Fred & Barbara Erb Family Foundation

Compensation

Full Description

Public Interest Communications Strategist: A New Role for Erb Family Foundation’s Last 10 Years of Changemaking What causes people to care — and act on that care? That’s what we want to know at the Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation. We want to see what the world looks like, in Southeast Michigan and beyond, when people care deeply, become involved and take action to improve the health of the Great Lakes, strengthen the region’s arts and cultural organizations, advance Alzheimer’s research, promote sustainable business, and protect democracy. Since we made our first grants in 2008, we’ve given more than $180 million to improve the quality of life for residents in Southeast Michigan and around the Great Lakes. Recently, we decided to act even more boldly. We decided to spend down its assets by 2034. This allows us to get funding into communities when the need is most urgent. We are guided by our values: to make a lasting transformative difference; embrace possibility; work and learn in partnership; and pursue fairness and respect. We use grantmaking and other supporting work to help us make a greater difference now and future-proof work that will continue after the Foundation closes its doors. Putting strategic communications to work for changemaking—a public interest communications approach—is essential to making a difference, because it taps into what causes people to care and motivates them to act where they can make a difference. It is our hope to inspire our community to do that long after we’ve made our last grant. We recognize that we cannot achieve this long-term goal without the help of a visionary communicator who shares our passion for these issues and is eager to experiment with bold new approaches. We are hiring for a new role: a public interest communications strategist who will work side by side with our leadership, learning, and program teams, especially for our Great Lakes and democracy priorities. The Opportunity for a Public Interest Communications Strategist If you’re a strategic communicator committed to positive change, this could be your moment. Changemakers have been practicing public interest communications for centuries, but the field has only recently adopted this name. If you’re hearing about public interest communications for the first time, it might show up in your work experience as approaches that: • Develop and implement science- and evidence-based, strategic communications. • Achieve significant change on an issue that transcends the interests of any one organization. • Recognize what people care about and trust – and tap into those connection points. • Focus efforts on the audience members with the greatest likelihood of acting and making change happen. • Activate new ways of thinking, identify what works best and course correct as needed. • Work toward solutions that address underlying systems that create a condition. The Foundation has just under 10 years to make meaningful, lasting change via our program areas. A public interest communication strategist will make the most of this time and champion communication approaches that will help our partners continue their work after we close our doors. We want to hire someone who’s a systems-level thinker and takes an iterative approach to the work: thinking strategically and setting priorities while actively trying things out and assessing what works best. Specifically, we’re seeking: • A team member with experience putting strategic communications to work to achieve social change, such as positive behavior changes individuals made for improved environmental conditions or civic engagement. • A colleague who will hear and respect many viewpoints from staff members, board members and partners and be able to recommend a clear path forward that focuses on where the Foundation will make the greatest possible difference. • A doer who walks on that path, implements approaches, coaches colleagues and partners to join in, evaluates progress, and course-corrects along the way. • A lifelong learner who builds on emerging insights from the developing field of public interest communications (including insights from psychology, sociology, neuroscience and more) and who accepts feedback and counsel from colleagues. • A champion who will help create a culture of communications by demonstrating its changemaking power. • A strategist who can look at the big picture and do tactical work.