Communications Specialist Jobs

About The Sumba Foundation

The Sumba Foundation is a US based public charity, non-profit and non-governmental organization fully committed to helping the people of Sumba, Indonesia develop while preserving and respecting the culture of its people. Focused on health, water, education, nutrition and economic projects, we are alleviating disease and poverty on the island and changing the lives of tens of thousands of people.

Learn more at: https://sumbafoundation.org/

About the role

We are looking for a talented and passionate part time writer/marketing person (10~15 hours/week) to join the Sumba Foundation family and help us tell the stories of our impact and the people empowered. You should be able to communicate information clearly, accurately, and consistently. This is an opportunity for a talented writer/communicator, who first and foremost is motivated by wanting to make a real difference in the lives of those that need our help the most.

As our foundation is rooted in the knowledge that the most effective actions come from within the context of our own lives and hearts, we believe there is a valuable opportunity to more intentionally demonstrate our approach to helping those in need. With a thoughtful aid plan based on 25 years of firsthand knowledge of the island and its people, we have a rich history, plenty of content, and powerful learnings and insights—but we need help to extract, collate, articulate, position and present these to our community and donors.

Our work is also constantly evolving to meet the current and future needs of the Sumbanese people, and our content and communications strategy should reflect this growth. Having established a solid foundation of better health and basic education for the community, we can move to what is needed next: supporting even more remote areas, better education, training new skills, and creating employment opportunities for future generations, all opportunities to find new angles to reach new audiences.

Responsibilities

Your role will involve supporting projects such as, but not limited to:

• Issue IRS donor confirmation letters to donors contributing more than 100 $
• Creating and updating social media posts on Instagram/Facebook
• Updating our website with fresh and up-to-date content
• Assist team in organizing annual fundraising events including donor invitations, tickets, food/drinks, auction items etc.
• Developing key messages and crafting engaging stories to strengthen our external narrative
• Keeping existing documentation up-to-date with the latest details and stats
• Drafting regular updates/imagery based on stories and data/imagery from our 65 SF team members. This includes brief monthly donor updates and an annual summary of our work.
• Preparing personal messages/imagery for donors, on the specific projects they’ve contributed to.
• Assist in creating email campaigns to donors with assistance from external marketing firms
• Assist team in developing case studies and fine tune proposals for donation requests etc.
• Strategizing press releases for milestones and major announcements

Minimum qualifications

• A true team player, in that as we’re a small organization, you may sometimes be asked to help out with tasks beyond your official scope of work, such as fundraising events etc.
• 8+ years professional freelance experience in writing and/or content development
• Home location flexible, ideally with prior 3rd world working experience
• Proclivity to work proactively, independently, (mostly) remotely, and with limited guidance but ample access to current data, imagery and information
• Adventurous, well-traveled, and open-minded!
• Relatively technically-savvy (eg. comfortable with CMS, CRM, Salesforce, basic exploratory analysis in Google Sheets as it relates to content development), or else willing to take the initiative to learn
• Available to travel to Sumba initially to spend 2 weeks with the teams, and then periodically 1-2 times per year
• A strong desire to realize a vision of a better world, using your position and resources to help people living in real poverty
• Native or fluent English speaker and writer

Preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in Journalism or Communications
• Experience working with non-profits

Compensation

2,500 USD or equivalent per month and all expenses related to Sumba and event travel covered

To apply, please send your resume and portfolio to Emily at [email protected] explaining why you’re the best fit for the role.