Volunteer PR & Media Relations Specialist

Dimora Arts Foundation is looking for a volunteer Public Relations and Media Relations professional to help introduce our newly established organization and its founding story to journalists, television producers, podcasts, and arts and culture media.

We are a new Puerto Rico-based 501(c)(3) public charity developing an Artists Residency and Study House in Río Piedras. Our goal is to rehabilitate an abandoned or underused building and create a place where artists can live, work, study, teach, collaborate, and build community.

The story behind the organization is unusual and is an important part of our media strategy.

Our founder, Charlie W. Burns, is an artist, teacher, curator, and longtime New York City resident who moved to Puerto Rico on March 1, 2026, for love. She was also dealing with a chronic illness and a difficult medical treatment that had made continuing her work in New York increasingly difficult.

After the relationship became dangerous and she received death threats from her partner, Charlie became homeless on May 11, 2026. Over the following four months, she stayed in three different homeless shelters while trying to rebuild her life.

During that period of homelessness, she reassessed what she wanted to do with her life, embraced sobriety, and began creating Dimora Arts Foundation using essentially the only resource available to her at the time: her phone.

She researched how to establish a nonprofit, created the organization, assembled a board, completed the federal application process, and began developing a vision for an artists residency and study house in Puerto Rico.

On September 11, 2026, Charlie received the IRS determination letter recognizing Dimora Arts Foundation as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

That same day, after four months of homelessness, she moved into her own apartment.

The organization is now beginning its next chapter. Our predominantly women-led five-member board is exploring buildings in Río Piedras, San Juan that could potentially be rehabilitated and transformed into an artists residency and community arts space.

We believe there is a compelling human-interest and community story here: a person who came to Puerto Rico for one reason, experienced an extraordinary period of upheaval and homelessness, and used that experience to rethink her life and begin building something positive for her new community.

Volunteer responsibilities

The volunteer will help us:

• Develop a compelling media strategy for the organization's launch.
• Identify journalists, editors, television producers, podcast hosts, and other media contacts who may be interested in the story.
• Develop and tailor pitches for different types of media.
• Help introduce Charlie and Dimora Arts Foundation to appropriate media contacts.
• Pursue opportunities for interviews, profiles, podcasts, television segments, and arts/community coverage.
• Help develop a basic press kit and media materials.
• Advise the founder on preparing for interviews and communicating the story effectively.
• Help identify additional publicity opportunities as the organization begins searching for and rehabilitating a property in Río Piedras.

Who we're looking for

We are especially interested in someone with experience in public relations, media relations, journalism, television production/bookings, communications, nonprofit communications, or arts/culture publicity.

Experience pitching human-interest stories or nonprofit founders to television, podcasts, or national media is particularly valuable.

We are looking for someone who is a strong communicator, understands how journalists and producers work, and can help us distinguish between simply sending press releases and actually developing relationships with the right people.

This is a volunteer position. Dimora Arts Foundation does not currently have funds available to compensate a PR professional. We are looking for someone who believes in the mission and would enjoy helping a new arts organization get its story into the world.

The position can be remote and flexible, and the initial commitment could be as little as a few hours per week.

This is an opportunity to play a meaningful role in the public launch of a new Puerto Rico arts organization and to help shape its first major media campaign from the ground up.