Call for Expressions of Interest: Strategic Comms and Influencing for Community Tech
Promising Trouble is looking for a freelance strategic comms and influencing specialist to support the development of the Community Tech programme of work.
Expressions of Interest due by 9am GMT, Monday 14 November 2022 by email to jobs@promisingtrouble.net
Budget and timing:
In 2022: £6,000 - broken down into £3,000 for strategic planning and £3,000 for delivery
Across 2023: £12,000 - most likely as a monthly retainer
These figures include VAT.
About the Community Tech project:
Community technologies give power to and generate benefit for communities. Our programme of work combines funding, research, and advocacy to build the field – initially in England, with an ambition to broaden out across the United Kingdom and beyond.
Promising Trouble runs the secretariat and research strand for the Community Tech programme of work, currently fully funded by Power to Change. We are working to build a network of funders to support and grow the field.
Activity to date includes:
Future planned activity in 2022/23 includes:
Two additional funding opportunities (specifics tbc)
A Green Tech playbook for community organisations
Development of a community of practice to support community tech practitioners
Policy influencing programme, evidenced by additional research
A programme of events and digital content to engage other potential funders and to grow the community tech ecosystem
Developing relationships with an aligned international community of thinkers, makers, and doers
The Community Tech landscape (from The Case for Community Tech)
What we need:
Between the various partners on the programme, we have created lots of assets and have lots of connections. We are looking for a strategic comms expert to help make the most of these, in line with the values of the programme. We already know we need someone to lead on the following:
lead stakeholder mapping and help us keep track of who is talking to who, and when
create a strategic plan that effectively grows the reach and influence of the programme, helping us to build useful relationships and reach beyond our existing networks
make the most of the content we have already created and improve our digital presence: this is likely to be a mix of planning with some hands-on asset creation, editing, and template creation
create and deliver a press and media plan
offer guidance for strategic content creation
develop a comms and influencing schedule that supports activity across 2023
liaison with Power to Change’s marketing team, as needed
Ways of working:
We are a fully remote team that currently uses Slack and Zoom for day-to-day communication, and a range of digital tools including Asana, Miro, and Google Workspace. This freelance contract will be based in and collaborate with the Secretariat, but will be contracted with and responsible to Power to Change.
About you:
We’re looking for expressions of interest from individuals or small teams with expertise in using comms and influencing to create effective social change. You’ll be used to working in a small team with the ability to move between strategic decisions and hands-on delivery, and have experience of delivering complex messages in ways that appeal to general audiences. You’ll be digitally savvy, with an excellent media and policy contacts book, and have existing connections within the community tech ecosystem – either with community businesses or as part of the broader alternative technology world. Ideally, you’d be ready to start work in the second half of November, or shortly afterwards.
How to submit an expression of interest:
Please send a short document (no more than 4 slides or A4 pages in total) to jobs@promisingtrouble.net with the following information:
Tell us about you – your previous experience of delivering a similar campaign, your connection to the community tech landscape, and why you’re interested in this opportunity (no more than 1 page)
We need a comms and media plan that brings community tech to the attention of policy makers, funders, community businesses, and other stakeholders who can help grow the field. Over two pages, tell us how you would go about creating his, how you would deliver it (and what support you would need), and what success would look like
Lastly, tell us about time and money. We’d like to know your day rate and how you would propose to allocate your time, this year and next.
About Promising Trouble:
Promising Trouble is a social enterprise whose work puts community power at the heart of technology and innovation. Our work centres equity and social justice, with a network of clients and associates distributed internationally. With our sister organisation, Careful Industries, our mission is to make sure more people have the chance to shape, inform and create new technologies.
Our Values
Care is the organising principle for everything we do: care for and about people and the planet, combined with a rigorous and diligent approach to investigating uncertainty.
We are constantly learning, always curious, and strive to be inclusive and accepting.
We champion careful innovation and feminism for the 99%.
We are wayfinders not competitors.
We ask good questions, seek useful answers, and listen closely
We are impatient for change, but careful in our actions
We use our power to state the unsaid and make space for others
We look after each other so we can make careful trouble together
About Power to Change:
We are the independent trust that strengthens communities through community business. We use our experience to bring partners together to fund, grow and back community business to make places thrive. We are curious and rigorous; we do, test and learn. And we are here to support community business, whatever the challenge.
Power to Change started life in 2015 with an endowment from The National Lottery Community Fund. Responding to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic we were given an additional grant of £20million in 2021 which enabled us to set out a new five-year strategy to continue to back the sector, creating the ideas, evidence, and exemplars that make the case for others to back them too.