Description

United Today, Stronger Tomorrow 

Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer

January 2026 through December 2026

1099-Eligible

Burt, Cuming, Dakota, Dixon, Thurston, & Wayne Counties

Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer

United Today, Stronger Tomorrow is seeking to hire a Community Organizer to work in Northeast Nebraska. The organizer will be responsible for building local organizing committees and at least one issue campaign in the region, as part of our regional Siouxland Organizing Project. This work will include new member recruitment, leadership identification, development and training, issue id and campaign development. In addition, the organizer will build a C3 civic engagement program, including voter registration, education and mobilization. The geographic regions will include the following counties: Burt, Cuming, Dakota, Dixon, Thurston, & Wayne.

This project will include three core programs:

Rural Listening/Pivot Project: The organizer will focus on recruitment, issue ID and mobilization of local residents into our Rural Listening Project. This will include identifying potential participants in our campaign, one-on-ones with local grasstops leaders, as well as building out a mobilization February through April focused on lifting up the issue of affordability.
Siouxland Strategic Campaign: In addition the organizer will work to identify community members and stakeholders who are concerned about issues in the region that align with our Siouxland Strategic Campaign. These issues include clean energy/good jobs, affordability (including healthcare), and agriculture/conservation/water issues.
Civic Engagement Program: The organizer will also be responsible for running a civic engagement project, including running a volunteer voter registration drive, voter education activities and events, and C3 voter mobilization activities.

UTST

UTST is a community power building hub and distributive organizing initiative that improves the lives of people living in rural and remote areas across the Upper Mid- and Mountain West and Alaska. We restore trust in democracy and mediating institutions by helping people understand their own agency in the decision making that impacts their lives and engaging them in strategic local, state, regional, and federal campaigns and programs that deliver concrete benefits. Simultaneously, we are building the next generation of rural and remote leaders, many of whom hail from conservative communities, to meet the current political moment and lay the foundation for long-term power building over the next decade.

Core Programs

The Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer will initially devote the majority of their time to the Rural Listening Project. This multi-state research initiative is investigating the attitudes and values of rural and remote Americans across nine states: Alaska, Iowa, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Indiana, and Montana. At a moment of national political transformation and technological disruption, this project seeks to identify the perspectives of rural residents in the states on a range of issues, including: energy and climate; artificial intelligence and emerging technology;  corporations and the economy;  trust in governing systems, like democracy, mediating institutions, civil society; and immigration. By centering the perspectives of rural residents—especially moderates, Republicans, and independents—on economic, political, and technological shifts, the project will produce actionable findings that will help UTST and the broader field develop effective messaging and strategic organizing in rural communities.

The Organizer will also work under the direction of UTST senior staff to manage member-run, local organizing committee(s) in rural communities in Northeastern Nebraska. The Organizer will work with members and local grass top leaders, including local elected officials, workers, and small business owners, to lead campaigns on issues that are widely and deeply felt across the diverse constituency. In addition to base building, and C3 voter mobilization, the organizer will build relationships with existing organizations who are potential coalition partners in these campaigns. The issues, demands, targets, and strategies will be developed by the local organizing committee.

The Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer will be working with individual community members, grasstops leaders, and other stakeholders.

Requirements

Responsibilities

Working with the Rural Listening Project Lead, and directly supervised by the Field Coordinator, this position will initially help identify and recruit rural community members to participate in our research—including surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one conversations. The Organizer will also be responsible for following up with research participants in one-on-one conversations, via Zoom, phone, or in person, to identify individuals for further participating in UTST’s work at the local, state, or federal level. The Organizer will also work to identify key stakeholders, elected officials, public safety officers, business and industry leaders, faith leaders, and civic and educational institutions who would be good candidates for inclusion in this research project and/or moved into local campaigns in Northeastern Nebraska.

• Help recruit participants into focus groups in our target rural communities. These will each be about 2 hours in length, mostly conducted via Zoom, with some in-person opportunities. The entire project will include between 12-16 focus groups, each of which should have between 8-15 participants.
• Reach out to 100-300 community leaders, organizational partners, and/or research participants, resulting in 10-20 one-on-one conversations (approximately 40-50 minutes in length) and 50-80 shorter phone assessment conversations. These conversations will be structured around a set of open-ended questions to help ID people who may be interested in future work with UTST and our campaigns.
• Maintain effective tracking systems of people who you meet and assess potential for campaign engagement. This will include moving people into campaign work either with an existing UTST organizer or building a local campaign with support from the larger UTST team.
• Move people you have met into campaigns and or actions. This project is intended to identify how people see our current politics and to identify who could be moved to action as opportunities to strengthen rural and small town communities arise.
• Build a base of people and organizations to activate in local and state campaigns focused on delivering concrete benefits to Siouxland residents.
• Convene issue committees to be co-facilitated by member leaders and build leadership development programs.

Qualities and Qualifications

The ideal candidate is someone who is curious about people; interested in understanding, learning, and activating personal networks; likes research; and is a good listener. They are able to hold a conversation that seeks to understand people where they are at, as opposed to trying to convince someone of something else. The ideal candidate is someone who is interested in building a statewide campaign and has strong experience in base-building, leadership development, or is willing to learn. More specific qualities and skills include:

• Ability to be an active listener, to reflect back to people what they say, and to hold information. They must be willing to probe, discuss, and manage conversations about issues and perspectives that may not align with their own in a non-judgmental way.
• Is comfortable with and wants to work with a wide array of stakeholders and people, including elected officials, business owners, faith leaders, law enforcement professionals, school officials, and others who are leaders in more conservative rural and small town communities.
• Is organized and effective at tracking data, holding large numbers of relationships, and at assessing people’s view of the world and issues, their self-interest, and what would move them to action.
• Is able to conduct large numbers of conversations and one-on-one meetings each week (approximately 80% of the job), track these conversations, and transfer relationships to the pertinent staff.
• Able to and/or willing to learn how to move people into action through various campaign structures. 

This position is remote but includes local travel. Applicants must be located in Northeast Nebraska; have reliable access to a car; work flexible hours, including some evenings and weekends when necessary; and have access to a reliable computer with strong internet. Spanish fluency is a plus but not required.

Women, people of color, Native/indigenous people, and LGBTQ+ people are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer will work 40 hours per week and earn $35 to $40/hour based on experience.

If interested, please send your resume to: jobs@unitedtoday.org with “Northeast Nebraska Regional Organizer” in the subject line.

Applications will be accepted until January 31, 2026.