About the role
This is a broad leadership role combining strategic leadership, business development, international partnerships, organisational growth, and oversight of programme delivery.
You'll join one of the world's most experienced organisations delivering democratic lotteries and citizens' assemblies. Working across Europe, the UK, Australia and beyond, you'll shape how democratic innovation grows internationally while helping build the infrastructure that allows others to run high-quality deliberative processes themselves.
As part of the leadership team, you'll hold ultimate responsibility across our democratic lottery delivery teams, develop partnerships, and help shape where we go next as an organisation. You'll grow our opportunities through a considered and systematic approach to business development - new applications, bids and partnerships - and the revenue that comes with them, with support from the team.
This is a role for someone who's genuinely committed to democratic renewal, and good at bringing people together across different contexts and cultures.
Key Responsibilities
- Driving the organisation forward
- Working alongside the other directors to shape the organisation's strategy
- Imagining and developing new applications/markets for sortition and deliberation; translating ideas into concrete opportunities, bids, contracts, and revenue
- Spotting and pursuing new opportunities (bids including fundraising, partnerships, earned revenue) particularly at an international level, with the support of the team
- Leading the growth, sustainability and adoption of OpenDLP, our open-source democratic lottery software on a global scale (including but not limited to, building strategic partnerships, developing sustainable revenue models, and promoting adoption amongst users)
- Connecting the global sector
- Maintaining and developing relationships with key global partners, funders, and stakeholders
- Keeping up with what's happening in the deliberative democracy world and bringing relevant
opportunities back to the team - Sharing best practice across teams and helping raise standards across the sector
- Leading the team
- Strategic oversight of Democratic Lottery teams
- Line managing Heads of teams, one of whom is based in Australia which will require some flexibility in hours, and a few more team members
- Coordinating and facilitating budget proposals from the Democratic Lottery teams, making sure resources are allocated fairly and teams have what they need
- Contributing to a Working Group (to be decided)
For more details, please see the recruitment pack.
About the organisation
The Sortition Foundation and its subsidiary based in Hungary, Sortition Europe Nonprofit Kft, are not-for-profit companies that exist to transform politics and upgrade democracy. We recruit people from all walks of life for citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative events in the UK, Australia, Europe, and around the world, with clients including national governments, local governments, cultural, technology and other organisations. The surplus generated from this work funds our campaigning for the institutionalisation of these assemblies at local and regional/national level. We are structured as a workers co-operative and our people are based in the UK, Australia, and Hungary.
Vision, Purpose, Values
Our Vision is that people from all walks of life make informed decisions about how we live together.
Our Purpose is to build the movement for permanent, powerful citizens’ assemblies.
Our strategic goals are to:
- Build a powerful movement for democratic renewal using citizens’ assemblies;
- Build the capacity and expertise to deliver citizens’ assemblies at scale;
- Build the belief that citizens' assemblies are feasible and desirable; and
- Build and maintain a sustainable organisation.
Our goals are guided by the following values: Collective Wisdom and Social Justice.
Our culture is guided by the following values: Curious, Caring, and Courageous.
The Application Process
To apply, please complete this application form; we're unable to accept applications by email or in any other format. The closing date for applications is 12:00pm, 12 October 2026 (GMT). If you need extra time, please email us at [email protected] by 7 October 2026, and we'll do our best to accommodate you. Depending on the volume of applications received, we may close this advert ahead of the stated deadline or extend it. We'd therefore encourage interested candidates to apply as early as possible.
We're happy to consider reasonable adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process, as well as on the job. If there's anything you'd like to request, just email us.
If you'd like to discuss the role or have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch.
While we understand that many candidates may choose to use AI tools when preparing their application, and this is perfectly fine, we'd encourage you to let your own voice come through as much as possible because we're keen to hear directly from you.
We welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds, and do not discriminate on the basis of disability, race, colour, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.