At the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, we are intentional about the organizational values we strive to embody and the ways in which we work together — both internally and externally with our partners and the progressive ecosystem. We believe that living into our values will drive BISC towards even greater impact and foster a positive and meaningful work experience for our staff.
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Staff Benefits
Comprehensive Health Insurance – 100% employer-funded health insurance coverage plus dental and vision for you and your family. Coverage begins on the 1st of the month following the date of hire.
Mental Health – An employer-funded Employee Assistance Program that provides confidential assessments, short-term counseling, and referrals to support employee and family needs.
Flex Spending Account – Allows employees to set aside money from their paycheck, tax-free, for healthcare and dependent care expenses.
Short-Term and Long Disability Plan – Short-term disability insurance covers 60% of weekly income up to $1,800 and long-term disability insurance covers 60% of monthly income up to $8,250.
Generous Vacation Package – 15 days of paid vacation, plus 10 sick days, 13 paid holidays, 2 paid personal days, and 2 paid floating holidays each year. BISC staff also receive one week off for a BISC summer break and from December 24 to January 1 each year to allow all staff time to rest and recharge.
Sabbatical – Sabbaticals are paid leave with no work obligations. After 5 years of employment, employees are eligible for 1 month; after 7 years, employees are eligible for up to 2 months; and after 10 years of employment, up to 3 months.
Parental Leave – After a year, new parents are eligible for up to 16 weeks of paid time off to spend with their family (includes adoption and fostering).
401(k) Plan – To help save for retirement, BISC contributes 5% of an employee’s annual salary. All employees are immediately eligible to participate in the plan and it is 100% vested after one year.
Life Insurance & AD&D Insurance – 1x your salary up to $350,000 to protect you and your family.
Professional Development – Each staff person creates a yearly professional development plan. We invest in staff training and development based on individual professional development goals.
Internet and mobile phone costs – Reimbursed monthly up to $90 for cell phone costs and up to $50 for internet services.
Home Office – Reimburse up to $250 annually towards your home office.
BISC’s Compensation Philosophy
BISC’s compensation philosophy is a reflection of our organizational values. This compensation philosophy reflects an assessment of the landscape at the time of creation (current version: 2022). While BISC cannot fully address systemic inequities like racism, sexism, capitalism and other forms of exclusion and oppression, we are committed to a compensation structure that not only pays competitive salaries, but also offers above-market benefits to support employee medical, retirement, and other needs. We are also committed to pathways for staff to increase their compensation and benefits over time as they grow in expertise and tenure at BISC. We see this as a starting point from which to continue our work to resist and dismantle these systems.
The values guiding this framework are the following:
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- Generous and Fair Compensation – We are a national organization with national impact. This means that we strive to pay highly competitive wages wherever our staff might live, and we benchmark our salaries to some of the most expensive labor markets in the United States. We also offer a generous benefits package to staff and their families and are committed to a total compensation approach that prioritizes both a competitive base salary and a comprehensive benefits structure – a both/and strategy of doing right by our people.
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- Remote-First Structure – We will not reduce salaries if you live outside of the most expensive geographic markets used in our market analysis. We seek to hire the most talented folx across the country and compensate staff based on the role and expertise people bring to the organization wherever they may live.
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- Pathways and Transparency – We want opportunities for organizational advancement to be clear and well defined. We provide definitions for the core competencies and responsibilities that accompany each organizational role so that staff know what to expect – and what will be expected of them – in each of our staff positions at BISC. We also strive to create opportunities for continuing growth and development that are flexible enough to support people in their overall career aspirations – whether those are at BISC or at another organization.
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- Flexibility with Boundaries – We establish an entry-level, midpoint, and upper-level salary range for all roles at BISC and these ranges are transparent to both current and prospective staff. At the time of hire, we allow for negotiation within each of these salary boundaries contingent on an internal equity and parity analysis. This helps to ensure that we preserve relative salary parity between similarly experienced staff doing similar roles.
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- High Performance – We hire talented staff who are committed to our vision and mission and we expect everyone at BISC to care about their role and responsibilities and perform them at a high level. We do not expect perfection, we are a learning organization where we will make mistakes and seek to grow from them. But we also expect leadership and ownership at every level and seek to cultivate a team that is creative, committed, and connected to our core values.
BISC’s Racial Equity Stance
At the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, we work to transform our country into one that is equitable and just. In our work, we strive to challenge structural racism, and center the people most impacted. BISC works with commitment to racial equity inside our organization in our operations and management processes, and externally through our research, training, and organizing work with ballot measure campaigns, partners, and funders.