Manager, Growth

The American Journalism Project is seeking a Manager to help lead our efforts to grow and scale some of the most innovative and exciting local nonprofit news organizations in the country. This is a role for an entrepreneurial, collaborative, and creative problem solver. You‘ll bring a track record of working across projects to plan and support sustainable business strategies, and enthusiasm for reshaping the future of local news in the U.S.

Who we are

We’re an entrepreneurial team that’s passionate about journalism, civic engagement, and how local news plays a unique role in shaping our democracy. We help build and grow sustainable local news organizations all over the country — through financial investment, venture support, and movement building — that are governed by, sustained by, and look like the public they serve. Since 2019, the American Journalism Project has committed more than $37M of investment in 33 nonprofit news organizations across the United States. Learn about our grantees.

Our team is deeply connected to our mission and supportive of each other’s goals and overall well-being. We aim to be an organization where everyone feels heard, respected, and valued. We are an entirely remote, distributed team and strive to maintain a healthy, fun, and productive workplace, working alongside smart, energetic colleagues who enjoy one another and the work. Meet our full team.

Our values

• Local First: We know that local journalism must serve and be led by local communities. We make a practice of listening to, and making decisions with – not for – those communities, and connecting them to find strength in each other. 
• Bold Leadership: We understand the severe economic challenge facing local news and thus democracy, and we embrace a sense of possibility with courage, urgency, and perseverance.
• Constant Learning: We recognize the unknown in front of us. Therefore, we operate with humility and a commitment to continuous improvement and collaboration.
• Commitment to Equity: We commit to creating a better, more diverse, and more inclusive news media that advances human and civil rights. We actively fight against injustice and racism, and that starts with doing the work ourselves.
• Integrity: We accept the responsibility of earning trust every day. We operate with honesty, transparency, dignity, and respect, and without allegiance to party, ideology, profit, or power.

Your team

The program team invests in local nonprofit news organizations to build their revenue and business operations, partners with communities to launch new organizations, and mentors leaders as they grow and sustain their newsrooms. As part of that work, we identify promising nonprofit local news leaders and organizations, conduct due diligence and growth planning, design multi-year investments, and deliver support across vision and strategy, talent and culture, finance and operations, and revenue generation to build sustainable nonprofit news organizations. 

The position

You will report to a vice president on our program team, and will work closely with colleagues on a rotating set of strategic and operational consulting projects to support grantees in our portfolio. You will also draw on support from and collaborate with other experts both within and outside the organization.

We give our grantees a combination of significant financial investments, intensive coaching, and sustained capacity building; our support consistently leads to durable growth and expansion of newsrooms, ensuring that communities across the country have access to vital, trustworthy, and representative information. In this position, you will help us create and support a new generation of sustainable, equitable social enterprises that defend our democracy, hold power to account, and strengthen our communities.

In this role, you will develop a deep understanding of our grantees’ business opportunities and challenges, propose customized strategies and solutions, and help them execute these strategies. Our goal is that organizations flourish, become more resilient, and are thriving by the end of their grant period. 

In this role you will have the following responsibilities:

Ongoing grantee support 

• Imagining and helping implement exciting growth initiatives for our portfolio of local news organizations
• Reviewing and/or creating financial models, staffing scenarios and revenue analysis for grantee organizations’ future growth and expansion plans.
• Designing and conducting qualitative and quantitative research and analysis, including customer/audience trends, financial and revenue opportunities, and technology solutions. 
• Developing and communicating creative solutions and product concepts that expand grantee organizations’ reach and impact. 

Strategic projects

• Leading and/or supporting short- and medium-term projects to create new products and processes for the program team, capture and share knowledge drawn from across our portfolio, and rapidly scale the impact of our venture support model.

Grantee investment review process 

• Supporting financial and operational due-diligence
• Supporting the overall proposal process, including helping prospective grantees to develop a 3-5 year growth plan, where American Journalism Project investment will help enable the organization to reach its goals

Over time, you will deepen your knowledge and be involved in generating creative solutions and best practices that can then be shared as learnings across the portfolio. As you develop tools and processes to support our grantees’ work, you will be contributing significantly to our growing resource library.

Background and skills

We know not all strong candidates will have all the skills we list. That’s OK. Research shows that women and people of color are less likely to apply for a position if they don’t meet every skill listed. At the American Journalism Project we are committed to creating a better, more diverse, and more inclusive news ecosystem, and that starts with doing the work ourselves. So if your past experience doesn’t align perfectly, but you know this is the role for you – please tell us! 

An ideal candidate will have experience in roles that require research and analysis of individual businesses/organizations as well as broader markets and sectors. Experience working in media, management consulting, or venture capital, or similar experience working in the nonprofit sector is preferred but not required. We are also excited about candidates who have experience working with organizations that serve low-wealth communities or build access and capital for BIPOC-led ventures. 

This role is a fit if you are… 

• A systems-thinker: You are a research- and analytics-driven strategist with a high capacity for understanding and interpreting nuance. 
• A strategic and operational executor: You know how to get things done in an efficient manner and have an excellent ability to manage to execution with timeliness and a strategic eye ahead for anticipated blockers and risks
• Collaborative and agile: You have a consultative and service-oriented mindset. You know how to quickly jump into different scenarios and projects, to adapt your workstyle to the individual people involved in each project and to approach that work with empathy at the core. 
• Entrepreneurial: You thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment that requires you to be nimble, adapt to change, and think outside of the box.
• Bold and mission-oriented: You are deeply concerned about the future of journalism but boldly optimistic that we can reimagine our country’s local news infrastructure. You work with urgency to get us there faster. 
• Committed to equity: You’ve worked (either professionally or through volunteer experiences, board service, etc.) with diverse teams and in environments committed to equity. You bring experience working across lines of difference and a fluency that has been shaped by those experiences.
• Fun and supportive: We work hard as a team and take our mission seriously, but also believe it’s important to have fun and find joy in the work we do together.

Compensation & benefits

Our total compensation package is competitive in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, and we are committed to supporting our team with what they need to show up every day, ready to bolster the local press our democracy deserves.

We benchmark our salaries against similar organizations, and use a scale that considers job complexity and magnitude of responsibility to determine role levels and corresponding base salaries, as well as offer regular opportunities for salary increases. The salary range for this position is $103,852 – $114,237. Read about our benefits here.

Please submit an application through our portal. Download the full job description here. If you have any questions please feel free to email careers@theajp.org with “Manager, Growth” in the subject line.

The American Journalism Project is dedicated to equal employment opportunities for all applicants and employees. The American Journalism Project encourages people of all races, colors, national origins, ancestries, creeds, religions, genders, ages, disabilities, veteran status, sexual orientations, and marital statuses to apply.