We love to see nonprofit communications teams grow! I always do a little dance in my chair when someone in our community says they’ve been approved to hire a new comms team member. But then the question becomes, what should that new communications hire do? How should we write that job description?
In other words, what’s the vision for how your nonprofit communications team should grow?
There’s no right or wrong answer, but there are a few ways to think about this.
Don’t Try to Clone Yourself
This is an easy mistake, especially if you’ve been working as a team of one for a while. You need another person like yourself!
But that’s a trap for you and the person you hire. They will never meet your expectations, and honestly, you probably won’t even be able to define those expectations well. It also robs you of the most significant benefits of growing your team: adding diverse skills and insights that will hopefully balance you out rather than trying to duplicate you.
Instead, Think of Additional Roles or Specialties
First, consider what you and any other team members already do well. Then, think about where you and any others hope to grow professionally. Then, consider what gaps that leaves in your team.
Next, consider whether these approaches make sense for your organization.
Hire By Communications Skills
Do you need someone who is good with words and can take on a lot of original writing and editing of work drafted by others? Is the amount of written work your organization produces overwhelming current staff?
Or do you need someone who is at home with visual communications, like photography, graphics, and video? We can all make do with tools like Canva, but it may be time to hire someone who really knows what they are doing and can produce much higher-quality design work faster than everyone else who has learned on the job.
Hire by Communications Channel Management
Do you need your new communications hire to understand email marketing from start to finish, for example? This person might need to know about email list building and segmentation, crafting good conversion copy for emails, and creating the right graphics, too. The same could be said for a media relations/PR position, which requires particular skills and relationships.
Hire by Roles on Projects
In other cases, you may be looking for someone to fill a role within a project management framework like MOCHA, RACI, or CALM. You may need more helpers or contributors to many different projects (more of a utility player), or you may need people who can lead projects and make final judgment calls.
Hire by Internal Service Lines
I’m not a huge fan of this approach because I think it often leads to too much fragmentation of the communications and marketing strategy. Still, you could also hire team members who work for the comms team but are essentially embedded within programmatic teams, too. So, if you serve both children and elders, you might have a team member who focuses on comms related to children’s programs and another who focuses on comms for programs serving elders.
Hire to Fill Gaps in the Marketing Strategy
Yet another approach would be to look at where your team is missing someone who understands and can implement work on a core part of your marketing strategy. For example, do you need people whose job is to focus on the people you are communicating with, such as market researchers, data managers, or “business” development folks? Do you need a brand manager? Or a content strategist who drives messaging decisions?
You can’t expect someone to do all the things. I hope this post helps you sort through your options!
Want more? Big Duck has helped many nonprofits grow their communications teams and shares advice on their blog.
