Marketing/Communications Lead

PLEASE APPLY HERE: https://upchieve.welcomekit.co/jobs/communications-sr-manager-director_brooklyn

About UPchieve

UPchieve is an edtech nonprofit that provides free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling to low-income students nationwide. Using our app, students can request and get paired with a live, volunteer tutor in under 5 minutes. Our mission is to close the college enrollment gap between low- and high-income students so that all students have an equal opportunity to achieve upward mobility. We’ve matched 350,000+ requests from 50,000+ students across all 50 states. Our work has also been recognized by Forbes and TIME, and our funders include both Y Combinator and the Gates Foundation. Watch this video to see our impact on students.

Who we’re looking for

We’re a small team taking on the monumental challenge of democratizing access to academic support. That means we need team members who are excited by autonomy and willing to work on projects outside the scope of their job description if needed. We also look for candidates who have a personal connection to our cause or a demonstrable interest in education or serving low-income populations.

Our team

• We’re a remote-first team located across the U.S.
• We highly value diversity of experiences & perspectives. The majority of the team are people of color, and many of us have experience growing up low-income or navigating nontraditional educational pathways
• We believe working full-time means 40 hrs/wk. Non-work stuff is important too!
• We get together in person 2x/year to foster connection as a remote team: Once for an all-staff retreat, and once for a department offsite.

Our benefits

• 3 weeks paid vacation AND 20+ paid holidays (including Dec 24-Jan 1)
• Flexible work schedule (choose your own hours)
• $1000/year professional development stipend
• $1000/year remote work stipend
• Free health insurance for employees AND their families
• 401ks with a 6% employer contribution
• Half-day Fridays half the year

Job Description

UPchieve is changing the world—but nobody knows it yet. We’re looking for our first-ever communications hire to help us raise awareness of the impact we’re already having on thousands of students each year, and to tell our story of how we’ll scale that to millions and close the college enrollment gap once and for all. You’ll help us accomplish our mission by ensuring that 1) potential donors and funders know we exist and believe in our potential impact, 2) potential school and district partners know about us and want to work with us, and 3) our current students, volunteers, donors, and partners remain engaged and excited about the work that we do.

This might be the right job for you if…

• You love to write and take pride in writing better than ChatGPT
• You’re comfortable using data and digital communications/analytics/AI tools to inform decisions and increase productivity
• You enjoy roles where every day is different; there’s always a new project to tackle or skill to learn
• Being a team of one sounds fun; you enjoy working as an “operator” / “individual contributor”
• You’re looking for an opportunity to grow into leadership (e.g., potentially building out a marketing team in the next few years)

Note: We’re open to a range of experience levels (from seasoned professionals who have recently held a hands-on director role to those who have never held a leadership/management role but are ready for more responsibility). Salary will be commensurate with experience level.

What you’ll do:

• Co-create UPchieve’s messaging platform with the leadership team
• Ensure all of UPchieve’s external communications across departments (Development, Programs, Product, and Sales) is consistent and aligned with our targeted messaging
• Maintain/own all of UPchieve's external-facing properties, including the website, social channels, and key collateral
• Create and manage our editorial calendar, including writing content for our social media, blog, newsletter, and annual report
• With the support of the Programs and Development departments, source and produce great stories (both in written and video formats) about our students, volunteers, and partners
• Amplify awareness of UPchieve’s impact through outreach and relationship building with the media (e.g., publications, news channels, podcasts, etc.)
• Manage contractors across all marketing domains to complete tasks (e.g., design, content generation, SEO, ads, video production, etc.)
• Position UPchieve's founder/ED as a thought leader in the spaces of tutoring, college access, and upward mobility through submitting speaking proposals to conferences, collaborating with Development and Sales on events/webinars, and drafting external communications such as LinkedIn posts and articles.

Preferred Experience

• At least 5 years of experience in communications, with at least one year of that spent working for a similar organization, such as:
  • An edtech company that sells to K-12 schools and districts
  • A youth-serving nonprofit that is funded by donors/foundations
  • A tech nonprofit (any industry)
• Exceptional writing and editing skills, with proven ability to craft messages for varied audiences and within various author voices
• Demonstrated experience making a big impact with limited resources/team, for example at a startup, solo venture, or other small org
• Broad exposure across multiple other marketing domains (ads, SEO, community marketing, email marketing, social media, PR, video production, etc.)
• Demonstrated experience owning brand; you understand how visual identity, voice, and details shape trust and credibility
• Knowledge of or deep interest in learning about the fields of tutoring, college access, and upward mobility for low-income students
• (Bonus) Former low-income student and/or K-12 educator/admin

We encourage you to apply even if you don't believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will check every box, and research shows that people from underrepresented backgrounds may be more likely to underestimate their fit—so if you’re excited about our work, we hope you’ll apply.

Hiring limitations:

• As a small nonprofit, we are currently unable to sponsor H-1B visas and can only hire people eligible for employment in the United States.
• UPchieve uses E-Verify to confirm the identity and employment eligibility of all new hires. For more information, please visit E-Verify.gov.

Thank you for considering us and investing effort into applying! In total, our hiring process has three main stages that take us about a month to complete:

• Screener: A short call to learn about each other and check mutual fit.
• Paid project: A realistic project (i.e., modeling every-day work) to help us learn about how you think.
• Interviews: One or more calls to learn how you’ve driven success and navigated similar challenges in the past.

Please note that due to our small team and the volume of applications we get, we can typically only bring the top ~15 candidates forward to screening calls. We expect to invite a first round of candidates to schedule those calls with us during the week of March 2nd. We aim to notify all candidates of their application status by the end of March.

If you’re interested, please apply directly here!