Growth Marketing Manager

Organization Overview

As America approaches its 250th birthday, growing polarization threatens our national unity, democracy, and security. We can’t afford to wait—we must address this divisiveness now. To chart a peaceful path forward, we need citizens who are well-informed, productively engaged, and committed to democracy. Today’s 14-24-year-olds urgently need the civic knowledge and skills to solve the complex challenges our country faces. Yet, the institutions where they learn, work, and live are not fully equipped to provide them with the tools they need to become effective, collaborative citizens.

The mission of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (“C&S”) is to cultivate talent, ideas, and networks that develop young people as effective, lifelong citizens. Our vision is a strong American democracy and a flourishing civil society where all people can thrive. We collaborate with leaders in higher education, business, and philanthropy to transform colleges, workplaces, and communities into hubs for civic development. In each of these spaces, we develop and implement programs that equip young people with the civic skills needed to address the divisive issues facing our country. Our offerings include co-designed programs, digital products, convenings, trainings, fellowships, and coalition networks – all with clear success metrics to measure real progress.

For the past 80 years, C&S has prepared leaders and engaged networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges, helping to shape an informed, productively engaged, and committed citizenry. Formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, we have forged stronger connections between K–12 and higher education and provided early funding for the work of 16 Nobel Laureates, 21 Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 Presidential and National Medalists, 44 MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipients, and more than 100 college presidents.

Today, under the leadership of its President, Rajiv Vinnakota, C&S is uniting the organization's legacy with a commitment to launch new civic learning ventures in and beyond education, building unlikely alliances to reimagine and recenter citizen development for young people.

Position Overview

The Growth Marketing Manager will play an integral role in supporting the Communications/PR/Marketing function and will report to the Senior Director of Marketing and Design.

Essential Position Functions

Are you obsessed with audience growth, conversion funnels, and turning attention into action? C&S is seeking a Marketing Manager to build the audience and engagement engine behind our goal of sparking 20 million young people to become civic problem-solvers by 2029.

This role sits at the intersection of growth marketing, analytics, content distribution, and digital experience. You will lead efforts to grow, engage, and activate audiences across social media, email, web, creators, ambassadors, and strategic partners.

Working closely with communications, program, and leadership teams, you will develop the systems, campaigns, and partnerships that support the launch of &You, a national initiative designed to spark 250,000 young people to take first civic actions this year while helping build the long-term movement needed to reach 20 million young people by 2029. You’ll also support the amplification and growth of our work on college campuses including College Presidents for Civic Preparedness coalition to 400 campuses by 2029.

Key Responsibilities

Audience Growth & Acquisition

• • Support audience acquisition, engagement, and conversion across social media, email, website, creator, ambassador, and partner channels specifically focused on 14-24-year-olds.
  • Execute audience growth strategies that strengthen C&S's reputation and visibility among Gen Z and youth-serving audiences.
  • Identify emerging trends, platforms and cultural moments relevant to target audiences
  • Implement audience segmentation and lifecycle marketing strategies that move users from awareness to action.
  • Manage creator and influencer, strategies that extend the reach of organizational campaigns.
  • Support recruitment of college presidents for membership in College Presidents for Civic Preparedness.

Conversion & Digital Experience

• • Implement against the website conversion strategy, including landing pages, user journeys, calls-to-action, lead generation, and participation pathways.
  • Partner with internal and external teams to optimize website performance and user experience.
  • Develop testing strategies for website content, landing pages, email campaigns, and digital experiences.
  • Improve conversion rates from social audiences to email subscribers, participants, advocates, and supporters.
  • Build and maintain marketing funnels that support audience growth and civic action participation.

Analytics, Measurement & Optimization

• • Track audience growth, engagement, acquisition, conversion, and campaign effectiveness.
  • Analyze website, email, social, and campaign performance data to identify opportunities for optimization.
  • Translate insights into actionable recommendations that improve organizational performance.
  • Establish testing and experimentation frameworks that improve engagement, conversion, and audience growth.
  • Support attribution and measurement efforts across campaigns, initiatives, and partnerships.

Campaign Strategy & Distribution

• • Manage distribution strategies for major organizational initiatives, including &You, youth recruitment campaigns, higher ed recruitment campaigns, impact reports, thought leadership efforts, and partnership activations.
  • Collaborate with communications staff to identify content formats and storytelling approaches that improve engagement and conversion
  • Manage amplification opportunities through creators, ambassadors, media partners, and strategic partners.
  • Coordinate with external vendors and consultants as needed.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• • Partner with program teams to align audience strategies with recruitment, engagement, and participation goals.
  • Collaborate with development and external affairs teams to support fundraising, partnership, and visibility objectives.
  • Contribute to organization-wide planning, reporting, and strategic communications efforts.
  • Support special initiatives and cross-team projects as needed.

Qualifications

• • Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Business, Journalism, or related field (or equivalent experience).
  • 4–7 years of experience in growth marketing, audience development, digital marketing, performance marketing, or demand generation.
  • Demonstrated success growing audiences across social, email, website, creator, or partner channels.
  • Experience building and optimizing conversion-focused marketing campaigns and digital funnels.
  • Demonstrated ability to use analytics and audience insights to drive marketing decisions and improve performance.
  • Experience building dashboards and reporting systems that inform strategy and decision-making.
  • Strong experience with SEO, website optimization, and content discoverability strategies.
  • Strong understanding of Gen Z digital behaviors, audience engagement trends, and platform best practices.
  • Comfortable running tests and experiments to improve engagement, conversion, and audience growth.
  • Experience managing cross-functional projects and external partners.
  • Excellent communication, collaboration, and project management skills.
  • Experience growing audiences for consumer brands, startups, media organizations, nonprofits, educational institutions, or mission-driven organizations.

Success Measures

This role will contribute directly to C&S's goal of sparking 20 million young people to become civic problem-solvers by 2029 through:

• Supporting the successful launch and growth of &You
• Supporting the membership growth and programmatic work of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness.
• Growing C&S's Gen Z social and email audience
• Increasing website traffic, engagement, and conversion rates across key campaigns and reports.
• Expanding the reach and effectiveness of ambassador, creator, and partner amplification efforts.
• Nurturing sustainable audience acquisition, measurement, and optimization systems that support long-term organizational growth within the three portfolio areas.

Our Core Values

• We are constantly learning and improving. We test and refine new ideas and learn from our mistakes. We dare to question old solutions. We seek opportunities to collaborate with our diverse team; different backgrounds, skill sets, and thinking styles give us valuable new perspectives. We share knowledge and insights with each other to help us grow as individuals and as an organization.
• We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for all. We believe that we are stronger for our differences, and we acknowledge, respect, and appreciate them. We actively work with and learn from everyone—across all demographics, backgrounds, ideologies, and geographies. We identify areas where we differ and, for the good of the organization and each other, we explore and engage with differing perspectives.
• We are gracious and grateful in all that we do. We invest in our relationships with warmth and a sense of humor. We express gratitude to all our colleagues and stakeholders. While we strive for excellence, we recognize that no one is perfect. We give others the benefit of the doubt and act with kindness and integrity.
• We are attentive and intentional. We are aware of the needs of the world and those around us so that our work has a real impact. Our work is mission-driven and we know the “whys”—both large and small—behind what we do. Recognizing that details matter, we are equally committed to quality.

C&S offers a generous benefits package.