We designed these tasks in the hopes they would take about 3 hours to complete. We've heard that they can take longer. Please do not feel a need to spend more than 3 hours.
Submit your responses to the form below by the date/time you were given. Word counts are upper limits; if you can convey your response in fewer words, do so.
Don’t worry if the content of these research tasks doesn’t line up with your strengths. These are meant to assess your ability to encounter a new idea or challenge, digest information quickly, and devise a plan for further investigation.
Read the instructions carefully and work in a separate document until you're ready to submit; this page will not save your work.
If any of the instructions are not clear, don’t hesitate to email us and we will clarify.
For this task, you are asked to learn about a new conceptual framework relevant to advocacy, communicate a summary of the ideas, and implement them. Your answers will be assessed for your ability to quickly digest, convey, and apply new ideas in writing.
Learn - watch the first 10 videos (the remaining 5 are optional) in this playlist showing a training by structure-based organizing legend Marshall Ganz on his messaging framework Public Narrative.
Task 1A: Report - explain Public Narrative as if you were speaking to a grassroots community organizer. Explain what it is, how it works, the key ideas, and why it is relevant to their work, in 250 words or less.
Task 1B: Implement - Imagine you were submitting a letter to the editor in the Denver Post, modeled on Public Narrative, in support of a local animal rights campaign to ban slaughterhouses in the city. What personal anecdotes, supporting facts, and other components might you choose to include? Sketch out 1-2 examples each of how you'd convey your stories of self, us, and now. 250 words or less.
For this task, you’ll conduct the kind of interview/debriefing that will be central to the Historian's main responsibilities. You will be assessed on your ability to quickly draw out, understand, and synthesize organizational learning.
You will debrief Brent, a Pax Fauna partner who isn’t very talkative, about a project he recently completed. Your goal is to work with Brent to reflect on his experiences and determine the key points that someone else would need to know in order to more easily succeed at this task in the future, imagining that you would then write a guide for that task based on what you learn.
The specific project you’ll debrief Brent about was described in the email inviting you to complete these tasks. If it wasn’t, please reply to that email requesting instructions.
Task 2A: Submit a simple outline describing how you will conduct the interview. Provide a list of questions you will ask, and include examples of follow-up questions you might use. Explain your reasoning. 250 words or less.
Task 2B: Schedule a 30-minute video call with Brent to conduct the interview. If there's too much to discuss in 30 minutes, that's OK, simply include what you discuss in 30 minutes. Make sure Brent records the interview. Once the interview is complete, share notes on some key insights you got out of the call about how the work you interviewed Brent about can be completed better or faster in the future, totaling 200 words or less. This task will not be assessed on writing quality. Incomplete sentences are appropriate. Focus on conveying the important takeaways from the interview.
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