AORTA Facilitator (FT)

AORTA is accepting applications for this role until July 20, 2025 at 11:59pm PT

Role Overview

AORTA Facilitators are essential to advancing AORTA’s vision and theory of change, and to growing and sustaining AORTA’s work as a cooperative business and political project. Each Facilitator spends the majority of their work time engaged in responding to the needs of AORTA movement partners in two ways, working both independently and as part of collaborative pairs or teams. First, they provide skillful online and in-person facilitation, thought partnership, coaching, mediation, and project management to movement groups, and second, they work together to develop and deliver training and coaching offerings for the public. Every year, through their collective efforts, AORTA Facilitators serve as trusted guides to over 80 movement groups whose purpose is rooted in racial, gender, economic, environmental, and disability justice; trans and queer liberation; anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism, and more.

As worker-owners or worker-owner candidates at AORTA, Facilitators also apply their skills in business management, collaborative teamwork, and organizational development to the work of sustaining and growing AORTA as a cooperative business along with their fellow coworkers/co-owners.
 

Role-Specific Responsibilities and Expectations

Core Function: Advance AORTA’s Theory of Change through work with external partners and participants.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Deliver services to both groups and individuals: Guided by client project plans and/or program goals as appropriate, provide a combination of the following kinds of services and interventions to organizations, groups and individuals:
  • (Co-)Facilitation: Use participatory and creative facilitation techniques to guide conversations in virtual, in person, and hybrid groups, prioritizing accessibility and engagement.
  • Thought partnership: Guide leaders and organizers on complex challenges, providing advice and co-thinking.
  • Trainings and workshops: Offer trainings and workshops for groups on both political learning and practical skills development.
  • Coaching: Bring a healing-centered and resilience-focused approach to coaching with teams and individuals, supporting self-knowing in the context of collective struggle. 
  • Conflict tending: Support repair and healing, lovingly pushing groups towards cultivating strength and alignment in conflict.
• Gather and integrate feedback: Solicit regular feedback from clients, program participants, and co-facilitators. With the support of AORTA’s Program Evaluation team and Client Stewardship team, integrate feedback and lessons into program delivery and client-facing practices to develop and improve AORTA’s services and our individual skills and craft.

Client-Related Responsibilities:

• Maintain a portfolio of clients: Work with a range of client organizations, providing strong project management and stewarding hospitable client relationships. This includes timely communication, tracking scopes of work and timelines, utilization of shared project tracking tools (currently Asana) and adapting to the changing needs of AORTA clients.
• Cultivate and secure client work: As part of a collaborative team of facilitators, respond to client inquiries, conduct intake calls, develop project proposals, and secure client projects with movement organizations and groups.
• Assess need in order to create and execute project plans: In collaboration with clients and any co-facilitators, identify areas of client need and prioritize them, match them to AORTA’s areas of expertise, and create and execute project plans to meet those needs in ways that align with client capacity and goals.

Program-Related Responsibilities:

• Participate in delivery or co-management of at least one of AORTA’s existing programs.
• Collaborate with other AORTA Facilitators to innovate on existing offerings and develop new program offerings that respond to current movement needs and conditions and disseminate AORTA’s unique approaches and interventions.

Core Function: Generate revenue to cover AORTA’s costs.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Generate at least 10% of AORTA’s planned revenue each year through a combination of billable client work and delivery of program offerings, in alignment with the client or program objectives and strategy set by the coop as a whole.
• Cultivate potential future clients, participants, partners and funders for AORTA client projects and public programs.

Core Function: Sharpen and co-create AORTA’s political analysis and pedagogy.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Pursue regular professional and political development to deepen and hone your facilitation, consulting and coaching skills and develop a keen perspective on the movement landscape to inform work with clients and in programs.
• Actively share pedagogical innovations, learnings, and political insights with other Facilitators, contributing to reciprocal learning and sharpening.
• Contribute to externally-facing resource development including creating learning materials or other AORTA program and client resources, and/or developing public printed or digital resources.
• Champion and invest in AORTA’s pedagogical approach as a shared vehicle. Even though all Facilitators have their distinct style and expression, we are deeply committed to our unifying values and an aligned approach.

Areas of Specialization and Expertise

Each AORTA Facilitator brings specific areas of specialization and expertise. Having different strengths and backgrounds allows us to form effective teams to meet our client needs. Some areas of specialization and expertise we will be prioritizing in this hiring round include:

• Experience and skill in some combination of the following modalities:
  • Conflict transformation, mediation, and healing work;
  • Strategic planning and organizational development; 
  • Political education curriculum design and delivery;
  • Liberatory leadership + alternative management frameworks;
  • Shared power and leadership in the context of organizing and direct action
• Experience in one or more of the following sectors or kinds of organizations: 
  • Democratically-run non-profit organizations
  • Progressive philanthropy, resource-management or resource-generation
  • Networks, coalitions, and alliances
  • Cooperatives, B-corps, and other solidarity economy groups
  • Indigenous-led groups or formations
  • Grassroots collectives, unincorporated community groups, and community-based organizations including mutual aid groups, etc.

AORTA Core Responsibilities and Expectations

AORTA Worker Responsibilities

All workers at AORTA are expected to:

• Uphold AORTA’s policies, democratic process, organizational decisions, and core commitments.
• Contribute to AORTA’s cooperative, caring, fun-loving workplace culture.
• Set and advance purposeful annual worker goals in alignment with AORTA’s strategic plan and theory of change, and engage in peer feedback and annual evaluation processes.
• Participate in co-op business meetings, email discussions, retreats, and other internal coordination and management meetings.
• Participate in internal standing committees or project teams to advance specific areas of business operations, as appropriate based on worker role, expertise, interest, and capacity.
• Seek political and professional development in alignment with AORTA’s values and position duties.
• Perform individual worker administrative duties, such as timely submission of timesheets and expenses and other duties as assigned.

AORTA Worker-Owner Responsibilities

Once a worker at AORTA becomes a worker-owner, they are also responsible for co-managing AORTA as a business and making fiduciary decisions for the organization. This includes the following additional expectations:

• Lead and participate in business management discussions and decision-making processes.
• Develop, approve, and manage organizational budgets and financial or legal risks
• Provide leadership in policy and organizational development processes
• Conduct performance evaluation, accountability, and peer management of co-worker-owners, and supervision and support of non-owner workers
• Facilitate regular organizational meetings, retreats, and processes
• Provide shared business administration labor through committee membership and leadership
• Anticipate, name and problem solve for complex organizational challenges
• Identify and pursue organizational growth or improvement opportunities to support the sustainability and co-management of AORTA as a cooperative. 

Working conditions 

Because AORTA is a fully remote workplace, workers are expected to acquire and maintain their own physical workspace such as a home office or coworking space. AORTA provides some financial support to workers in renting, furnishing, and/or supplying their physical workspace (see compensation section, below, for more details). 

Salaried AORTA employees (including this position) operate on a flexible work schedule across three time zones, and workers have significant discretion in setting their own working hours; however, full-time workers are generally expected to be available for the majority of the hours between 11am-4pm CT, Monday through Friday. The worker in this position may occasionally be required to meet with clients, provide services, or participate in AORTA programs that are offered in the evenings or on weekends. 

In order to perform the essential functions of this position, the worker must be able to accomplish the following: 

• Operate a computer throughout the workday, including entering and manipulating data in multiple programs and formats. 
• Communicate and exchange accurate information in English in both electronic/asynchronous and real-time formats. 
• Attend and participate in virtual meetings for multiple hours during a workday. 

As part of our commitment to accessibility, language justice, and disability justice, AORTA also proactively budgets for expenses related to worker accommodations, with the goal that all workers are able to accomplish their essential or priority job functions and participate fully in our workplace in ways that work best for them

Summary of compensation 

The starting salary for this position, for the duration of the “candidacy year” (the year after hire during which a Facilitator is a worker but not yet a worker-owner), is $95,000 annually. AORTA’s salary scale for all full-time worker-owners (35 hours/week) in 2026 is expected to range from $96,000 to $103,500 annually.

AORTA offers a wide range of additional compensation and benefits to eligible workers, including:

• Health, dental, vision and life insurance;
• A retirement plan with a 2% employer contribution;
• Professional development, tech equipment, and operating expense stipends;
• Student loan repayment benefits;
• Flexible holiday time and a one-week office closure at the end of the calendar year;
• 5 total weeks of annual PTO and sick time.