Full-Time Communications Manager
Job Description
As a Communications Manager for SELC, you will be an integral part of the communications team working to engage and educate about a full range of environmental issues of particular importance to the South—climate change, clean air and water, our public lands, coastal protections, and environmental justice.
If you’re up for the challenge of figuring out how communications can advance environmental progress, we want you to be part of our team. You will be responsible for overseeing communications for our Georgia and Alabama offices, as well as acting as the point person for other regional and federal programmatic issues. You will work closely with our attorneys, partner groups, and communications team members to plan and execute communications strategies. You will think strategically and creatively about how to message environmental issues, incorporate storytelling into our content, help shape media coverage on environmental legal and policy developments, and integrate different communications touchpoints to reach target audiences. Your days will involve working with attorneys to develop a messaging platform on a new issue, pitching reporters on a development, collaborating with the digital and creative team on an online advocacy campaign to advance an issue, and working with partner groups on an op-ed or press event.
This is a chance to join our 20-person communications team of strategists, designers, analysts, investigators, ambassadors, and innovators who work closely together to develop comprehensive communications strategies to help SELC meet its programmatic and organizational objectives. We tell the stories, paint the picture, make the information clear, and reach the right people to move the environmental needle.
This is a full-time position based in Atlanta, with regular travel to Birmingham, reporting to the Director of Program Communications and working in close partnership with our Georgia and Alabama Office Directors and communications and program teams.
Primary Responsibilities:
- Work closely with SELC attorneys and the design, digital, geospatial, and marketing teams to develop and implement communications strategies for Georgia and Alabama and regional programmatic issues.
- Collaborate with other communications managers to address joint challenges and opportunities, share regional coverage duties, and provide help on coverage in other states and program areas as needed.
- Help lead and coordinate the development and implementation of broader communications campaigns for higher priority issues, working closely with the design, digital, geospatial, and marketing teams.
- Oversee all phases of outreach, from messaging strategy and materials development to media relations. Responsible for ensuring website content on assigned issues is up-to-date. Work with digital and design team to guide News Feed, social media, graphics, advertising, and multimedia content.
- Act as media point of contact for assigned issues, managing and cultivating press relationships.
- Stay in close communication with the attorneys to keep up-to-date and anticipate upcoming opportunities and needs and coordinate the legal review process to ensure our communications are consistent with legal objectives and requirements.
- Establish productive relationships with partner groups to develop strategies, ensure messaging consistency, and coordinate responses and outreach.
- Report to the Director of Program Communications.
Qualifications:
- A Bachelor’s degree, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
- 5-7 years of communications experience, preferably advocacy-oriented communications.
- Commitment to and knowledge of environmental, climate, and environmental justice issues.
- Creative and strategic thinker. You love thinking through strategies of how to reach people and move them to action, and you’re creative in considering new approaches to make change.
- Significant experience working with the media and establishing strong relationships with reporters.
- Excellent communicator and writer. You will play an integral role in crafting messages that engage target audiences and ensure that materials – from web, to social, to email, to ads – adhere to the overarching narrative. As an important voice of the South’s leading environmental organization, you’ll need to be able to package complex legal issues for a range of platforms, moving with ease between talking points, press releases, op-eds, web copy, and digital campaign emails that move people to get more involved.
- Familiarity with a variety of content production and a track record overseeing projects that use video, audio, illustrations, and other kinds of multimedia to advance an issue. You think creatively about how to use different types of content to reach the broadest audiences.
- Strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. You have a genuine interest in and commitment to helping SELC create and foster a more diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace. You think about how to infuse commitments to equity into communications strategies and into organizational and campaign planning from the ground up. You engage in ongoing personal learning and are eager to contribute to our organizational efforts to be a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace.
- Highly organized. You are self-driven and have excellent time management skills. You can move from drafting a rapid response press statement, to ensuring digital campaign components are designed and delivered on time, to tracking the budget for a communications project. You feel confident shifting priorities in a fast-paced environment, including managing several communications efforts at once.
- Collegial, collaborative team player. You enjoy learning together with your teammates and helping others to succeed in their work as well. You bring a collaborative attitude to engaging with other team members and external stakeholders alike.
About SELC: The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 170, including 90 attorneys, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, Va., with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, D.C.
SELC believes that a broad range of ideas, life experiences, and backgrounds enriches our workplace, drives innovative thinking, and attracts highly talented people who seek a work environment that values the unique contributions of individual team members. We are eager to welcome new team members who share this belief. We still have much progress to make, but our goal is to create and maintain a staff that, at every level, reflect the rich racial and cultural diversity of the communities where we work and the clients that we serve. SELC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and committed to fostering a transparently inclusive workplace environment. We are looking for people to join us in this effort. Persons of all backgrounds—including people of color, women, people with disabilities, veterans, and LGBTQ candidates—are strongly encouraged to apply.
Compensation: SELC offers salaries competitive with other leading environmental non-profits nationally and provides an excellent benefits package. The starting salary range for this position is $65,000-$80,000, commensurate with experience. For more details about our benefits package, please visit our Careers page.
How to Apply
To Apply: To apply, click on the ‘Apply Now’ button at the bottom of this page to be directed to an online application where you may upload your application materials. Applicants must submit a cover letter and resume. Cover letters should be directed to the Director of Program Communications, Emily Driscoll. Interested persons should apply immediately. The initial deadline for receipt of complete applications is November 1, 2021. However, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the position is filled.Apply for this Job
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