Communications Manager

Job Description

Are you passionate about leadership, race equity, and social impact at nonprofit and philanthropic organizations? Do you want to help social sector organizations achieve their potential for impact by supporting leaders in building more diverse, inclusive, and equitable cultures? Are you an energetic, creative storyteller, with experience using virtual platforms to increase engagement?

If so, we’re looking for you

ProInspire is seeking a Communications Manager to play a key role in telling stories about our work supporting organizations to advance equity and leadership. This person will be responsible for the organization’s communications strategy and implementation, development of thought leadership, and may support our training programs and services for nonprofit organizations and foundations.

• Awareness: Utilize emails, newsletters, blogs, podcasts, and thought leadership to drive awareness
• Consideration: Improve website user experience and information to support business development
• Branding: Build trust with consistency, transparency, authenticity, storytelling
• Conversion: Analyze communications progress & impact

The Communications Manager will have hands-on

The Communications Manager will report to the CEO and work closely with the staff based in Washington, DC, as well as ProInspire’s communications partner (Bombilla).

The Communications Manager will focus on:

• Showcasing ProInspire’s people, expertise, credibility, and impact (Awareness)
  • Showcase ProInspire team and our experience through various channels
  • Support team members for podcasts, media interviews, conference presentations
  • Secure, promote positive testimonials, success stories of impact conversations
  • Write content for regular newsletters, blog posts, and other communications
• Uplifting/centering voices and experiences of leaders of color in the social sector (Branding)
  • Profile the dynamic members of the Catalyst Collective, ProInspire Network & Board Members
  • Identify channels to increase visibility for leaders of color in our network
  • Reshare content on social media from underrepresented voices in the sector
• Reaching new audiences who seek and need race equity work (Consideration)
  • Publish an illustrated, user-friendly Leadership Practices Guide
  • Identify creative ways to share out content from Leadership Practices Guide (e.g. email drip campaign)
  • Boost digital experience to support new business development, including investing in strategic Google AdWords campaign
  • Leverage content partnerships, speaking engagements and media interviews that align with target audience
• Supporting existing audiences on their race equity journey
  • Launch a podcast to discuss our work
  • Create FAQ content (blog, podcast, newsletter) that answers common questions
  • Invite, engage with past participants / client for referrals
  • Utilize surveys and interviews to understand latest opinions, attitudes, and needs (and gather testimonials)
• Analyzing communications progress and impact (Conversion)
  • Track and analyze data on viewership, downloads, etc.
  • Manage use of Google AdWords based on impact
  • Evaluate how communications supports our relationships and impact

The Communications Manager will support development of new products or programs that enable us to expand our reach, enhance branding, and meet community needs. These could include:

• Research and Thought Leadership:
  • Develop workbook or toolkits for foundations as part of a funder community of practice
  • Organize speaker series for our network (e.g. self care, boards and race equity)
• Training Programs:
  • Build on our curriculum to create workbooks, videos, materials for new open enrollment or cohort programs
  • Support facilitation of training
  • Create and edit deliverables for brand consistency (e.g. presentations, online workshop tools, etc.)

• Team Activities:
  • Participate in regular retreats, weekly team meetings, etc.
  • Contribute to board meetings, presentations, community events, and convenings
• Internal Work:
  • Engage in ongoing internal work around building a race equity culture
  • Push the organization to live into our values and our desired impact
• Organizational Development:
  • Support or lead internal projects
  • Mentor and develop people across the organization

Qualifications

This is an extraordinary opportunity for an individual to lead the communications work of a growing nonprofit organization. This role provides a high level of responsibility and independence for individuals to determine how and when to complete their work.

What we are looking for:

• Relevant Experience:
  • You have 3+ years of experience managing communications for an organization or campaign, with an attention to detail and an eye for how each piece fits into the organization’s larger strategic goals.
  • You understand why equity and inclusion are important in the social sector.
• Communications Skills:
  • You have excellent written and verbal skills, as well as an eye for graphic design and online content management.
  • You have extensive knowledge of the unique capabilities of various social media platforms.
  • You have the ability to effectively communicate with diverse audiences and write in a compelling manner about multiple topics.
  • Bonus points if you have experience with working in a small or start-up organization, training or consulting, as well as skills in Adobe, Wordpress, Asana, Salesforce, MailChimp, and/ or social media planning tools.
• Ways of Working:
  • You can juggle multiple projects at one time and plan out work accordingly.
  • You are a compelling relationship builder working with people at all levels in organizations.
  • You are able to think and execute quickly and effectively.
  • You don’t have all the answers, but are willing to figure things out.
  • You are able to work independently and maintain productivity with colleagues and stakeholders in different locations.
• Mindsets:
  • You bring integrity, humility, resilience, and passion for ProInspire’s mission
  • You authentically dive into work about the role that identity and race plays inside organizations, and are able to speak from your lived experience.
  • You have an entrepreneurial spirit and desire to expand our impact.

What you will gain from this role:

• Impact: You’ll have the opportunity to advance leadership, equity and inclusion in the social sector. You will see the impact you have on individuals and organizations through their engagement in our programs.
• Build on your Strengths: You will have the opportunity to shape your work and our programs, building on your strengths, and your lived experience.
• Learning: You will continuously be learning as you support our partners and through your own professional development.
• Visibility: You will be responsible for facilitating training, speaking to large groups, and representing the organization with partners.
• Autonomy and Ownership: You will have responsibility for specific programs and services, setting strategic objectives, leading teams, and managing budgets.

Additional Information

At ProInspire, we believe that people are the most important asset to delivering our mission and we strive to make ProInspire a great, collaborative place to work. ProInspire values equity, authenticity, collaboration, and courage. In our benefits and HR policies, this means:

• We prioritize approaches that serve all of us and promote our collective impact, ensuring we meet the needs of those with least access to decision-making power
• We identify both individual and team-wide solutions, providing flexibility and support for each other
• We share transparently about the opportunities and limitations we face as a small nonprofit organization, engaging staff in the process to shape our approach
• We think creatively about how to align our values and meet our goals within our policies, identifying how we various types of benefits can strengthen our culture

We aim to accomplish two goals through our benefits and HR policies:

• All staff members have what they need to do their jobs well, to do their best work, and to grow individually - including accommodations for various needs and functional roles, considerations for growth within role and organization as well as towards career goals
• All staff members have what they need to take care of themselves, recognizing the wholeness of who we are, our personal wellbeing, and how that may impact us at work and in our lives outside of work

Our benefits include:

• Focus on Wellbeing
• Unlimited PTO: Minimum 20 days expected, includes vacation, sick, mental health, family care, etc.
• Org-Wide Holidays and Digital Detox Windows: Total of 20 days (10 Holidays and 2 Detox Windows of 5 days each) to support everyone with fully disconnecting
• Flexible Work Schedules: Includes options for structuring work week/days, space for learning/collaboration
• Robust Health Benefits with 90% of individual premium covered
• Short-Term Disability/Long-Term Disability/Life Insurance
• Wellness Fund (with additional telework benefit for 2021)
• 401k Enrollment with organizational contribution
• Benchmarked Compensation with Annual Opportunities for Increases

• Professional Development Fund: $1,000/FTE/year
• Laptop Reimbursement Fund
• Access to/Participation in Trainings and Conferences
• Opportunity to Engage in Projects Aligned to Personal/Professional Goals

• Salary: Starting salary for the first year ranges from $60-65k.

• Travel: No travel is currently required due to COVID-19. Once the pandemic is under control, work travel may be required for delivering programs, conferences and meetings; on average, 2-3 trips per month. There are also occasional events during non-standard business hours.

• Start Date: The ideal start date is February 2021, with some flexibility

• Location: We no longer have a physical office space due to the pandemic. Currently all of our full time staff are based in the DC/Maryland/Virginia (DMV) area and we expect to be working virtually through the end of 2021. Based on safety and the needs of our staff, we may transition back to a physical location in 2022. We are open to the candidates based outside of the DMV area.