Title:  Senior Vice President of Marketing & Communications
Department: Marketing & Communications
Reports To: President & CEO
Classification: Exempt
Other: Fulltime, exempt, eligible for benefits

Organizational Background and Evolution
Valley of the Sun United Way develops and supports hundreds of health and human service programs that address our community’s most pressing needs. Today, over 25 cities and towns make up Valley of the Sun United Way’s community impact area, officially encompassing all of Maricopa County with the exception of Mesa. Serving the needs of our community for over 85 years, VSUW focuses its efforts in three areas: Ensuring Children and Youth Succeed, Increasing Financial Stability and Ending Hunger and Homelessness.

VSUW partners with Valley leaders, volunteers, donors and other nonprofit organizations to find innovative solutions to address short-term individual needs and create long-term community results. Thanks to more than 100,000 donors, VSUW will invest about $79 million this year in results-driven programs, working with strong boards, skilled volunteers, expert committees, and hundreds of community partners.

The work of VSUW has evolved tremendously over the last decade. More individuals and families are struggling just to meet their basic needs and resources are scarce. As VSUW monitored changing trends in the economic, business and investor environments it also recognized the compelling opportunity to build an even stronger, more responsive organization to address the unmet challenges of our community.  As a result, VSUW has evolved its business model and transformed itself from the familiar and long-standing role as a fund-raiser/fund-distributor.  Instead, it serves as a key catalyst in bringing together an array of community partners engaged in like-minded efforts to develop and deliver short- and long-term solutions to the most critical human care issues.  In collaboration with these partners, VSUW actively evaluates needs, identifies resources, creates a framework for success, develops and funds appropriate programs and initiatives – many of which are now designed and developed exclusively by VSUW, and monitors outcomes.
 
To support this expanded leadership role, the organization has diversified its fundraising as well, going from a transaction-based to a relationship management-based model, to significantly enhance its potential for philanthropic involvement.  With a focus on “total revenue,” emphasis on grants, principal gifts, endowment and planned gifts as well as the annual workforce campaign create the financial base to support the work of VSUW.

The Work Environment
VSUW has a staff of more than 90 employees, annual budget revenue of $88 million and four major business units including Finance and Administration, Resource Development, Community Impact and Marketing and Communications.  The culture is fast-paced, friendly, nurturing, passionate, committed, and ever changing.  Employees are hard-working, dedicated and appreciated for their efforts.  The structure has become relatively flat and all levels of management are engaged in the day-to-day business.  As VSUW expands its role as a community impact leader, its internal focus is on communicating direction and objectives, building infrastructure and capacity, prioritizing and integrating efforts, aligning resources, enhancing skills, defining accountability, and measuring performance to assure impact and results.

The Marketing and Communications Organization
The critical role of this area has evolved exponentially with the transformation of the business.  The Senior Vice President is accountable for positioning VSUW as a proactive catalyst for community change and for directing the development of all external communications tailored to a variety of target audiences, including current donors, prospective donors, community and business leaders, elected officials, the media and more. The department is made up of a team of eight professionals and a total budget of more than $2.6 million. Reporting directly to the Senior Vice President are the Vice Presidents of Marketing, Communications and Public Relations.  Reporting to the Vice Presidents are the Communications Director, Marketing Manager, Marketing Coordinator, and Public Relations Coordinator.

Reporting Relationships
The Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications reports to Merl Waschler who is President and CEO of VSUW.  Waschler joined the organization in 1992 as Chief Financial Officer.  Other members of the senior leadership team reporting to Waschler include the Chief Operating Officer, Senior Vice President of Resource Development and Senior Vice President of Community Impact.
 
Position Responsibilities
The Senior Vice President will expand and direct the evolution and execution of marketing, communications and public relations strategies and activities to enable each key business area to meet its performance objectives and to ensure the achievement of VSUW’s vision.  S/he will:

• Strategically lead a multifaceted marketing and communications department; enhance understanding of the department’s role in advancing key organizational goals related to resource development and community impact.
• Oversee a multi-faceted internal and external communications strategy using multiple formats and media to increase awareness and understanding of VSUW’s key community goals and achievements, differentiate the organization competitively, foster development of new and diverse financial resources and cultivate and sustain critical relationships.
• Oversee integration of media planning and advertising, market research, audience segmentation, marketing and sales support, sponsorships, and direct and e-marketing to support business outcomes.
• Oversee public and media relations work in an effort to better position VSUW, its CEO and Community Impact staff as leaders and experts in the three key areas.
• Develop and implement a strategic plan to better understand and ultimately communicate with all target audiences; define opportunities and develop relationship-building strategies and plans to generate customer loyalty.
• Create effective and productive relationship with Senior Staff to advance community impact priorities to increase and diversify revenue.
• Participate in the development and successful implementation of overall business strategies and plans as part of the senior management team; provide a united, visible and positive presence across the organization as an advocate for change to instill new thinking, focus and prioritization of VSUW’s community impact efforts.
• Collaborate with Resource Development, Finance and Administration and Community Impact; serve as a champion for integration of organizational efforts.
• Provide managerial support to direct reports; define and ensure training to evolve roles and skills; develop required support systems and processes, inspire teamwork and job satisfaction, and mentor staff development to create a broader business focus and results. 
• Cultivate and maintain positive, productive relationships with board members, volunteers, marketing committees, community and business leaders, investors, stakeholders, senior officers, employees, vendors, and agencies.
• Provide responsible fiscal leadership working in conjunction with Finance on budget requirements; leverage in-kind contributions and partnerships to help manage limited resources.

Position Requirements
The ideal candidate will have 15+ years of proven experience and technical understanding of all aspects of marketing, communications and public relations, and a proven track record of creating customer, stakeholder and investor loyalty.  S/he must have:

1. Diverse expertise in the development and execution of multi-year communication and marketing strategies and plans; success in leading a broad base of functions including market segmentation and research, internal and external communications, advertising, public and media relations, and direct and e-marketing; understanding of resource development marketing extremely valuable.
2. Technical ability to create a framework and base of knowledge to support a customer relationship management model; experience in developing and implementing audience segmentation strategies which produce quantifiable results that meet or exceed objectives.
3. Proven record of accomplishment in developing strong, cohesive and high performance teams; excellent managerial skills to influence, assess, coach, mentor, train, and inspire; strong ability to influence, integrate and lead cross-functional efforts.
4. Exceptional listening, verbal and written communication skills; excellent relationship cultivation skills and ability to engage and influence a variety of diverse groups and individuals.
5. Experience in working as part of a leadership team to build collaborative relationships that advance business outcomes; ability to exhibit behaviors that reflect and support organizational direction; expertise communicating and instilling support for systematic and sustainable growth and change.
6. Strategic, creative and progressive thinker; success in handling major horizontal priorities in a fast-paced environment; ability to handle ambiguity and nuances; well organized with strong follow-up and follow-through.
7. A high degree of ethics, integrity, community involvement and values that align with the mission of VSUW.
8. Bachelor’s degree required in related field, graduate degree valuable; nonprofit leadership experience a plus.

Resume & Cover Letter Submission
Submit your resume to staffing@vsuw.org. Please attach your information as a MS Word document, PDF or plain text document. Please no phone inquiries. Please submit information no later than August 19, 2011. VSUW is an E.O.E.