Director of Communications

Benefits:

• 401(k)
• 401(k) matching
• Dental insurance
• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• Home office stipend
• Paid time off
• Parental leave
• Vision insurance

About NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worldson and off the page. NaNoWriMo began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.

Executive Summary
The Director of Communications is a key member of our leadership team. Assets generated by the Communications department have visibility to all NaNoWriMo constituents:

• NaNoWriMo community members (adults as well as Young Writers Program participants)
• Individual and institutional donors
• Sponsors
• Affiliates
• Strategic partners (e.g., authors, publishers)
• The media and the general public

The Director of Communications is tasked with developing and executing communication strategies that hold and honor the following priorities:

• Adding value to the creative lives of current and prospective community members
• Organizational transparency; accountability to the people we serve and to our donors
• Learning from our community via authentic engagement
• Brand and reputational management
• Continually striving to leverage communications to further serve the NaNoWriMo mission

Roles and Responsibilities
Serving as chief strategist and curator of all communications:

• Maintaining a central editorial calendar
• Ensuring that all scheduled communications remain on track
• Ensuring the high quality of our editorial content, visual and multimedia
• Developing and enforcing editorial protocols around sensitivity, quality, and DEIB values-alignment
• Developing and enforcing protocols around archiving and record-keeping
• Developing and enforcing protocols around disseminating official information through customer service
• Developing a ready-to-use crisis communications plan and proactively training employees and the Board

Personally developing content for key channels:

• Routine NaNoWriMo and YWP newsletters
• The NaNoWriMo blog
• Encouragement and engagement messages that follow the seasonal cycle of NaNoWriMo
• Emails that celebrate affinity groups
• Website content (this is a periodic responsibility that comes with the occasional website redesign)

Coordinating or procuring content from other sources:

• Partnering with other functional leaders around messaging originating from their organizations
• Liaising with published authors and other industry players around guest posts and takeovers
• Supporting sponsors and affiliate partners around the creative development and publication of their content
• Managing any and all contractors and interns (primarily social media and graphic design support)

Analysis and reporting related to NaNoWriMo communications:

• Monitoring KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and conducting monthly reporting and trend analysis
• Supporting the Development Team by providing information needed for grant applications
• Leveraging data insights (including social listening) in order to inform our channel strategy and media mix

Job Specifics: Supervision

• The work of the Director of Communications is supported and supervised by the Executive Director
• The Director of Communications supports and directly supervises the work of all social media, graphic design, and public relations talent, whose status may range from part-time employees to contractors
• The Director of Communications has a dotted-line/matrix supervisory role to any employees serving in a customer service or de facto spokesperson role

Job Specifics: Leadership Expectations

• Enthusiasm for contributing to the overall strategy of the organization
• Active participation in our weekly leadership team meeting
• Leadership of the weekly editorial meeting
• Developing and strengthening relationships with content-contributing authors and industry partners
• Ownership of the Annual Report (full digital + at-a-glance print versions)
• Ownership of the resource library and community archives
• Ownership of the NaNoWriMo Content and Style Guide
• Leadership and logistical coordination of critical and crisis communications

Job Specifics: Key Internal Partnerships

• Support the Executive Director in the production of our annual Sponsorship Packet; collaborate around brand strategy and reputation management; keep them informed around noteworthy developments that should be communicated to the Board
• Collaborate with the Director of Community Engagement to maintain a continuous understanding of community sentiment and to formulate official messaging and responses
• Provide the Development Team with community engagement statistics to support grant applications; compile information for the Annual Report; support the design of fundraising collateral
• Provide the Programs Team with content and media that may be needed for areas of the website or web app that cant be self-managed.

Job Specifics: Key External Partnerships

• Recruit authors and industry players to become guest contributors. Support them around content vision, tech onboarding (if necessary), editing, and marketing collateral. Serve as their contact and general ambassador.
• Help sponsors understand the benefits that come with their packages and work with them proactively to plan, schedule, and (if necessary) produce collateral; ensure they receive all the benefits to which they are entitled
• Ensure the correct placement and proper functioning of affiliate content; work with partners to approve collateralContinually measure the results of partner programs in order to refresh the stats we use for partner pitches.

Job Specifics: Media Channels and Multimedia Mix

• Website (e.g., Wordpress)
• Blog (e.g., Tumblr and Wordpress)
• Email (e.g., Campaign Monitor)
• Social Channels (e.g., Facebook group, Facebook page, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube)
• Zoom (e.g., affinity group meetings, writing sprints, webinars)
• Print and digital collateral (e.g., annual report, sponsorship packet)

General Job Expectations

• Availability during core office hours: 9am - 3pm PST + 2 hours on either side (some flexibility is available)
• Occasional in-person meet-ups with our audience including evening and weekend busy season events
• Engagement in professional development opportunities.
• Pursuing and responding to open dialogue about workplace challenges.
• Engaging with the NaNoWriMo DEI tactics and strategy.

Organizational Expectations

• Collaboration (communication with colleagues and contribution to shared projects)
• Project Management (project planning and meeting of deadlines)
• Deliverables (quality and timeliness of final products)
• Engagement (consistent effort and energy)
• Initiative (commitment to new ideas and approaches)

This is a remote position.