson, CEO & Founder, Open Cages (UK) – What is Anima International and what is Open Cages?
A quick tour on who we are, what we do and the impact we have. You will learn why we have no office, are not afraid to be wrong and don’t listen to our bosses. Our organisational culture is not for everyone, so we want to make sure you have a good understanding of it before you apply. 30/06/2022, 7PM BST
Watch the recording here.
3. Aleksandra Knotz, Development Manager, Open Cages (Poland) –You’re not the perfect candidate for this job? Join the club! What to do when you want to change the world but doubt yourself
We know that recruitments can be stressful and demanding. We are also aware that we will inflict emotional pain on most of the applicants, because we cannot hire everyone. Finally, we know that many of you suffer from imposter syndrome. Join this webinar to learn how we try to address all these issues. 07/07/2022, 7PM BST
Watch the recording here.
4. Ania Pierzchała, Human Resources Manager, Open Cages (Poland) – How do we conduct recruitment in Anima International? An overview and backstage look at our recruitment practices
Join us to learn about the philosophy behind our recruitment. During this webinar, we will provide technical information on each stage of the process and principles that guide it. 08/07/2022, 7PM BST
Watch the recording here.
Important information about our recruitment process
Overview of the process
We are not interested in participants’ cover letters and CVs
The aim of the process is to get to know you. We find cover letters and CVs not useful for this purpose.
We don’t conduct recruitment interviews until near the end of the process
People who make a good impression during interviews are not always the best fit for the organisation – and vice versa. We prefer to talk to you after we’ve had the chance to get to know you.
We aim to be fair and minimize bias
To avoid bias, our recruitment process in most of the stages is blind, anonymised and pseudonymised by someone not participating in the candidates’ evaluations. We put substantial effort into making sure we rate all applicants objectively.
We hope to reduce application obstacles and make the recruitment process dignifying
We will be hosting webinars for those interested to give a glimpse into what the role is about and how we work, and help combat performance anxiety. We also provide a list of materials for people who lack the necessary experience or expertise for the role.
Ideally, after the recruitment, we will try to provide feedback on our rationale and comment on stronger and weaker aspects of a candidate if rejected. Please note that the feedback feature may be limited by the number of participants due to limits in our resources. Most likely we will only be able to provide feedback to candidates who reach later stages of the recruitment process.
Participants will be compensated for the trial.
Unfortunately, due to the structure of our recruitment process, it may be time consuming and demanding.
Timeline
- 20/06-17/07 – Apply – time for you to apply (just fill out the questionnaire here).
- 25/07-31/07 – Answer questions – we will contact you to tell you if you were accepted for the next stage. If so, we will send you a form with questions to answer.
- 08/08-17/08 – Do role-specific tasks – we will contact you to tell you if you were accepted for the next stage. If so, we will send you some tasks to complete.
- 05/09-11/09 – Join an interview – if you successfully pass the previous stage, we will invite you for an interview. We will send you most of the interview questions a few days in advance. This stage is optional based on how many people will be there in the recruitment process.
- 23/09-04/10 – Do a short work trial with us – if you successfully pass the previous stage, we will invite you to join us for a two-day work trial. You will be compensated for this. This stage is optional based on how many people will be there in the recruitment process.
- 08/10-11/10 – Learn whether you are accepted – we will contact you to let you know about the final decision regarding your application.
- October – Get feedback from us– if you are interested, we will do our best to provide feedback to help you understand what we rated positively in your application and what we didn’t. We hope this will help you in getting another impactful position. This stage is heavily dependent on the amount of participants due to constraints in our capacity.
Please note: the timeline may slightly change due to unforeseen circumstances. We will do our best to make sure it won’t.
Deadline
We accept applications until the end of 17/07/2022 in your timezone.
Technical aspects
- A Google Gmail account will be required for the recruitment process. If you do not have a Gmail account, you will be required to create one. It can be deleted afterwards. If you have any problems, please contact us at join@opencages.org
- You will be required to use the Zoom application to participate in the webinars and in the interview stage of the recruitment.