Seeking: Volunteer Policy Organizers + A Democratizing Entrepreneurship Fellow

Hi friends,

It’s been an exciting year at DPN. We launched in full in February, published three new policy kits, hosted a summit with Run for Something on transformative state-level policy and strategy, and published our first ever book. In a few weeks, we have five new policy kits coming out, on topics ranging from citizen news vouchers to youth decarceration to restorative justice.

For now, I am reaching out to friends and followers of DPN, because we are seeking new folks to come join us in our work of gathering, packaging, organizing, and amplifying transformative state policy.

First, we are seeking new volunteer policy organizers for our Fall Cycle.

At the center of our policy system are policy organizers: passionate people working to gather promising state policies from Movement experts and advocates, package them into useful policy kits for our network of state legislators, and amplify them to legislators, journalists, and the public at large. Our Fall 2021 Policy Organizer Cycle is kicking off in early November — and the application to join us for it is open through October 22. If you or someone you know would like to organize a policy kit with us, we would love to hear from you:

Apply to be a Volunteer Policy Organizer

For more information, here is our full description of the program:

Learn more about DPN Policy Organizing

Second, we are seeking a paid Democratizing Entrepreneurship Fellow to make three kits

Over the coming months, DPN aims to compile three policy kits about ways states can democratize entrepreneurship:

• (1) A policy kit on democratizing technology to small- and medium-sized enterprises (including cooperatives);
• (2) A policy kit about the variety of tools states can use to promote “community investment” — local crowdfunding investment and stock exchanges; redirecting endowments and pensions to community businesses and cooperatives; using procurement to promote community wealth-building, creating state venture funds, and more;
• (3) A policy kit about promoting community accelerators and other forms of community- and government-support to startups (including cooperatives).

To build these, we at DPN recently received a grant to hire a democratically-spirited, policy-minded Democratizing Entrepreneurship Fellow. This is a paid position for part-time, self-directed work over six months.  Those interested can apply below:

Apply to DPN's DE Fellowship

For more information, here is our full description of the fellowship position:

Learn more about DPN's DE Fellowship

Hope you can pass this email along to interested folks in your network. And if you would like to be more involved in DPN in any way — if you have an idea for a policy kit, if you know a state leader who you think should join our network, if you want to organize policy kits with us, if you want to help amplify ideas in our kits, if you want to bring DPN policies to your state — please reach out. My email is Pete@DemocracyPolicy.network and our "Join up" form is here. As the old saying goes, “They have money, but we have people” — so we need all hands on deck to make DPN work.

All the best,

Pete Davis

Director, Democracy Policy Network