Communications Director

Job Type: Full-time, senior leadership

Reports To: Executive Director

Direct Reports: (1) Communications Manager, (2) Web Content Manager/Managing Editor (plus access to many capable writers across our team who love contributing to our content, and likely a summer intern)

Location: Hybrid (1-2 days a week in office) in DC preferred. Remote optional for the right candidate

Compensation: $85-120k DOE, plus excellent benefits, flexible hours, and generous PTO (more below)

To Apply: Click here to fill out the 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:

We’ll be up front about the hard parts of the job first.

1. You’ll find yourself having to balance communicating with two audiences:
   • The AHA’s longtime supporters, who tend to be older, whiter, highly-educated, more likely to identify explicitly as atheists, and very interested in philosophy, rationalism, and church-state separation. This is the base of folks who have built our movement - we need to honor + cultivate them.
   • The multi-racial, cross-class, intergenerational audience of people who hold humanist values but don’t identify - yet - as “humanists” - the millions of Americans who are “nothing in particular,” “spiritual but not religious,” agnostic, or atheist, who believe deeply in the equal worth and dignity of every human being. These are the people who need to know humanism is something they can belong to, believe in, and fight for.
2. You’ll be helping us figure out how to build punchy, engaging, easily-shareable messaging about a movement and worldview that has often bogged itself down with academic, esoteric language.
3. You’ll be managing a lot of platforms and projects, while trying to keep up with the latest news cycle. This is a job for someone who’s able to work quickly and decisively, comfortable with doing some things “good enough,” and able to switch focus easily.

But the fun parts of the job? Oh man. You’ll have:

• A mandate to be creative, subversive, and inventive, calling out the hypocrisy of the radical Christian right - and promoting the humanist worldview - in clever and eye-catching ways.
• A strong foundation to build on, including social channels with 800k+ subscribers, a fully-functioning magazine that’s been written for by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Asimov, and access to humanist luminaries in the fields of art, politics, science, and beyond.

You’ll be leading a team that is responsible for maximizing public awareness of humanism. With your leadership, the AHA’s comms team will:

• Conduct a messaging + website audit, creating clear, engaging, shareable definitions of humanism - and tools for sharing them - that can be used by staff, surrogates, and supporters, and reorienting our web presence to focus on people new to humanism.
• Design and launch a new set of media tools - including a podcast and short-form videos on TikTok and other channels - explicitly designed to compete and contrast with the right-wing media ecosystem, featuring our Executive Director and other humanist leaders, with a focus on how humanism can help people live lives of meaning, community, and purpose - and making the moral case for progressive public policy.
• Lead outreach to press on behalf of the AHA, working to place op-eds for the Executive Director and other organizational leaders and establish the AHA as a go-to rapid-response voice on issues of religious freedom and human rights in America.
• Leverage AHA’s social media channels, with 800k+ followers, to promote humanism to new audiences with engaging, shareable content, and call out the radicalism and hypocrisy of the religious right with clever, cutting rapid response.
• Manage the production of a weekly newsletter and quarterly magazine that delight and inspire our membership and platform new, exciting ideas in the Humanist movement.
• Design strategies to effectively promote the AHA’s programs and campaigns. One week you might be strategizing how we can get an article about secular wedding officiants placed on The Knot, the next, designing a billboard to embarrass Oklahoma Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters.

Requirements

Non-negotiable:

• 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”
• An exceptional writer, skilled at distilling complex concepts for a broad audiences
• 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
• Highly skilled at inspiring and motivating others
• Able to move seamlessly from big ideas to bold action. You have a high output and finish what you start

Super Helpful, A Big Plus

(The successful applicant will absolutely have some, but likely not all, of these):

• Experience managing teams to meet ambitious goals
• Experience managing up to, and producing content with/for, a high-octane, public-facing organizational leader
• Experience securing media coverage, interviews, etc for a leader or organization
• Experience producing successful new media programming (podcasts, short-form video)
• Experience training and curating other content creators (speakers, writers, etc)
• Experience producing either, or both, political/advocacy content or lifestyle/inspirational content that captures the hearts and minds of large audiences

Nice To Have, But Not Necessary:

• Strong speaking ability, experience as a public-facing communicator or willingness to learn (we recognize that many great comms leaders do not love being in front of a camera)
• Experience with/understanding of nonprofit fundraising
• Experience with/connection to the humanist/secular movement or affiliated movements like Unitarian Universalism (but willingness and enthusiasm to learn is an absolute must)
• Experience with magazine editing/production
• Experience managing social media platforms

We Don’t Care About:

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

Hiring Process:

You can start by applying here: https://forms.gle/nYy4xBuMzdV2kzWCA

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 Jan 12th)

• 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 reviewers. The top 8 candidates, based on scores, will be invited to an interview. We will then review resumes alongside answers and choose 2-4 additional candidates to invite. The goal of this process is to reduce bias while allowing for holistic evaluation of applicants.
• All candidates will receive a response regardless of whether or not they are invited to an interview.

Stage 2: First-Round Interviews - 10-12 candidates (Weeks of Jan 13th + 20th)

• 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: Second-Round Interviews - 5-6 candidates (Week of Jan 27th)

• Candidates invited to a second-round interview will meet with a small panel of 3-5 AHA staff, including the hiring manager, any staff member who would report into this position, and at least one staff member from a different department who would collaborate with this position. Interviews will last an hour and focus on scenario-based questions (“Tell us about a time you…” “Tell us how you would go about…” “What would you do if…”). Interviews will last an hour. You may also be asked to meet separately with the hiring manager for a brief follow-up.
• We will invite 2-3 candidates for final interviews and a paid work test. We will let all candidates know about their status after finalist interview offers have been made and accepted.

Stage 4: Paid Work Sample - likely 2-3 candidates (Weeks of Feb 3-14)

• Candidates selected for the final round of the hiring process will be asked to complete a paid work sample - a defined piece of work product relevant to the responsibilities and goals of the position - and then revise it based on feedback.
• We will pay applicants an hourly rate for their time spent on this work sample (up to an agreed-upon number of hours), based on the advertised salary range for the role.
• You’ll have the chance to meet with the hiring manager and ask questions prior to starting the work sample and at any time during the process - this is meant to simulate what it would be like for us to work together! These meetings will also be a time for us to ask each other any final questions, and it’s possible we’ll pull in other team members.
• We will make an offer to our top candidate, and let other candidates know their status once it has been accepted.

Our goal is to make offers around President’s Day and have the new candidate start in Early March.

Salary:

We’re a smallish ($2m budget) nonprofit that likes to punch above our weight. We are committed to compensating our team competitively relative to market salaries for nonprofit organizations of our size to attract top talent.

Our Director salary band is $85,000-$120,000, depending on experience, with new hires most likely to start in the $90,000-$105,000 range.

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 ($20/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.)