Jobs With Justice: A Creative Zine Reveals Opportunity

Jobs With Justice leads the fight for workers’ rights and an economy that benefits everyone. The only nonprofit of its kind, Jobs With Justice, leads strategic campaigns and shapes the public discourse to build power for working people. 

With a grant from Progressive Multiplier, they launched Facebook ads that called out Amazon for their poor labor practices. The campaign aimed to bring new people to the cause and create new revenue streams. Unfortunately, the timing coincided with the height of the COVID lockdown, when many people depended on Amazon to deliver essentials home. The individuals who signed up through the ads were solicited through email and telemarketing but with little success. 

When these efforts fell short of their goals, Jobs With Justice worked with Progressive Multiplier on several course corrections. Despite these dedicated efforts to change their creative and targeting strategy, they only acquired 23 one-time donors and seven monthly – well below expectations. 

Jobs With Justice ultimately pivoted to a new project, launching a print zine to re-engage lapsed offline donors and also offering creatives in the labor movement a place to share their talents. They used the first issue of their zine as an opportunity to incentivize individuals to become sustainers at a $5/month or a one-time donation of $50. The first issue went to all 6,000 people on the Jobs With Justice mailing list with a Labor Day solicitation. 

The mailing brought 30 donors, nine of whom chose to give monthly. Recipients liked the print version, and a demand for greater access created an opportunity for Jobs With Justice to put the zine online. Unfortunately, unanticipated circumstances caused them to cancel the production of the second edition. Jobs With Justice is still encouraged by the zine’s reception and is looking for opportunities to partner with other nonprofits to fund the zine on an ongoing basis. 

With both projects, Jobs With Justice had key learnings that will inform their future efforts and found great value in testing these tactics before making an even greater investment.

Jobs With Justice believes that all workers should have collective bargaining rights, employment security, and a decent standard of living within an economy that works for everyone. They bring together labor, community, student, and faith voices at the national and local levels to win improvements in people’s lives and shape the public discourse on workers’ rights and the economy.