Manager Marketing and Communications

The Manager, Marketing & Communications serves as a lead storyteller, content producer, and project manager responsible for elevating Youth Guidance’s voice locally and nationally. This role develops compelling narratives that center youth voice, demonstrate program impact, and position Youth Guidance as a national leader in youth development and school-based mental health supports.

The Manager translates organizational strategy into high-quality multimedia content across digital, social, media, and internal channels. Working within Youth Guidance’s national hub-and-spoke marketing model, this role balances the communications needs of Chicago (Central Office) with those of Youth Guidance’s regional sites, ensuring consistent messaging, strong brand alignment, and equitable visibility across markets.

As a core member of the External Affairs team, the Manager plays an important role in advancing Youth Guidance’s development and government affairs priorities by capturing and elevating stories that demonstrate program impact and inspire support. Through strategic storytelling and the production of communications materials, this role helps strengthen donor engagement, support fundraising initiatives, reinforce public policy messaging, and communicate the value of Youth

Guidance’s work to philanthropic partners, policymakers, and other external stakeholders.

The ideal candidate combines a journalist’s curiosity and storytelling instincts with strong digital production skills, social media expertise, and project management discipline. They are equally comfortable interviewing youth and staff in the field, producing multimedia content, managing editorial workflows, and coordinating cross-functional communications initiatives.

Storytelling & Content Production

• Identify, develop, and produce compelling mission-driven stories that highlight youth voice, program impact, and community partnerships across Youth Guidance sites.
• Conduct interviews and gather stories using journalistic best practices, translating complex programmatic work into accessible and emotionally resonant narratives that support Youth Guidance’s fundraising, advocacy, and thought leadership efforts.
• Capture and produce multimedia content—including photography, short-form video, and social-first storytelling—for digital platforms.
• Regularly attend Chicago-area program sites, schools, and events to document Youth Guidance’s work and build authentic relationships with staff and participants.
• Partner with regional sites to source and elevate stories nationally through structured story collection processes, ensuring strong content pipelines that support donor engagement, government affairs efforts, and national visibility.

Social Media Strategy & Management

• Lead day-to-day execution and optimization of Youth Guidance’s social media presence across platforms.
• Develop and manage editorial calendars aligned with organizational priorities, campaigns, and storytelling goals.
• Produce platform-native content designed for engagement, growth, and mission awareness while reinforcing Youth Guidance’s value to donors, partners, and policymakers.
• Analyze performance metrics and recommend data-informed improvements to content strategy.
• Monitor social trends and emerging platforms to expand reach and relevance.

National MarCom Coordination & Project Management

• Project manage marketing and communications initiatives across multiple Youth Guidance sites, balancing local and national priorities.
• Serve as a key liaison between Central Office and regional teams to ensure messaging consistency and brand alignment.
• Develop timelines, workflows, and systems that improve collaboration and efficiency across departments.
• Support major organizational initiatives including annual reports, fundraising campaigns, events, thought leadership publications, and leadership communications.

Digital Communications & Technical Execution

• Support website content updates, blogs, and content audits to maintain accuracy and storytelling impact.
• Build and manage email communications using modern marketing platforms; analyze engagement data to improve performance.
• Utilize emerging communications technologies—including AI-assisted tools—responsibly to improve efficiency, storytelling scale, and audience engagement.
• Maintain organized digital asset libraries and editorial systems that enable teams across development, government affairs, and programs to access storytelling content.

Internal Communications & Brand Stewardship

• Support internal communications that strengthen staff alignment and organizational culture.
• Ensure brand standards and messaging consistency across all materials and sites.
• Coach staff and partners on storytelling best practices and brand voice.

Organizational Contribution

• Contribute to strategic marketing planning and innovation initiatives.
• Demonstrate Youth Guidance’s core values in all interactions and communications.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education/Experience/Training

• Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, Communications, Marketing, English, or related field required.
• Minimum 3–5 years of professional experience in communications, journalism, media, or digital content production.
• Demonstrated experience producing stories, multimedia content, or editorial work preferred.
• Experience supporting marketing and communications efforts that advance fundraising, donor engagement, public policy, or government affairs initiatives is strongly preferred.
• Experience working in mission-driven, nonprofit, education, or youth-serving organizations strongly preferred.

Skills/Abilities

• Exceptional writing, editing, and storytelling skills across formats and audiences.
• Strong journalistic instincts, including interviewing, narrative development, and editorial judgment.
• Demonstrated experience managing organizational social media channels and analyzing performance metrics.
• Experience producing or editing photo/video content using modern tools (e.g., Adobe Creative Suite, Canva, CapCut, or similar).
• Familiarity with CMS platforms (WordPress or equivalent).
• Experience with email marketing platforms and analytics.
• Strong project management and organizational skills.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities across distributed teams and geographic locations.
• High digital fluency and ability to quickly adopt new tools and software platforms quickly, effectively, and efficiently.
• Comfort working both independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
• Proficient user of MS Office, including Outlook, Word, and Excel.
• Experience designing clean, modern emails in MailChimp (or a similar email service provider) and analyzing metrics

Core Competencies

• Continuous improvement-minded: Takes initiative to identify and execute strategies and processes to continuously improve one’s leadership to strengthen organization’s overall impact.
• Develops and motivates others: Motivates others and supports their development through strong coaching and mentoring. Effectively stewards self and others through both small- and large-scale change.
• External representation and relationship building: Represents the organization among external stakeholders, and builds strong, trusting relationships with stakeholders
• Leads with vision: Has an inspiring vision for the future of the organization, beyond the status quo, and communicates it effectively; leads with courage and willingness to take risks in service of impact
• Manages with data: Understands data; analyzes data and identifies insights and implications
• Strategic thinking and resource management: Considers the future of the organization proactively and responsively; weighs diverse inputs to inform strategies; identifies innovative opportunities when relevant; makes and communicates decisions that effectively balance tradeoffs between financial sustainability and impact
• Team building: Builds strong relationships with teams and colleagues; fosters effective teams and collaborative interactions

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

• This role operates in a hybrid work environment with a requirement for regular in-office presence at least one day per week, as outlined in the agency’s Office, Remote and Hybrid Work Conditions policy. The person in this role must be flexible and prepared to work from the office more frequently as needed to support collaboration, cross-departmental initiatives, meetings, and organizational events.
• The employee must reside within the Chicago metropolitan area to support regular field-based storytelling, events, and collaboration.
• Regular local travel is required to attend program sites, organizational events, and community engagements. The employee must maintain flexibility in their schedule to be available for in-person meetings, training sessions, and supervision as needed.

Core Competencies

• Continuous improvement-minded: Takes initiative to identify and execute strategies and processes to continuously improve one’s leadership to strengthen organization’s overall impact.
• Develops and motivates others: Motivates others and supports their development through strong coaching and mentoring. Effectively stewards self and others through both small and large scale change.
• External representation and relationship building: Represents the organization among external stakeholders, and builds strong, trusting relationships with stakeholders
• Leads with vision: Has an inspiring vision for the future of the organization, beyond the status quo, and communicates it effectively; leads with courage and willingness to take risks in service of impact
• Manages with data: Understands data; analyzes data and identifies insights and implications
• Strategic thinking and resource management: Considers the future of the organization proactively and responsively; weighs diverse inputs to inform strategies; identifies innovative opportunities when relevant; makes and communicates decisions that effectively balance tradeoffs between financial sustainability and impact
• Team building: Builds strong relationships with teams and colleagues; fosters effective teams and collaborative interactions

Physical Demands

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

Benefits

Youth Guidance offers a competitive benefit package for eligible full-time employees including the option to participate in medical, dental, and vision plans as well as short-term disability, life insurance, flex spending accounts, pet insurance, 401k, a wellness program and more. You may also quality for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).

Work Environment

The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

This job operates in a professional office environment, school setting, and working with the public

• Occasional local and national travel