Communications Associate in Detroit, Michigan at Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan

The Communications Associate executes the day-to-day digital communications and marketing work of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan. Reporting to the Brand and Marketing Officer, this role produces and publishes content across the Foundation's social media channels, email newsletters, and website, supporting donor engagement, giving campaigns, and the visibility of the Foundation's work throughout the seven-county region.

This is a hands-on production and content role. The Associate works within brand, digital marketing, and campaign strategies, and partners regularly with Communications Officers across the department to execute content needs. The position suits an early-career professional with two to four years of experience who enjoys managing social media content, writes well for digital audiences, works comfortably in publishing and analytics platforms, and can own recurring deliverables end to end.

About the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM):
The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan was established in 1984 to ensure residents in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Washtenaw, Livingston and St. Clair counties can thrive. As a permanent community endowment built by gifts from thousands of individuals and organizations, the Community Foundation supports a variety of activities benefiting economic opportunity, health equity, youth and education, arts and culture, and the environment and public spaces. Since its inception, the Community Foundation has grown to be among the top 35 community foundations in the country and has distributed more than $1.4 billion through roughly 91,000 grants to nonprofit organizations. The Community Foundation’s mission is to make southeast Michigan a desirable place to live, work and play for all residents, today and tomorrow. For more information, please visit www.cfsem.org.

Responsibilities:

• Social Media Publishing: Draft, schedule, and publish content across the Foundation's social media channels in line with the editorial calendar and brand voice; adapt stories, grant announcements, and event coverage into platform-appropriate posts.
• Community Management: Monitor comments, mentions, and direct messages daily; respond within established guidelines and escalate sensitive or time-critical items to the Brand and Marketing Officer.
• Email Marketing: Build, test, and deploy the Foundation's digital newsletters and email campaigns, including audience segmentation, list hygiene, scheduling, and coordination with internal departments to ensure donor, fundholder, trustee and grantee audiences/lists are kept up-to-date.
• Website Management: Make routine updates to cfsem.org and the Foundation’s intranet through content management systems, including news posts, impact stories, grant opportunities, event listings, and staff and affiliate pages; flag structural or design issues for the Brand and Marketing Officer.
• Digital Content Development: Write and edit short-form digital copy — social posts, email subject lines and body copy, web page copy, campaign landing pages, and digital ad copy — and adapt long-form content produced elsewhere in the department for digital channels.
• Giving Campaign Support: Support the execution of giving and awareness campaigns, including content production, scheduling across channels, coordination of assets with the Graphic Design Manager, and tracking of campaign deliverables against timelines.
• Analytics and Reporting: Compile recurring and campaign-level analytics for web, email, social, and paid digital performance; prepare summaries with observations and recommendations.
• Brand Consistency: Apply the Foundation's brand and accessibility standards to all published digital content; maintain digital asset organization and channel-level templates.
• Content Capture: Capture photos, short-form video, and quotes at Foundation events and site visits for use across digital channels, in coordination with Communications Officers.
• Cross-Team Support: Serve as a responsive point of contact for digital publishing requests from across the Foundation, working within department intake and review processes.
• Platform and Vendor Coordination: Support day-to-day coordination with digital platform vendors and external consultants as directed, including troubleshooting, access management, and routine account maintenance.
• Perform other duties and special projects as assigned.

Qualifications:

Required

• Bachelor's degree in communications, marketing, public relations, journalism, English, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Two to four years of professional experience with social media, digital communications, marketing, and content production.
• Demonstrated writing and editing ability for digital audiences, with work samples available on request.
• Hands-on experience managing organizational social media accounts, including scheduling and community management.
• Experience building and deploying email campaigns in a marketing platform.
• Experience making content updates in a website content management system.
• Working knowledge of digital analytics and the ability to summarize performance for a non-technical audience.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams) and virtual meeting platforms.
• Ability to work collaboratively across departments and manage competing priorities and publishing deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Commitment to the mission and values of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan.
• In-office presence consistent with Foundation policy, with occasional evening and early-morning hours and local travel within southeast Michigan for events and content capture.

Preferred

• Experience at a nonprofit, foundation, community organization, or agency, or in a values-driven communications setting.
• Experience with WordPress, or a comparable content management system.
• Experience with HubSpot, Constant Contact, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or a comparable email platform.
• Familiarity with social media scheduling and listening tools such as Sprout Social or Hootsuite.

• Familiarity with Google Analytics and paid social or search advertising.
• Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Cloud or Canva for light asset production, and basic photography or short-form video skills.
• Familiarity with digital accessibility standards and AP style.
• Experience supporting fundraising, donor engagement, or giving campaigns.
• Knowledge of southeast Michigan's nonprofit, civic, and philanthropic landscape.

Core & Role-Specific Competencies

• Customer Focus: Prioritizes understanding and addressing the needs and expectations of our community and stakeholders. Demonstrates active listening, empathy, and responsiveness, with a consistent commitment to delivering exceptional service.
• Plans and Aligns: Invests time in planning, discovery, and reflection. Engages in active mindfulness to identify and adjust mental shortcuts and assumptions. Seeks out diverse perspectives and experiences to test thinking, proactively anticipates reactions and multiple outcomes, and plans for potential issues and industry trends.
• Collaborative: Works effectively with others — within the team and cross-functionally — to achieve individual, departmental, and organizational goals. Values diverse input, shared accountability, and partnership as essential to producing strong outcomes.
• Decision Making & Problem Solving: Simplifies complex challenges using critical thinking and sound judgment. Gathers and evaluates relevant information, incorporates multiple perspectives, identifies root causes, and determines practical, effective solutions. Applies an audience-centric approach by considering the needs of stakeholders when making decisions and implementing solutions.

Role-Specific Competencies:   

• Digital Writing: Writes clear, accurate, audience-appropriate copy for social, email, and web, and adapts tone across channels without losing the Foundation's voice.
• Technical Fluency: Learns and works confidently in publishing, email, and analytics platforms, and troubleshoots routine issues independently.
• Attention to Detail: Catches errors before content is published; treats accuracy in names, figures, dates, and links as non-negotiable given the public nature of the work.
• Data Interpretation: Reads performance data accurately, distinguishes signal from noise, and translates results into practical recommendations.
• Ownership: Manages recurring deliverables end to end, meets publishing deadlines reliably, and escalates issues early rather than late.
• Judgment and Discretion: Exercises sound judgment in public-facing channels and in handling donor, grantee, and organizational information.

Benefits & Salary:

The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan offers a robust total compensation package. The targeted salary for those entering this role is $57,000 - $72,000. In addition to a competitive base salary, benefits include but aren’t limited to 20 days of vacation accrued monthly, 5 personal days, 11 holidays, 9 sick days accrued monthly, paid parental leave, and employer paid short-/long-term disability.

The Community Foundation also offers a pension retirement program after 1 year of service, which contributes 10% of salary.

Application Instructions:

This position is being recruited on an expedited timeline. Internal applicants will be reviewed before external applicants and the deadline for all applicants is Sunday, November 8. Applications received before that deadline will take priority in our review process.

To apply, visit www.cfsem.org/careers and look for "Current Opportunities." Please submit your application, including your cover letter through the online portal.

To provide equal employment opportunities to all individuals, employment decisions will be based on merit, qualifications and abilities without regard to race, religion, creed, color, national origin, age, gender, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, height, weight, political or union affiliation, disability or any factor prohibited by law.