Thank you for your interest in being a Placement Organization for the Jews of Color Organizing Fellowship. The next Fellowship year is February 2025-February 2026, with city hubs in New York City, Chicago, the San Francisco Bay, and Los Angeles.
Applications are now open and due by December 20th.
There are two ways to become a Placement:
- If you are interested in hiring a JOC Organizing Fellow, you can download a PDF with all the details about hiring a JOIN Fellow here.
- If you want a current staff member to participate in the JOC Organizing Fellowship, you can download a PDF with all the details here.
The application is the same for either situation. You can apply here. Please email applications@joinforjustice.org with questions.
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The Jews of Color Organizing Fellowship
Since 1998, JOIN for Justice has recruited, trained, and sustained community organizers through year-long organizing fellowships that train them in organizing and help them ground in their Jewish tradition and values that sustain them. JOIN Fellowship alumni are incredibly talented and successful in their fields. Most of them continue to work as organizers in the fight for social justice. After years of development, JOIN for Justice is directing this training and support to develop Jews of Color as powerful organizers in a national cohort with city hubs in New York City, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area.
A central element of the program is the Fellows’ jobs as organizers at local organizations that partner with JOIN. Partner organizations have included unions, issue-based organizations, community development corporations, neighborhood organizations, and broad-based or interfaith organizations. Partner organizations are the official employers of JOIN Fellows, paying the Fellow’s salary and offering high-quality supervision. Jobs are typically full-time but occasionally part-time.
The Jews of Color Organizing Fellowship is designed as an intergenerational cohort of Jews of Color who gather for regular training sessions to develop their organizing skills. Fellows can access JOIN’s network of experienced organizers and community leaders as trainers and mentors. Additionally, Fellows receive mentorship from Fellowship alumni and staff.
A placement Organization that partners with JOIN to support its organizer, who identifies as a Jew of Color, has numerous advantages.
Recruitment of Talented Organizers
The JOC Organizing Fellowship adds value to your organization’s next hire by recruiting a pool of talented emerging organizers. JOIN attracts smart JOC leaders who are eager to work for justice. Our applicants span the age range, including recent college graduates and those with many years of professional experience, with a particular emphasis on people who are looking to stay in the organizing field in the long run.
Applicants submit written materials and references and participate in interviews with experienced organizers before they even meet potential Placements. By the time your organization interviews applicants, only the top candidates will have become finalists. The considerable effort and staff time JOIN puts into recruitment and screening work your organization does not have to do, allowing you to focus on other priorities.
Training and Professional Development
Fellows add value to their Placement Organizations by undergoing a year of focused training in community organizing and anti-oppression skills.
JOIN’s training curriculum has been honed over two decades of implementation and evaluation, and it continues to evolve based on the changing needs of our Partner Organizations and Fellows. Fellows participate in interactive and practical training led by experienced organizers, centered on skills ranging from recruiting leaders and building power to facilitating meetings and raising funds. The trainings are designed to be relevant to various organizing settings, including unions, neighborhood organizations and Community Development Corporations, issue-based organizations, electoral campaigns, and interfaith or broad-based organizations.
Additionally, JOIN provides our Fellows with regular, structured opportunities to reflect on their work and professional growth, engage in peer coaching with other Fellows, and seek mentorship from their peers and more experienced organizers.
The Fellowship’s focus on Jews of Color encourages Fellows to connect their social justice work to their identity, spiritual lineage, traditions, spirituality, and community. Grounding the challenging work of organizing in a Jewish context helps Fellows see the work as a sustainable career path and connect their work to a rich tradition of organizing for justice.
JOC Organizing Fellows meet on Zoom from roughly 9am-11am PT/ 11-1pm CT/ Noon-2pm ET on three Tuesdays monthly. Once a month, they meet from approximately 1:00 – 8:00 p.m. local time on Fridays for both a training session and a Shabbat observance. Fellows also participate in a total of 3 training retreats that begin on Thursday and end on Sunday, in May 2023, October 2023, and April 2024. Additionally, fellows meet monthly with a mentor, which is scheduled between the fellow and the mentor. This allows Fellows to serve as full-time staff members at their Placement Organizations while gaining the training and community benefits of participating in the JOC Organizing Fellowship.
JOC & Organizing Network
JOIN for Justice has run organizing fellowships for over twenty years. Your Fellow will be part of a strong network of alumni who are experienced organizers and leaders in social justice organizations across the US. Fellows are paired with a mentor and can use the alumni network as an informal source for professional advice and support. Fellows and alumni often find opportunities to make connections across organizations, uniting their constituencies and organizations in campaigns.
In addition, your Fellow will be supported by a cohort of up to 18 other Jews of Color, fostering community, affinity space, and support to show up fully in a JOC-only space. Some of the curriculum will be specific to supporting topics specific to the needs of a JOC cohort.
- Training and coaching about best practices for employing People of Color. Placement supervisors will participate in 1 training at the beginning of the Fellowship, 1 mid-year gathering of supervisors, and ongoing individual consulting as needed to learn about cultural communication, equity best practices, and racial justice. This training will help you have a positive experience working with your fellow, including addressing any challenges that may arise and deepening your capacity to employ people of color in the long term. These will be opportunities to learn about best practices for cross-racial supervision, creating inclusive work environments, and how racial justice relates to other justice issues and topics.
- Additional training and mentorship for your Fellow will explore individual adaptations to organizing practices based on their accessibility needs and strengths. Fellows will also explore lessons from disability movement history that can be applied to their work at their placements. Fellows will also develop a rich understanding of inclusion and disability justice that can strengthen their work at any placement.
Funding
For the 2023-2024 Fellowship year, we have funding to support organizations that would like to hire a JOC Organizing Fellow but are limited by budgetary constraints. We also have funds available to provide needs-based subsidies for Placement Organizations ranging from $1000 to $10,000 per Fellow. To apply for funding, please fill out the funding section of the Placement application.
The Placement Information Document provides more details, and we encourage you to contact Jan Wolf at applications@joinforjustice.org with any questions or to discuss your organization’s unique circumstances.
Previous Fellowship Organizations
JOIN for Justice has recruited, trained, and sustained community organizers through year-long organizing fellowships that train them in organizing and help them ground in their Jewish tradition and values that sustain them. More than half of the Fellows through our Boston-based Fellowship have stayed on after the year-long Fellowship program is over, and we anticipate this will be the same for the Jews of Color Organizing Fellowship.
In the Boston-based Jewish Organizing Fellows have worked at places at the following Greater Boston area organizations:
- Allston Brighton Community Development Corporation
- Boston Center for Independent Living
- Boston Worker’s Circle
- Boston Youth Organizing Project
- Cambridge Economic Opportunity Committee
- Community Action Agency of Somerville
- Disability Policy Consortium
- Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation: Youth Force
- The Food Project: Real Food Challenge
- Harvard Union of Technical and Clerical Workers
- The Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union, Local 26
- Greater Boston Interfaith Organization
- The Irish Immigration Center
- The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action
- Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters
- The Jewish Labor Committee
- Health Care for All
- Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston
- Keshet
- Massachusetts Senior Action Council
- Massachusetts AFL-CIO
- MassVOTE
- Moishe Kavod House
- National Organization of Women, Boston Chapter
- Neighbor to Neighbor
- Rosie’s Place
- Service Employees International Union, Local 509
- State Health Care and Research Employees/AFSCME
- Somerville Community Corporation
- The Welcome Project
- United for a Fair Economy
