We’re hiring: Engagement Lead
About the role
The Engagement Lead is the driving force behind the Cable’s presence and engagement with people in Bristol, and responsible for our membership growth and retention. You’ll build and deepen our relationships with existing and new members among Bristol’s many communities and organisations, via outreach activities and events that connect people with our journalism and the wider conversations around it.
You’ll organise informative and empowering community events in collaboration with community members, democratically engage our membership in driving the Cable forward, and pull off big public events such as our AGM, training workshops, and high-profile speaker events.
You’ll coordinate our volunteers, including our board of voluntary directors, and identify areas and new opportunities for volunteers to get involved such as distributing our quarterly magazine and promoting the Cable among their communities.
Your first points of focus will be contributing to our next membership campaign, and developing our community and member engagement strategy. We are looking for somebody to consolidate and improve our approach to gaining and retaining members, working with volunteers and directors, and finding new audiences. Your role will be core to the Cable’s mission and future sustainability.
Aside from our main roles, every Cable team member is part of the staff cooperative. We all have a shared stake in the work we do and how we work together, so all team members contribute to key decisions and the overall direction of the Cable, including our priorities, strategy and general operations.
Key information
Contract: Permanent (subject to funding)
Hours: 4 days per week.
Salary: £28,680 pro rata (Note: The Cable has an equitable pay structure where the pay differential between the lowest and highest paid is no more than 20%. This is band 3 out of 5 – 10% above base. See below for more info.)
Location: Bristol Cable office: The Station, Silver Street, BS1 2AG (with work from home flexibility, but you will need to be able to attend the office several days a week)
Applications closing date: Sunday 1 December, 5pm
Any questions? If you have any questions please email applications@thebristolcable.org.
We particularly encourage applications from women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people from working class backgrounds.
Role responsibilities
Community and Membership Growth and Retention
- Lead the Cable’s Engagement efforts across the city by:
- Engaging current and potential members through our membership funnel, increasing our member numbers and income, from a diverse group of local people
- Ensuring that a diverse group of volunteers organise around our journalism, by co-ordinating their movement through our engagement funnel
- Engaging each Cable team member in how they can contribute to engagement in a sustainable way appropriate to their role
- Work closely with the Communications Lead to deliver campaigns through digital channels including social media, email marketing and IRL through traditional print marketing.
- Plan and deliver revenue-generating and community-focused in-person events, and other digital outreach activities (e.g. callouts, video calls), that engage people with the Cable’s work and conversations around it
- Be a visible presence for the Cable in the city, giving talks and attending events to engage people in the Cable as needed
- Develop and maintain policies and procedures that help create a good experience for both our engaged volunteers and the Cable
- Support our board of elected voluntary member-directors as their main point of contact, convening board meetings and assisting with annual board elections
- Manage the member inbox
Distribution
- Manage the distribution of our flagship quarterly print newspaper, to maximise its impact on membership growth and reaching numerous Bristol neighbourhoods
General co-op coordinator responsibilities
- Pro-actively participate in sociocratic decision making in our team meetings and across the Cable
- Contribute to the general strategic development of the Bristol Cable as a co-op coordinator
- Participate in the peer-to-peer support scheme, providing mutual coaching and support with a colleague.
Person specification
Essential
- Ability to work independently, proactively and strategically
- Proficient and confident in digital skills such as document and spreadsheet creation, training in and/or experience using a CRM (Customer relationship management) platform such as Spektrix or Zendesk.
- Experience using email marketing communications and social media inbox to regularly communicate with stakeholders.
- Excellent organisational and project management skills, managing multiple priorities
- A track record of building and maintaining effective relationships with a diverse range of communities – from wealthy donors to people usually under-represented in media
- Experience in member conversion/retention to meet organisational goals, or similar area (e.g. fundraising, marketing, sales)
- Experience in community organising activities and events
- Knowledge of communities and networks in Bristol
- A confident, personable and effective communicator, able to connect with a wide range of people and audiences, communicating professionally and concisely in person and in writing
- Ability to speak at and facilitate public events as a representative of the Cable
- Enthusiasm for democratic and inclusive ways of working
- Flexibility to work occasional evenings or weekends, as needed for event coordination or volunteering tasks (you can claim these hours back as TOIL)
Desirable
- Driver’s licence and access to a car
- Experience managing teams of people (e.g. groups of freelancers or volunteers)
- Experience as a community organiser/outreach worker, voluntary or paid
- Experience of working with people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds
- Experience of being part of a group organised using principles similar to those found in sociocracy or holacracy
- Experience working in third sector, charity or similar fundraising environments for social justice, human rights and public health causes.
What we offer
- A permanent position in our staff team, subject to a 6-month probationary period and funding.
- A salary of £28,680 pro rata, with opportunities for increases.
- 36 days annual leave pro rata, including bank holidays, plus up to 5 days extra paid time off at Christmas, and up to 15 days unpaid holiday allowance, both pro rata.
- A pension scheme with a 3% employer contribution and 5% employee contribution.
- Flexible working based on team hours, and a period policy, to help you work when works best for you.
- Monthly socials.
- External supervision to support you with the emotional labour and people work you’ll do.
- A personal training, professional development and wellbeing allowance to help support you.
- A key role in a values-driven and purposeful team, with huge freedom to shape your work, evolve your role, and contribute to our strategy.
- Cycle to work scheme
About the Cable
The Bristol Cable is a community-owned media cooperative, owned and supported by thousands of people across the city. We’re recognised internationally as a pioneer in the movement for a new media, our mission is to redefine local journalism as a community asset, which is accountable to our readers. Together, we hold power to account through groundbreaking investigations, campaigning for change, and amplifying marginalised voices.
We produce award-winning local journalism, in print and online, made free to access for all by members. We don’t chase breaking news, but instead dig deeper into key issues with original angles, including the local impacts of national and international issues.
Co-operative working
The Cable is a co-operative, and we collectively share responsibility for managing the organisation, following the principles of Sociocracy. So, as well as the responsibilities listed above, being part of the Cable team also involves participation in helping to run the co-op.
The above responsibility is shared across the team, but the People and Wellbeing Lead is ultimately responsible for ensuring that a culture of compassion, professionalism and momentum is maintained within this co-operative culture.
Equitable pay structure
As a grassroots organisation with a big mission and brilliant people working here, salaries in the Cable are lower than we would like to pay our colleagues. We’ve come a long way since being founded by dedicated volunteers eight years ago, and are continually working to grow our income and raise salaries as we do that.
In 2021, the Cable team developed a new pay structure which aims to be transparent, objective, and equitable in how we decide salaries. The system involves an annual self-allocation to agreed criteria such as levels of responsibility, with peer support and team review. We have five salary bands staff can be allocated to, depending on the number of criteria they meet, with £26,073 being the lowest salary, and £31,287 the highest (a 20% differential).
New roles are allocated a banding based on our expectation for the criteria they meet, with the possibility to go up a band after the 6-month probation period, depending on whether more criteria are expected to be met.
As a member of the Cable team, you will be able to be involved in helping shape our pay structure as we continue to evolve it, and we aim to continue to raise staff salaries as we grow our income.
Anti-oppression
We recognise that our society contains many overlapping systems of oppression and that these injustices may be reproduced in how we work. We are learning more about our part in these systems and thinking strategically about how to change working practices, policies and systems so that we can challenge these unjust systems, as well as supporting colleagues who face particular oppressions in their daily lives.
This is a work in progress, and happening at individual and collective level. We expect all staff to educate ourselves on oppressions that we may not have experienced directly and to contribute to our work to make our organisational structures, practices and culture more inclusive and liberatory.
How to apply
Apply by using the link below, applications close at 5pm on Sunday 1 December. Interviews will take place on Monday 9 December and Wednesday 11 December.
We particularly encourage applications from women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and people from working class backgrounds.
If you have any enquiries about the role or application process not answered above, please email applications@thebristolcable.org or call our office phone on 07533718547.
This application form is a space for you to tell us about your experience, skills and approach to working which make you suitable for the People and Wellbeing role.
Please refer closely to relevant parts of the person specification in your responses, providing concrete examples of where you demonstrate meeting the criteria where possible, and what you specifically achieved in those cases if relevant.
You may want to draft your responses to this application form in a different document. You can find all the questions listed above in this document: Engagement Lead – application questions. Download or make a copy of it to draft your responses before pasting them in to the form here.
Your application and personal information will be processed in line with our Job Applicant Privacy Notice. If you have any questions please feel free to email us.
