Communications Officer at Room to Read

The person in this role spends the majority of his or her time providing global marketing and awareness, fundraising, and country-specific communications support. This primarily includes providing material development and donor engagement support. It also includes vendor management and reporting, as well as local awareness and public relations.

This person reports directly to the Country Director. The role works in close coordination and is in frequent contact with the global office of Room to Read, headquartered in San Francisco, California, USA, to ensure requests are understood and completed, guidelines are followed, and the role is supported with professional development opportunities and global office communications support.

Duties & Responsibilities:

Material Support (30%)

• Create content for global office marketing materials. This includes collecting and writing stories about our impact, including photography and video-based stories; providing content for global office website; and supporting global awareness campaign content.
• Create content for unique stewardship materials for donor management.
• Using guidelines provided by global office, create or helping to create country office annual reports, newsletters, brochures/fact sheets, PowerPoint decks and other materials for local stakeholder meetings.

Donor Engagement (30%)

• Plan, coordinate and host support for donor visits and corporate employee engagement visits and volunteering.
• Support relationship management for existing corporate donors, including support to special corporate programmatic initiatives in-country and implement any specific public relations needs in country related to the partnership.
• Train country office staff on site visits and messaging (orientation and ongoing capacity building).

Creative Controller (Vendor Relations) (20%)

• Responsible for overseeing creative materials produced by the country office. This includes accountability of photo/video collection and quality control for global marketing and donor materials produced within the country office, working in close collaboration with the country director and program operations staff to complete tasks.
• Using guidelines provided by the global office to identify, hire, supervise and train outside vendors (photographers, videographers, printing/design, etc.) to support both global office material development and donor reporting materials (e.g. project-specific photos).

Reporting (10%)

• Review donor reporting photos to ensure high quality and guidelines followed.
• Provide translation or language support for donor reports, as needed.

Awareness and Public Relations (10%)

• Develop, implement and evaluate local public relations strategy based on local needs and target audience(s).
• Establish and maintain relationships with local journalists and news/media agencies.
• Support local PR/awareness raising opportunities, as needed, at celebrations and events.
• Act as brand custodian and ambassador to country office using global branding guidelines; train staff on message and brand training (new hires).
• Contribute local content on global and local social media feeds per global office. guidelines. If there is no local social media presence, still contribute content to global office.
• Supervise other communication staff, if applicable in South Africa country office.

Qualifications:

Required:

• Degree in a related field (e.g. communications, marketing, etc.)
• 7 – 10 years of relevant work experience
• Prior experience in: creating communications materials; project management; and experience in travel, tourism or hospitality preferred.
• Excellent English oral and written communication skills, knowledge of African languages a recommendation
• Familiarity with design and photography principles, ideally with experience using software such as Adobe InDesign, Photoshop,
• Comfort working both independently and closely with diverse teams and collaborators
• Highly organized: ability to multitask, manage multiple deliverables/timelines and ensure all deadlines are met
• Strong computer skills including Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and Outlook
• Experience using social marketing and outreach tools including Facebook and Twitter
• Attention to detail

Compensation:

Room to Read offers a competitive salary with excellent benefits. Benefits including 13th month bonus, pension fund, medical aid and staff professional development. The non-monetary compensation includes a unique opportunity to be part of an innovative, meaningful, fun, and rapidly growing organization that is changing transforming the lives of millions of children in developing countries by focusing on literacy and gender equality in education.

Room to Read is a child-safe organization; all personnel are expected to adhere to Room to Read’s Child Protection Policy and Child Protection Code of Conduct.

Location(s): South Africa - Main - Pretoria

To be successful at Room to Read, you will also:

• Have passion for our mission and a strong desire to impact a dynamic nonprofit organization
• Be a proactive and innovative thinker who achieves results and creates positive change
• Have a very high level of personal and professional integrity and trustworthiness
• Embrace diversity and a commitment to collaboration
• Thrive in a fast-paced and fun environment

Room to Read is proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to identifying and developing the skills and leadership of people from diverse backgrounds