Community Growth & Engagement Manager
About We Are In Beta
We – the education community – Are In Beta – always learning.
We Are In Beta is a digital learning content production company working towards a brighter education system. Supported by Teach First, The Young Foundation and Super Being Labs, we are an award-winning, teacher-led organisation. Having completed a round of funding, we now want to focus on building a team that helps us carry out our mission.
- We believe there is a huge amount to be positive about in education, despite the negative headlines. So we give schools a voice and a platform to share it.
- We believe the solutions to growth are within our schools already. So we unlock them and share them at scale to ensure the next generation’s potential is limitless.
- We believe in the power of community. So we are building a community of schools, leaders and teachers who learn from each other to reimagine education.
Who are we looking for?
We’re looking for an awesome Community Engagement & Growth Manager, with an indefatigable curiosity about education and social justice. One with intelligent empathy for the people working in it and desire to serve and delight them. Someone who also believes in the power of positivity, growth and community.
You’ll work closely with the CEO/Founder to design and deliver our community engagement and growth strategy, which places practicing educators at its heart and drives educational improvement.
We’re not just looking for someone who is interested in helping us create a bold and challenging approach that’s currently missing in education, but someone who is an active voice in the room as we shape our proposition as we grow.
The questions you will be finding answers to in this role?
You’ll be asking these crucial questions, all with educational improvement and policy change as our goals:
1. Who is our community? What do they need? How do we serve them?
2. How do we build the richest people-centred CRM in education that enables us to make connections between our community and give back to them?
3. How do we grow our community to enhance the power of it for a brighter educational future?
Responsibilities in more detail:
- Reading and truly understanding what teachers, leaders and the We Are In Beta community (listeners, followers and schools) are saying and feeling – via social media, calls, meetings and events.
- Researching topics and powerful success stories that haven’t yet been told so we can all learn from them (using publicly available data sets/research reports, community recommendations, relationships with partners, social media, and conferences/events).
- Serving the We Are In Beta community by giving schools a voice and championing them through our platform/channels so they can be heard and catalyse peer to peer learning.
- Understanding, analysing and managing the community using a CRM and other digital marketing platforms.
- Building deep and lasting relationships with schools and connecting members of the community with each other and/or with existing services that are better placed to support them.
- Growing the We Are In Beta community by designing and implementing loyalty and membership programmes and benefits.
- Engaging deeply, managing closely and growing quickly the community using social media – Twitter/LinkedIn/etc.
- Mapping and building relationships with key stakeholders in the education community (schools, listeners/followers, grassroots organisations, local education authorities & opportunity areas, service providers, existing networks, multi academy trusts, teaching school alliances) to find stories, help them meet their goals, amplify their voices and secure distribution channels.
- Working with the content production team to produce and tell stories and communicate what the community is feeling in a way that truly serves them.
- Combining a data driven approach with a passion for multimedia content and story telling to serve the community.
- Designing and communicating campaigns/activities/communications that serve, support and delight the WAIB community.
- Writing regular reports/blogs/articles/newsletters/communications.
- Setting goals and analysing and reporting performance against them.
- Researching and developing commercial opportunities and raising funding.
- Building, managing and maintaining relationships with partners and clients as We Are In Beta grows.
Who are you?
A values-driven educationalist: Shared values with We Are In Beta (see below. Knowledgeable and passionate about education, policy and social justice. An interest in and desire to make a difference and influence education policy. A background in teaching would be amazing but not essential.
Curious and empathetic: Empathy for and curiosity about schools, teachers, leaders, parents and students. Sensitive and creatively responsive to people’s needs. Passion for serving and supporting others to meet their goals.
Entrepreneurial, innovative and flexible: Thrive in a fast-paced, autonomous (but supportive) startup environment, proactive and happy to get stuck in and work flexibly within a small team. Have an innovative and entrepreneurial mindset – you’re joining a mission-driven start-up so you’ll have a chance to be part of it from the beginning of our story. Willingness to do things differently and embrace new technologies.
A relationship builder: Comfortable building and maintaining relationships – both those beginning with warm introductions and those with cold approaches. Ability to negotiate with partners, clients and funders.
An organised record keeper and project manager: Obsessed with being organised, keeping records and tracking progress. Ability to manage time, numerous tasks on multiple projects and prioritise objectives without getting flustered.
Analytical but also a content-minded story teller: Interested in trends and patterns in data and behaviour. Combined with ability to unearth powerful stories about particular topics that can inspire change beneath data. Critical reader of the press and existing content with an ability to see what’s missing or not being talked about and have ideas about how to make it more useful for teachers.
A feedback-embracing learner in pursuit of excellence: Enjoy collaborating, embrace feedback and seek others’ viewpoints. As comfortable asking for help as you are expressing your challenges to an approach being taken to ensure success. Get pleasure from going the extra mile and doing a phenomenal job. Looking for a role with room to grow that comes with the ability to shape the direction of an organisation.
What experience and track record do you have?
Community engagement and growth/memberships: Building an audience and keeping them engaged. Launching loyalty and membership programmes and benefits. Mapping key organisations, partners and people within a sector. Developing and maintaining partnerships.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Building and working with CRMs e.g. Hubspot. Updating, managing and analysing community databases using technology.
Social media: Using social media to research, communicate and build relationships – Twitter and LinkedIn. Tracking and analysing your performance, using data to iterate and improve.
Researching: Identifying topics and stories within them by. Researching using a number of different sources: print, online, academic research, national data sets, impact reports and social media.
Writing: Skilled at writing in a broad range of styles for different audiences: blogs, articles, journalism, impact reports, funding applications.
What will you get bonus points for?
Webinars: Planning, managing and hosting webinars. Setting topics, inviting guests, quality assuring materials and content.
Fundraising: Researching funding opportunities, developing relationships with funders and writing funding applications.
SEO: Experience with keyword research. Tagging and adding metadata to blogs and post. Analysing performance, iterating and improving.
The We Are In Beta Values
- The 5 powerful story-telling Ps – positivity, personality, practicality, pioneering, plurality. We are here as the antidote to mainstream negativity about education. We are here to inspire others by showing what’s possible. To unpack how schools, teachers and leaders have succeeded. If they did it differently, and we can too, even better. We recognise no one approach is a silver bullet.
- Growth and learning – We make content for and about people whose job it is to make learning happen. We are making it so they can learn themselves. To do this well, we must always be hungry to learn, be curious and ask questions to achieve excellence.
- Community – The answers are within us and can be applied when they are shared by making connections. We galvanise our community around our mission by sharing our knowledge, expertise and contacts. The more we share, the stronger our community will be. We will gain strength by lifting others.
- Diversity – We are committed to being an inclusive organisation with a diverse team. This extends to the guests we have in our stories, programmes and events, who must be reflective of our society.
- Vulnerability – The most compelling content is made, and deepest learning happens, when people allow themselves to be vulnerable. We must strive to be vulnerable ourselves and encourage our community to do the same.
- Service – Everything we do must serve our audience and the members of our community. If it doesn’t serve them, we don’t do it.
- Change – until now teachers and leaders haven’t been given a platform that invites everyone to tune into. We are here to amplify their voices so they can be heard in a way that informs and improves policy.
What are the benefits?
- Opportunity to work within an early-stage, mission-driven organisation and shape its direction and make a difference.
- Competitive salary £25,000-£35,000 dependent on experience plus founding team EMI options for the right candidate
- 25 days holiday
- Exposure to the most inspirational and impactful leaders and teachers in the country
- Flexible working culture/flexible working hours
- Workplace pension
- Project-based or part-time contract based on performance milestones for the right candidate
Location: London
Timeline:
- Deadline for applications: midnight Sunday 10th November
- First interviews: Week beginning Monday 18th November
- Second interview: Week beginning Monday 25th November
- Notification of decision: Week beginning Monday 2nd December
- Start date: as soon as possible
How do you apply?
Please apply with the following no later than Sunday 10th November at midnight:
1. A covering letter (one side) outlining how your values, knowledge, skills and experience meet the requirements of the role
2. Your CV including references (maximum two sides)
3. The job title in the subject of your message.
4. In the body of your message: confirmation of where you saw the job role; confirmation of your current salary and notice period; whether you have the right to work in the UK and a valid criminal check with the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS); any links to any portfolios/bodies of work you have completed in the past to demonstrate what you are capable of (this could be reports, writing, performance figures, social media campaigns, articles, videos); and indication of whether your availability will be limited during the recruitment period.
No agencies please.
Read how We Are In Beta started here: https://weareinbeta.substack.com/subscribe
Other organisations might call this role Head of Membership, Community Engagement Manager, Director of Network Development, Network Manager, Community Experience Manager, Membership Development Manager.