Vice President of
Digital and Communications

Deadline: Open until filled.
Location: This position can be located anywhere in Colorado.
Work Schedule: Exempt, full time.

About Conservation Colorado
Conservation Colorado is the largest statewide environmental organization in Colorado. We work to protect Colorado’s climate, air, land, water, and communities. For more than 50 years, we’ve faced off against powerful interests and worked to win the conservation, justice, and public health that Coloradans expect. In the past few years, this has meant winning nationally leading climate policies, conserving hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and building equity into every part of our work.

We play a unique role in Colorado because we bring people, policy, and politics together. This means that our work is focused on organizing communities, influencing decision-makers, and electing conservation-minded leaders. We believe that achieving racial, social, and environmental justice are critical to our mission. 

Our priority issues are fighting climate change, conserving public lands, keeping Colorado’s rivers healthy and flowing, and working with our communities to ensure all Coloradans have equitable access to a healthy environment. 

We work to elect pro-conservation leaders to public office and then hold those decision makers accountable to protecting what we love about Colorado for generations to come. Plus, we combine our local knowledge with national power – Conservation Colorado is a member of a nationwide conservation voter movement working in more than 30 states and in Washington, D.C. We believe that elections matter to protect our environment and communities.

Conservation Colorado is a family of five different legal entities focused on education, organizing, and elections, both alongside and independently of candidates. They all work together to move our state forward. Click here to learn more.

What You’ll Do

As VP of Digital & Communications, you will be responsible for the development, integration, and implementation of a broad range of marketing, communications, and storytelling activities relative to the strategic direction and positioning of the organization and its leadership. This is a brand new senior leadership position and will play an instrumental role in elevating our digital and offline communications alike to engage audiences and to win our campaigns. This position reports directly to the CEO and while the responsibilities can evolve over time, they include these buckets of work:

Vision, Strategy, and Leadership

• Create integrated, multi-channel marketing, communications and storytelling strategies that allows Conservation Colorado to articulate and achieve our mission
• Develop and oversee the Conservation Colorado brand, ensure its consistent usage and adjust for resonance with key audiences, topical events and cultural competence
• Ensure an integrated approach that promotes the work and engages the audiences of Protégete, our Spanish-language focused organizing and leadership program, and the Colorado Outdoor Business Alliance and connects both to the broader organization.
• Work with the CEO and other peers to help develop the Conservation Colorado membership program and strategy including meeting goals for racial diversification of membership, and own or implement portions of that strategy as determined by the membership program plan.
• Work with the CEO and other VPs as an Executive Team charged with building and maintaining of a strong organization capable of delivering our Strategic Plan 

Content Creation Management

• Develop strategy and manage staff and vendors in creation of digital and printed content, materials, and publications, including the Conservation Colorado website, blog posts, social media, newsletters, brochures, event invites, and online supporter stewardship communications. 
• Oversee the use of new tactics and tools that put Conservation Colorado on the cutting edge of effective marketing, communications and storytelling. Experimentation in this is encouraged and rewarded.

Team Management

• Manage a communications team of five to support the development and execution of the communications strategy, including directly supervising the Communications Director and Digital Director.
• Utilize established systems/protocols to monitor staff performance and development goals, assign accountabilities, set objectives, establish priorities, conduct annual performance appraisals, and administer salary adjustments.
• Oversee the day-to-day activities of the communications team including budgeting, planning, and staff development.

In addition to your regular responsibilities, all staff are expected to participate at some level in organizational priorities including helping in certain fundraising efforts, taking part in our election-related activities, and committing to our organizational efforts around equity & inclusivity.

Qualifications
To be successful in this job, you will demonstrate the strategic thinking, results-focused work, and efficiency to work well with our team. Fundamentally, we are looking for a marketing & communications expert who has the skills to execute in our context. More specifically, you will have or be most or all of the following:

1. 10+ years of relevant experience: You could have this in a combination of working with nonprofits in capacities other than communications, but we prefer you to have worked in various communication channels with experience developing and executing integrated and multichannel marketing plans.
2. Management experience: We want you to have experience managing high performing teams in a spirit of collaboration, transparency, accountability, and inclusion & equity.
3. Ability to conceptualize clear and compelling content: We want you to have the written and verbal communication skills along with the editing skills needed to oversee the turning of complex ideas into compelling content for our activists, donors, decision makers, and key partners.
4. Agility and teamwork: We work in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment, so the ability to stay nimble and organized while managing multiple projects and competing priorities is critical. You’ll also need the ability to effectively work with a large team, both your own and across the organization, to achieve our goals.
5. Cultural competency: We are focused on changing the face of the environmental movement by connecting with more communities who have been traditionally left out, particularly Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and other communities of color. Experience creating content for different communities is important to the success of our work.
6. Commitment to our mission & theory of change: Our organizational culture is informed by our advocacy-based environmental mission that centers equity and justice. Our theory of change focuses on elections, policy, and organizing. We want you to understand how your communication strategies fit into that context and to use them to influence decision makers to make policy changes.

This position does not have an undergraduate education requirement. Spanish/English bilingual is a skill we value, but it is not a requirement. This is a full time position but there can be some flexibility in the exact schedule.

Compensation and Benefits:

The full-time salary range for this role is between $111,000 to $145,000, based on a wage analysis across the organization and new staff rarely starting at the top of the range. We provide high-quality, zero-deductible health insurance and a strong benefits package that includes a SIMPLE IRA retirement plan with a match, at least 28 days of vacation & holidays as well as 6 physical & mental wellness days in your first year, and parental leave and a sabbatical program. This job offers an opportunity to engage people to find solutions to some of the most important environmental issues in Colorado and work with a great team that is committed to a better, more equitable future. It will be challenging, inspiring, and sometimes frustrating, but you’ll be making a big difference. Please note that as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, Conservation Colorado employees are not eligible to participate in the Federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

We are committed to building a more diverse and inclusive organization and conservation movement to fully represent and engage all Coloradans and to build as powerful a movement as we can. Recruiting staff that better reflects Colorado is a priority and we encourage applicants from all cultures, race, ethnicity, geographies, political affiliation, sexual orientations, gender identities, and all other identities represented in Colorado or protected by law. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and believe that life experiences can count just as much as formal education or traditional work experience. If you think you’d be great at this job but are worried about the qualifications, you should apply anyway!

To Apply

If this job truly speaks to you please click here to submit a cover letter addressed to Nikki Riedt, a résumé, and answer a few short questions. If you need accommodation or assistance with our online application process, please tell us how we can help by emailing jobs@conservationco.org.