Communications Assistant

About Us

Since serving its first meal to 35 guests in October 1982, the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen has opened its doors every Monday through Friday, without fail, to feed our hungry neighbors. More than five million men, women and children have been served. Each day the Soup Kitchen feeds approximately 1,200 hungry New Yorkers, and offers counseling and referrals to our guests to address their other needs, including referrals for clothing, shelter, housing, food pantries, medical, employment, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and HIV/AIDS services.

Holy Apostles strives to be a gateway to positive change in the lives of the people it serves and seeks to enlarge our guests' capacity for self-help and to reconnect them to the broader community. Through our programs and in our commitment to combating hunger and homelessness, we provide the support and respect guests need to become self-sufficient and regain hope for the future.

Position Summary:

This position offers the right candidate the ideal position to put their social media and communications skills to practical use within a busy non-profit environment. This is an opportunity to develop additional skills and experience through working with the rest of the Development Department across a wide range of channels. With direct responsibility for the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen Facebook and Twitter profiles and 'Food for the Soul' Blog, the Communications Assistant will need an in-depth knowledge of social media fundraising and community building.

Central to this role are strong verbal and written communications skills and an ability to tailor messages based on audience and channel. Alongside this, skills in graphic design for print and web are preferred and a good eye and flair for photography is a must.

Since this is such a varied role, the successful candidate will need to demonstrate a background of strong organizational skills and show a proven track record of utilizing resources effectively to meet goals.

Requirements:

• 4 year degree in Media or Communications
• 1-2 years communications experience within a Non Profit environment.
• In-depth knowledge and understanding of social media trends and techniques for fundraising and community building.
• Literacy with various programs: Office, Excel, Adobe Creative Suite
• Basic tech skills: Facebook development and apps, light HTML coding, database skills.

Responsibilities:

Social Media/Community Management

• Staying up to date with all social media feeds, apps, growth/content opportunities, and field developments.
• Telecommuting to update blog, moderate profiles, etc.
• Daily maintaining, editing & moderating of:

- Facebook

- Twitter & Pinterest

- FFTS Blog

Volunteer Interaction

• Meeting and greeting with visiting volunteer groups daily
• Taking daily group photo w/banner for Facebook
• Following up with corporate volunteers as necessary, inc. capturing contact data from online database/hard copy forms
• Volunteer database maintenance

Research & Publicity

• Contacting various targets in order to publicize blog/relevant events
• Drafting press releases for related events.
• Cultivating relationships with media.
• Researching projects, prospective opportunities, assembling reports
• Staying up to date with other nonprofits, especially those that have a strong online presence

Graphic Design

• Design work is on a project-to-project basis and may include:

- Researching, designing and producing themed infographics for posting

- Daily and event-specific photography

- Editing in Photoshop

- Web design

- Design for print