Los Angeles, CA

The Organization

Southern California Grantmakers (SCG) is a nonprofit membership organization that brings together 300+ or our region’s leading philanthropic organizations, including foundations, corporate giving programs, government grantmakers, generous families and individuals, and consultants to philanthropy. Our mission is to help Southern California philanthropy make the greatest impact on crucial issues in our region and beyond, through effective grantmaking and cross sector collaboration. We are the “big tent” where SoCal grantmakers and philanthropists learn, connect, and take action together on the issues that are most important to them and to our world.

Over the past three years, SCG has grown tremendously in our membership, scope, and staffing. We have nearly tripled our membership, which now includes over 300 organizations (representing 2,500 philanthropy staff and trustees) across eight Southern California counties as well as statewide and national grnatmakers who invest in our region. To serve our fast-growing membership, we now offer well over 150 programs per year on a wide range of our members’ focus areas and on professional development topics, and we are expanding our online services to better engage our members.

Founded in 1973, SCG has a strong and well respected brand within our niche and is now developing a national reputation for innovation, collaboration and leadership.

SCG’s 20-person team shares a strong commitment to our work and to each other. In keeping with our growing membership and scope of work, our staff has grown very quickly over the past three years. We have ambitious goals, which we develop together as a team; we know that we don’t have all the answers on how to achieve these goals, so our unofficial manta is “Test and Leanr”. We are passionate about philanthropy, fast-moving, hard-working, flexible in our roles, and fueled by laughter and snacks. Our executive team spenda alot of time supporting each staff member’s professional development and fostering a caring, collegial, high-achieving organizational culture.

Position Overview

The Director of Communications will bring a new level of strategy, vision, and leadership to SCG’s extensive range of digital and print communications. This is a newly redefined position reporting to the Vice President, Membership & Communications. As SCG’s membership and goals have grown, we have identified the following two major strategic communications challenges where the Director’s leadership can significantly advance SCG’s impact:

• How we can best communicate with our members to inform them about ways that SCG can advance their work, to motivate them to engage with us in those ways, and to learn from them about how we can better serve their needs?
• How can we lift SCG’s uniquevoice as a thoughtful leader to shape the conversation in our sector and beyond, so we can engage more potential members and more media, nonprofit, and government partners for impact?

The Director will mange a full-time Communications & Communities Assocaite who supports the Director on creating content, leveraging content to engage members, and building communities of audiences. The Director also manages vendors and consultants as needed. S/he collaborates closely with the rest of the Membership & Communications Team and across the entire team of approximately 20 staff.

The Director will have duties and responsibilities in fhree key areas:

1. Strategy and Leadership

2. Marketing and Communications

3. Media and Public Relations

Qualifications and Requirements:

Minimum seven years’ experience in increasingly responsible, writing intensive, strategic marketing/communications roles in philanthropy/nonprofit sector. Bachelor’s degree, preferably in marketing, journalism, communications or related field. Proven abiltiy to lead, develop, and retain a high-performing team to achieve excellent results. Demonstrated experience developing and executing highly effective strategic communications plans, building brands, creating integrated marketing campaigns, engaing audiences via social media, and catalyzing stakeholder engagement. Masterful multi-tasker with impeccable attention to detail and proven track record of simultaneously organizing, prioritizing and managing complex projects with distributed ownership on time and on budget. Exceptional written communication skills with adaptable style for different audiences, and a key eye for proofreading and editing. Superb verbal and interpersonal communication skills with the ability to listen, engage, and persuade internal and external stakeholders at all levels from diverse backgrounds. Very comfortable with technology. Demonstrated experience in selecting and managing outside vendors to produce high-quality projects within time and budget contraints. Demonstrated experience in strategic media relations. Clear passion to drive change on crucial challenges and opportunities affecting the communities that philanthropy serves; comfortable and experienced in working with diverse communities. Energetic appetite for working in a fast-paced, mission-focused, non-hierarchial environment of cross-functional teams with shared leadership at all levels where everybody wears multiple hats and everybody is both a leader and a do-er in their areas.