Communications Manager

Job Type: Full-time

Reports To: Communications Director

Location: Remote, with the option for DC-based candidates to work hybrid

Compensation: $75,000 - $85,000, depending on experience, with excellent benefits including fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance and retirement plan with 3% match - more below

To Apply: Start by filling out our application form.

Who You Are:

You’ve been wanting to build the progressive answer to Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro’s red-pill pipeline. You crave the opportunity to create content that sits at the intersection of the personal and political, helping people feel a sense of inspiration, purpose, and agency, and develop a worldview that uplifts the equal dignity of every person.

You love speaking truth to power in clever, subversive ways. You’ve never met a news cycle you didn’t have a hot take on. You’ve probably sat and stewed at a job where you couldn’t call out JD Vance on the clock, counting the minutes until you could fire off a cutting subtweet.

You’d rather take a big swing and miss than aim low; change the world or go down in flames trying. You’re an ambitious visionary who executes relentlessly, looking for a workplace that matches your energy while you’re on the clock and respects your boundaries when you’re off the clock.

Does that sound like you? Good. We’ve been waiting.

Who We Are:

Hi! Nice to meet you. We’re the American Humanist Association.

Humanists believe in people. We believe that people have inherent worth and dignity, without needing to be saved or redeemed. We believe that people can do anything as long as we live in a society where people are free to think freely and pursue rational truth. And we believe the highest good is to help other people live lives of freedom and flourishing.

Humanists have always moved America. Kristen Bell, Gloria Steinem, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Steve Wozniak, Joyce Carol Oates, A. Philip Randolph, John Dewey, Margaret Atwood, Abraham Maszlow, Jamie Raskin - these are some of the American visionaries whose humanism led them to envision new frontiers for advancing human worth and dignity.

For over 80 years, the AHA has been the epicenter of the humanist movement. We promote humanism as a community and worldview that “nothing in particular,” “spiritual but not religious,” atheist, and agnostic folks can belong to, believe in, and fight for. We fight the radical religious right in the courts, Congress, and the streets, organizing our thousands of members and 230+ chapters nationwide to fight for the separation of church and state, make the moral case for progressive public policy, and take direct action to improve their communities. We train hundreds of secular chaplains and celebrants who perform marriages and work in hospitals, college campuses, and prisons.

And we’ve got hella work to do.

The Role:

1. You’ll help us tailor AHA messaging to a digital audience, managing multiple social media channels and identifying opportunities for AHA to enter the conversation. We’re looking for someone with a creative, adaptive mind who can both generate content ideas as well as provide insight into what works and what doesn’t.
2. You’ll help us grow our digital channels to reach new audiences, setting goals and KPIs immediately upon starting. With your analytical skills, you’ll help our Communications team decipher social media performance reports, and distill recommendations for future success.
3. You’ll shepherd the launch of AHA’s podcast and play a significant role in the production and editing of new media content. Professional production experience is preferred, but we are happy to consider personal projects that demonstrate these competencies.
4. You’ll support the Communications Director in the drafting of key communications collateral, from op-eds to press releases, social media copy, and more, as needed. While you take pride in your writing, you don’t let ‘perfect’ become the enemy of ‘good,’ and are able to produce workable first drafts in a tight turnaround.
5. You’ll live and breathe new media and constantly be brainstorming innovative ways to get AHA’s message to our target audiences. Even if you’re new to humanism, you’ll bring a fresh perspective to the communications efforts of our 84-year-old organization, and help bring us into the digital age.

Requirements:

Non-negotiable:

• Experience managing social media platforms to success
• Experience producing digital content – even if it’s just your personal meme page! A big plus if you have experience producing political/advocacy content and/or lifestyle/inspirational content
• Strong project management skills, able to hold lots of moving pieces in your head at once, prioritize, and keep things from falling through the cracks
• A bias towards over-communicating and follow-through
• High familiarity and comfort with new media outlets (TikTok, Twitch, Discord, etc.)
• A strong writer, skilled at executing with little or ambiguous direction
• Ambitious and driven: You dream big for yourself and the places you work for, aiming high, working hard, and always asking “What can we do better?”
• Intrepid and fearless: You’re comfortable with failure, unafraid of rejection, and always up to (thoughtfully, strategically) court a little controversy.
• Creative and visionary: You see possibilities others don’t, aren’t afraid of divergent thinking, and are described as “bursting with ideas”

Nice To Have, But Not Necessary:

• Experience with/connection to the humanist/secular movement or affiliated movements like Unitarian Universalism (but willingness and enthusiasm to learn is an absolute must)
• Graphic design skills
• Prior experience working remotely

We Don’t Care About:

• Your degrees or where you went to school
• Your years of experience (tenure doesn’t matter, demonstrated success does)

Compensation:

Benefits:

We offer generous benefits, including:

• Fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, and the option to enroll dependents with the AHA covering 50% of the premium
• 403b plan - and we’ll match your contributions up to 3% of your salary
• Fully employer-paid short-term and long-term disability insurance, and life insurance
• Partial cell phone reimbursement ($45/month) and, for fully remote employees, partial home internet reimbursement ($65/month)
• Flexible Spending Account and pre-tax commuter benefits available
• Professional development budget available

PTO:

We want you to work hard on the clock and have plenty of flexibility to live a full life off of it. In general, we tend to be flexible around working arrangements and hours to meet staff needs, but here are our formal policies.

• Earned PTO: 18 days PTO in your first year, increasing by one day a year until you reach 25 days.
• Holidays: 12 paid holidays, plus the days between December 25th and January 1st.
• Flex time: 3 hours of additional “flex time” off each week to schedule as you please, to account for doctor’s appointments, errands, or just starting your weekend a bit early.
• Flexible Scheduling: Employees have the freedom to set their own schedule, as long as they’re available/online 40h a week (not counting flex time) and between the hours of 11a-3p EST.
• Parental leave: Two months of leave at full pay and an additional month of leave at 75% pay for new parents.
• Comp time: Time off is earned on a 1:1 basis for evening and weekend events worked and work travel outside of regular hours. (We anticipate this position will travel 1-2 times a year if based in or near DC, and 3-4 times a year if fully remote.)

Hiring Process:

You can start by applying here:

We like to share our full hiring process for transparency. However, please note that all parts of this process, including timelines, may change.

Stage 1: Application + Resume (Applications open through 3/23)

• All applicants will fill out the hiring application, responding to several short-answer questions and submitting a resume. (No cover letters. Who likes cover letters?)
• Responses to short-answer questions will be anonymized and rated by a panel of interviewers.
• All candidates will receive a response regardless of whether or not they are invited to an interview.

Stage 2: First-Round Interviews - 6-8 candidates (Week of 3/24-28)

• Candidates invited to a first-round interview will meet with the hiring manager for a 45-minute video call. This is a mutual interview - we’ll start with any questions you have for us, and then ask questions about your skills, experiences, and interest in the role, so we can both determine if this is a potential fit.
• We will let all candidates know about their status after second-round interview offers have been made and accepted.

Stage 3: Paid Work Sample - likely 3-4 candidates (Week of 3/31 - 4/4)

• Candidates selected will be asked to complete a paid work sample (two hours of time, at the timing of your choosing). This exercise will help us evaluate your ability to produce relevant communications work on a time crunch
• We will pay applicants an hourly rate of $40, pegged to the advertised salary range for this position

Stage 4: Work Sample review (Week of 4/7-11)

• Candidates will meet with the hiring manager to review the finished work product and ask any questions that came up during the exercise. Hiring manager will ask more in-depth, situational-based questions relevant to the role.

Stage 5: Final interviews (Week of 4/14-18)

• Finalists will meet with AHA’s Executive Director for a final interview and opportunity to ask any questions you may still have about us and the role.
• We will make an offer to our top candidate, and let other candidates know their status when the offer has been accepted.

Our goal is to make offers mid April and have the new candidate start by the first week of May.

Benefits:

We offer generous benefits, including:

• Fully paid medical, dental, and vision insurance, and the option to enroll dependents with the AHA covering 50% of the premium
• 403b plan - and we’ll match your contributions up to 3% of your salary
• Fully employer-paid short-term and long-term disability insurance, and life insurance
• Partial cell phone reimbursement ($45/month) and, for fully remote employees, partial home internet reimbursement ($65/month)
• Flexible Spending Account and pre-tax commuter benefits available
• Professional development budget available

PTO:

We want you to work hard on the clock and have plenty of flexibility to live a full life off of it. In general, we tend to be flexible around working arrangements and hours to meet staff needs, but here are our formal policies.

• Earned PTO: 18 days PTO in your first year, increasing by one day a year until you reach 25 days.
• Holidays: 12 paid holidays, plus the days between December 25th and January 1st.
• Flex time: 3 hours of additional “flex time” off each week to schedule as you please, to account for doctor’s appointments, errands, or just starting your weekend a bit early.
• Flexible Scheduling: Employees have the freedom to set their own schedule, as long as they’re available/online 40h a week (not counting flex time) and between the hours of 11a-3p EST.
• Parental leave: Two months of leave at full pay and an additional month of leave at 75% pay for new parents.
• Comp time: Time off is earned on a 1:1 basis for evening and weekend events worked and work travel outside of regular hours. (We anticipate this position will travel 1-2 times a year if based in or near DC, and 3-4 times a year if fully remote.)