Alumni Coordinator

Job Summary

Conservatory Lab Charter School is a public K-8 school in Dorchester where every single student plays a musical instrument every single day, starting in the first grade. The Alumni Coordinator will complete a four-person Foundation team that raises awareness and money for the School, managing its non-academic external relations. Specifically, this newly created position will primarily focus on building durable relationships with our alumni, identifying and tracking their paths, storytelling their achievements, and providing services to them and their families.

This is a newly-created position and so some flexibility will be required as the daily job requirements are clarified. However, what follows is a reasonable summary of the expectations.

The Alumni Coordinator will assist the Foundation Coordinator with the School’s social media and website, and provide the team with event support, largely in support of the overall goal of increasing alumni engagement. The Alumni Coordinator will partner with and / or support School staff charged with recruiting new students, and acting as a liaison to the Family Action Network (FAN).

Explicit experience in fundraising is far less important for this role than identifying a candidate with a passion for the arts who will energetically advocate for 450 public school students in Dorchester, and our 400 alumni, to have the resources they deserve. The ideal candidate will have strong relationship-building skills, along with the ability to write with clarity and brevity and work collaboratively with a small team. We are looking for someone who will help us work smarter and more effectively and will embrace the joyful culture in which we work.

About the Conservatory Lab Foundation

The Conservatory Lab Foundation (the Foundation) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides philanthropic support, and holds assets on behalf of the Conservatory Lab Charter School (Conservatory Lab), where every student receives daily orchestral musical instruction. The Foundation supports the national dissemination of Conservatory Lab’s educational model, and provides public relations, event logistics, and marketing support to the School.

About Conservatory Lab Charter School

Conservatory Lab was founded in 1998 by New England Conservatory faculty members and veterans of public health who shared a belief that the practice of music would lead to better academic and social outcomes.

In 2009, Conservatory Lab adopted the EL Education curriculum which emphasizes student-driven learning and lessons with real world impact. In 2010, Conservatory Lab became the first school in the United States to integrate El Sistema’s ensemble-based approach to music education into its daily curriculum.

In 2023, Massachusetts honored Conservatory Lab as a “School of Recognition,” the only K-8 school and the only charter school in the state to receive the designation. In renewing the school’s charter in 2024, Massachusetts Commissioner of Education Jeffrey Riley wrote, “Your school has proved what a strong vision, high standards, and hard work can accomplish for the students of Massachusetts.”

The School’s landmark Upper Campus was completed in 2020, serving grades 3 – 8. The renovated Lower School was reopened in 2025 with a Ribbon Cutting Event that included speeches from The Mayor of Boston and the Commonwealth’s Secretary of Education.

About the Alumni Coordinator position

Reporting to, and in partnership with, the Foundation’s Executive Director, the Alumni Coordinator maintains a database of our alumni, including sending regular updates and scheduling visits to Conservatory Lab as appropriate. They track and report on our alumni’s educational, musical, and professional outcomes. They liaise with the six most popular high schools our alumni attend.

The position requires someone with a keen sense of judgment, excellent writing and communication skills, a collaborative spirit, and the ability to work carefully under driven deadlines and expectations. The Alumni Coordinator is part of a four-person Foundation team which inevitably means cross-training and supporting other members of the team when needed.

The Alumni Coordinator position is new. Duties will remain flexible as the Foundation realizes the position in full. The main focus of the role will not change, as detailed below.

Working in collaboration with the Foundation Team, the Alumni Coordinator will:

• Gather and analyze data on our alumni
  • Maintain a database of roughly 400 former middle school students who have moved on since 2018, as well as alumni from earlier years. In collaboration with the Foundation Director, the Coordinator will establish a baseline of alumni engagement as well as targets for growth over time.
  • Collaborate with the School’s registrar on the unenrollment process, including providing outgoing middle school students with their own email accounts to facilitate long-term communication, and logging their immediate next step.
  • Liaise with the most common secondary schools for our alumni
    • Maintain relationships with alumni at these schools
    • Design and implement regular surveys among alumni and families, measuring student and family satisfaction as well as measuring their sense of preparedness for the next step in their educational path.
    • Interact with families of middle school students who are completing their Conservatory Lab careers, assisting them with applications for their preferred post-Conservatory Lab schools
  • Leverage the National Student Clearinghouse and the Boston High Education Resource Center to track alumni enrollment in post-secondary education
• Build an Alumni Association and a culture of belonging among our alumni
  • Curate a series of on-line and in-person events for alumni to attend in order to gain their attention and build participation
  • Inform current students about alumni resources
  • Connect students with professional musicians, post-secondary school, and industry mentors, including non-musical mentors as appropriate to specific alumni
  • Identify and provide, in collaboration with the Foundation team, other resources, including post-secondary scholarships and additional music lessons, that alumni desire
  • Identify and provide community resources for alumni’s families
• Documenting the stories of our alumni and their families
  • Serve as the Foundation’s primary storyteller for our alumni and the Conservatory Lab experience through an alumni lens
  • Establish relationships with current middle school students by attending events, Celebrations of Learning, and concerts
  • Build relationships with School administrators and teachers to identify needs, creatively packaging these to existing and emerging donors, and to best understand the texture and details of School programming.
  • Provide content based on interactions with alumni by:
    • Writing social media and blog posts,
    • Ghost-writing content on behalf of School staff
    • Creating content for the “Stories” section of the Conservatory Lab website
    • Maintain the current alumni page on the website
• Support School staff in a variety of non-academic activities, including:
  • Acting as a liaison to the Family Action Network (FAN), assisting families with developing and executing community events and fundraising for enrichment programs
  • Supporting the School’s Registrar in recruitment to the school, including working with the Foundation team to develop marketing materials, attending recruitment events, and serving as another point of contact for incoming families
  • Supporting the School and Foundation staff with family-centric communications, including social media, targeted email, occasional direct mail, and rigorous updates to the School’s blog and website

Skills & Experience:

An alum of Conservatory Lab or a Boston-area charter school would be a terrific fit, though not required. There are many skills and experiences that the Foundation team has identified as helpful. The successful candidate will articulate their match to some—though likely not all—of the following:

• Strong written, research, and verbal communications skills.
• Strong understanding of social media and some understanding of website maintenance.
• Familiarity with social justice, music and the arts, and K-12 education.
• Familiarity with Dorchester and the surrounding communities of Boston.
• Ability to create or repurpose video content for social media and other outlets.
• Experience working with local media, including writing press releases.
• Experience in graphic design in traditional printing materials as well as branded merchandise.
• Willingness to network in a variety of settings, including with government and corporate officials.
• High energy, positive, can-do attitude, flexibility and teamwork.
• The ability to appropriately deal with competing deadlines and expectations.
• Facilitation of emerging technologies, donor databases, and online giving platforms.

Above all, the position requires someone who is able to connect and communicate with middle school students and recent alumni.

Salary and Benefits:

The Alumni Assistant will receive a salary of $50,000. Benefits include three weeks paid vacation, plus school holidays, including February and April breaks, and a significant winter break; an employer-sponsored health and dental plan; and retirement plan.

The Foundation has a strong commitment to work / life balance and while there is a required Saturday attendance at the School’s Winter and Spring festivals, and occasional other events throughout the year, working evenings or weekends is rare.

Although on-site work is critical to the success of the Foundation’s goals, occasional off-site work is possible with prior approval. The Foundation’s hours of operation are typically 7am - 3pm, mirroring the School day but are flexible with approval of the Executive Director, so long as there is consistency.

English

Spanish a plus