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Form of workJob Description
About NaNoWriMo
National Novel Writing Month is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page. NaNoWriMo began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
Executive Summary
The Director of Programs is a key member of our leadership team whose strategic and tactical contributions are foundational to delivering on our mission. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated track record of effective nonprofit program management, community engagement skills, and impeccable maturity and judgment.
Our Director of Programs is tasked with executing and continuously improving programs that NaNoWriMo has developed in service of our mission, including:
National Novel Writing Month is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that believes in the transformational power of creativity. We provide the structure, community, and encouragement to help people use their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds—on and off the page. NaNoWriMo began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with a first draft. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
Executive Summary
The Director of Programs is a key member of our leadership team whose strategic and tactical contributions are foundational to delivering on our mission. The successful candidate will have a demonstrated track record of effective nonprofit program management, community engagement skills, and impeccable maturity and judgment.
Our Director of Programs is tasked with executing and continuously improving programs that NaNoWriMo has developed in service of our mission, including:
- Our 50,000-word November novel writing challenge
- Our April and July Camp NaNoWriMo personal writing retreats
- Our Young Writers Program
- Our Participation in the PEN Prison and Justice Program
- Our school services programs (e.g., free supplies for young writers)
- Access to year-round, self-service resources that are available to our community online
- Web app features and functionality that support access to resources and tools
The work of the Programs team has the greatest direct impact on our community. The successful candidate will have experience with:
- Online communities and digital social spaces
- Virtual programming and self-service resource management
- Global communities: multilingual, and multinational spaces
- Adult and youth populations
- Underserved populations
- Experience with high-level UI/UX planning or requirement-setting is a plus
- Experience with schools and educators is a plus
Core Roles and Responsibilities
- Ensuring the high quality of our program offerings, and of program execution
- Ensuring that programs adhere to scope and to the organization's mission
- Enforcing and continually improving protocols around community engagement
- Enforcing and continually improving protocols around sensitivity, DEIB, and values-alignment
- Conducting analysis and managing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) related to program participation, engagement and community sentiment.
- Leveraging data insights in order to inform program strategy and improvement.
Job Specifics: Supervision
- The work of the Director of Programs is supported and supervised by the Executive Director
- The Director of Programs supports and directly supervises the work of the Director of Community Engagement
- The Director of Programs is the strategic and programmatic leader of volunteerism that relates to programs, including Municipal Liaisons and moderators on NaNoWriMo.org
- The Director of Programs directly supervises programs-related contract workers
Job Specifics: Leadership Expectations
- A service-oriented mindset; unflinching dedication to centering our mission and our community
- Enthusiasm for contributing to the overall strategy of the organization
- Active participation in our weekly leadership team meeting
- Leadership of the weekly programs meeting
- Co-Leadership of the community engagement meeting (alongside the Director of Community Engagement)
Job Specifics: Key Internal Partnerships
- Support the Executive Director in understanding program status and performance; communicate needs and propose strategic improvements; keep them informed around noteworthy developments that should be communicated to the community or to the Board
- Collaborate closely with the Technology team by communicating and proposing new technical functionality needed to sustain, support, and improve programs. Serve as the requirements lead.
- Collaborate with the Director of Community Engagement to better understand program effectiveness and community sentiment
- Provide the Development Team with community engagement statistics to support grant applications; compile information for the Annual Report
Job Specifics: Key External Partnerships
- Serve as the primary program volunteer liaison at the leadership level
- Liaise with educators in relation to the Young Writers Program
- Liaise with program coordinators within beneficiary organizations to whom NaNoWriMo supplies resources (e.g., the PEN Prison and Justice Program, school supplies for young writers)
Job Specifics: Technical Skills
- Google Suite for day-to-day collaboration
- Excel
- PowerPoint
- Web editing (e.g., Wordpress)
- Zoom (e.g., affinity group meetings, writing sprints, webinars)
General Job Expectations
- Availability during core office hours: 9am - 3pm PST + 2 hours on either side (some flexibility is available)
- Occasional in-person meet-ups with our audience including evening and weekend busy season events
- Engagement in professional development opportunities.
- Pursuing and responding to open dialogue about workplace challenges.
- Engaging with the NaNoWriMo DEI tactics and strategy.
Organizational Expectations
- Collaboration (communication with colleagues and contribution to shared projects)
- Project Management (project planning and meeting of deadlines)
- Deliverables (quality and timeliness of final products)
- Engagement (consistent effort and energy)
- Initiative (commitment to new ideas and approaches)
