Senior Communications Lead

Purpose of the Role

The Senior Communications Lead is a pivotal, hands-on role responsible for driving the organisation's public presence, conservation impact and supporting its financial sustainability.

This role is critical to scaling Reef-World’s global reach. You will be the engine driving our communications strategy and securing the essential funding that directly supports our global marine conservation programmes.

This role is expected to allocate approximately 90% of time to Communications duties and 10% of time to Development support.

The primary responsibility is the strategic development, implementation, and oversight of the Communications Strategy to significantly raise the profile and maximise the global reach of both The Reef-World Foundation and its flagship initiative, Green Fins. The post-holder will be instrumental in translating complex marine conservation outcomes into compelling content that drives public awareness, action, and digital engagement.

The remaining time is dedicated to providing essential, operational support for the charity’s income generation and development activities. This includes maintaining key donor and supporter records via the CRM database, ensuring timely donor acknowledgement, and actively supporting the creation and delivery of fundraising campaigns to ensure the long-term sustainability and expansion of Reef-World’s vital programs.

The Officer will work closely with and report directly to the Development Manager, ensuring all communication and development efforts are strategically aligned to meet measurable organisational objectives.

• We recognise that this role has a
• broad scope, encompassing both strategic communications leadership and development support. We do not expect the impossible. Instead, we are looking for a highly organised professional who excels at prioritisation, time management, coordination, and defining realistic outcomes within the allocated hours and available support for execution (volunteers, contractors, consultants, etc.). We value sustainable, high-quality output over relentless effort and do not celebrate burnout.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Strategy

• Lead on Communications strategy setting, oversight, and delivery, reporting to the Development Manager.
• Lead on setting annual Objective and Key Results with measurable targets to deliver on the strategy.
• Lead on quarterly reporting of progress against targets to the Development Manager.

Web and Social Media

• Maintain the Reef-World and Green Fins websites, conducting regular content audits.
• Support the external consultant/agency on monthly social media content planning and strategic data monitoring.
• Own the strategic oversight of social media platforms and integrate reporting learnings into the Communications Strategy to maximise impact and reach.
• Delivering consistent reports on website and social media analytics to track and analyse digital engagement.
• Support public awareness and fundraising campaigns using web, email marketing, and social media.

Content Creation

• Diligently research and compose insightful and engaging articles and blogs for the Reef-World and Green Fins websites.
• Engage new, and liaise with current volunteers, journalists and bloggers to build content creation capacity.
• Alongside the Programmes team, assist in the gathering of photos and videos from field operations.
• Lead on the systematic archiving of footage and content contributing to a rich repository of content, ensuring easy access across the organisation.
• Provide design support to the Programmes team for dive industry facing projects such as e-course graphics, toolkit development and presentations (mostly from assets already created).

Branding, outreach, education and marketing

• Oversee and implement the design and development of key marketing assets like the annual Impact Report, newsletter, and fundraising packs.
• Alongside the Programmes team, maintain and develop the collection of outreach and education materials used in our conservation programmes such as e-course graphics, toolkit development and presentations (mostly from assets already created).
• Maintain and develop the collection of outreach and comms materials used in our conservation programmes.
• Provide branding assistance across the organisation to ensure consistent use of the logo, brand colours, fonts, and templates.

Community and Sector Engagement

• Act as a contact for outreach partners (press and media), Green Fins partners (dive and snorkel operators and dive professionals), general public (individuals) and partners (corporate) on communication-related matters
• Represent Reef-World at conferences, dive and travel shows, and international conservation events
• Use initiative to expand our current media reach.

Development

• Maintain up-to-date records of donors, supporters and the network using a CRM database (Brevo).
• Ensure timely thank yous to individual donors.
• Support Development Manager on the creation and delivery of fundraising campaigns.
• Support the Development Manager to ensure partnership Communications deliverables are fulfilled.

Culture and General Duties

The role is expected to actively uphold the charity's Culture of Care. General duties include:

• Ensuring effective teamwork and morale in line with Reef-World’s core values.
• Utilising internal communication platforms to maintain regular communication within the Development team and with other staff.
• Making use of well-being days.
• Using insights from TypeCoach personality analysis to inform communication and methods of working.
• Make use of the support provided by the Reef-World team coach where applicable, and advocate for this among co-workers.
• Ensure organised accounting and reimbursement of all Reef-World expenses to the Directors.
• Supporting the Development Manager and Directors with reporting to Trustees, UNEP, and other funding sources.
• Following and ensuring staff follow all relevant laws.

The employee’s duties may from time to time be reasonably modified as necessary to meet the needs of the Charity and/or associated project.

Please check out the full job description: https://reef-world.org/work-with-us

Holiday entitlement

30 days a year.

Flexible working

The Directors are based in an office in Bristol, U.K. and we have a field office in Dauin, Negros Oriental in the Philippines. As an international team working across time zones, our working policy is flexible and hybrid.

Pension

For all employees, we pay a minimum of 3% of your qualifying earnings per month (over £6,240). For UK employees, you’ll pay a minimum of 5% of your qualifying earnings per month.

Culture of Care

As an organisation, we are invested in the personal and professional long-term success of our Reef-World team. Reef-World’s vision for a Culture of Care embodies a collection of support mechanisms aimed at enhancing the well-being of our team and enabling each of us to properly care for ourselves, our teammates and our network. These include -

• Access to a team coach
• Access to the personality type tool analysis for yourself and your team
• Reflection days - dedicated time to reflect on your successes and takeaways
• Dedicated, and respected, focus time throughout your working week
• Exemplary and effective internal communication mechanisms
• We are a parent and family-friendly organisation, our Directors work flexibly around their children.
• Reef-World is a safe space for everyone. We especially want to make sure we are a safe space for LGBTQIA+ people, neurodivergent and disabled individuals, and racialised communities. We’re constantly learning to make sure everyone feels welcome here.

Essential: Proficiency in English

Desirable: Fluency in an additional language relevant to Reef-World's operational countries (e.g., Thai, Indonesian, Spanish).