Job Description
Our Strategic Communications Team will amplify IDinsight’s impact beyond our client work to enhance the use of evidence for decision-making worldwide. Reporting to a Founding Partner, the Team’s mandate is to drive IDinsight’s external communication strategy to mainstream our approach throughout the social sector. All communication and advocacy activities will be driven by the Team, and we anticipate pursuing an influencer strategy that engages the most important global development stakeholders for sector transformation.
The team will lead efforts including:
Strategy: Define, implement, and evaluate, IDinsight’s world-wide communications strategy.
- Determine approach for identification and bespoke engagement of sector influencers. Work closely with IDinsight’s Partners to establish a unified communication
Influencer management: Organize engagement with discrete, strategic audiences.
- Help develop, grow, and maintain effective relationships with IDinsight current staff, alumni, partners, key stakeholders in the social sector, clients, and media.
- Work with organization leadership to maintain internal databases of contacts.
- Prepare tailored correspondence strategies for stakeholders and partners.
- Coordinate IDinsight presence at internal and external conferences, summits, seminar series.
Content: Disseminate our stories through all appropriate channels.
- Prepare IDinsight spokespeople for maximum effectiveness
- Establish and oversee editorial processes for all written content via all channels.
- Maintain and update the IDinsight website and blog.
- Use analytics to examine social media and website trends.
- Manage all collateral-related processes including copy-editing and enforcing style guidelines.
- Produce global newsletters, annual reports, and other internal and external-facing documents.
- Research, write/prepare, and distribute media releases.
- Explore alternative communication platforms including podcasts and/or videos.
Culture: Align internal and external communication to enhance IDinsight’s distinctive team culture and values.
- Create and conduct internal trainings for IDinsight office and/or project teams.
Is it YOU we’re looking for?
We are building a team that is full of ideas, knows a great organization and culture when they see it, is intensely service-oriented, and has a “do it, get it done” attitude. Members of the Team are enthusiastic about IDinsight’s vision to change the world and do not think any task is beneath them. Team members will be carefully composed with individuals who have a proven track record and commitment to the tasks at hand. We are looking for an Associate to join our team, with the following qualifications.
Necessary qualifications:
- 0-3 years of work experience
- Detail-oriented and interested in an action-oriented communications role
- Demonstrated leadership experience and writing expertise is desired
Additional desired qualifications:
- Excellent writing, editing & verbal communications skills
- Data Visualization experience
- PR or advocacy functions at a comparable organization
- Ability to both work under limited supervision and as part of a team
- Excellent interpersonal skills
- Proven ability to effectively liaise with media contacts, organization members, and the public – including experience in event planning, media, public relations, advocacy, or journalism roles
- Attention to detail
- Experience in managing traditional and social media presence and blogs for an organization
- Experience with collateral design, branding & marketing
- Experience with customer relationship software systems
There is significant career progression potential within the organization. Promotion is determined by performance, not time or seniority. We commit to investing in outstanding professionals who will become the backbone of our organization for years to come. We welcome you to submit an application and would love to find a way to include excellent individuals into our flagship team.
Nuts and Bolts
Location and compensation will be discussed once we locate the right fit teammates for our role. Preferred location is with an IDinsight office (Delhi, Lusaka, Nairobi, San Francisco) but there is flexibility to be located elsewhere if needed. Compensation will be competitive and commensurate with experience and track record. Start dates are flexible but with a preference for sooner. A two-year commitment is expected.
About the Organization
IDinsight is an international development consulting organization that helps policymakers and managers make socially impactful decisions using rigorous evidence. We carefully tailor a wide range of analytical and quantitative tools to enable our clients to design better policies, rigorously test those ideas, and take informed action at scale to improve lives. Our services include experimental evaluation methodologies – including, but not limited to, randomized controlled trials – tailored to the priorities of international development decision-makers; monitoring and performance management systems to facilitate continuous data-driven improvement; policy design consulting and scale-up support. Our advisory teams are closely integrated into client organizations, and we strive to provide comprehensive support for clients who want to maximize their social impact through evidence-based policymaking. IDinsight’s vision is to improve millions of lives by transforming how the social sector innovates, learns and improves.
Founded by graduates of Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School, IDinsight works across Asia and Africa and is rapidly expanding. Our clients include state governments in India, national Ministries across Africa, the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, international NGOs and innovative social businesses. We work across a range of sectors, including governance, health, education, energy, agriculture, and sanitation.
IDinsight Engagements
IDinsight provides a range of data-driven policy advisory services. Example engagements include:
- Designing and evaluating anti-corruption reforms: An Indian State government seeks to decrease corruption in a $300 million per year school feeding program that reaches 9 million beneficiaries. IDinsight is helping to design a set of policy reforms and will conduct a randomized evaluation to determine which combination of strategies is most cost-effective. The results will guide the government’s decision of which reforms to scale up.
- Evaluating innovations to improve water, sanitation and hygiene: A large multilateral institution has asked IDinsight to help them increase their impact on water and sanitation outcomes. IDinsight will run experimental impact evaluations in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia to directly inform their programmatic strategies.
- Embedded team advising the government on expanding access to energy in India’s poorest state: The energy department of one of India’s largest, poorest, and most energy-deprived states seeks to improve electricity distribution. To support their reform efforts, IDinsight created and staffed an in-house learning cell that works closely with the Managing Director of the Energy Ministry to refine monitoring systems, design and evaluate innovations, and provide ongoing analytical support to answer critical policy questions, such as how to increase unsustainably low revenue collection.
- Catalyzing uptake of improved root crop varieties: One of the world’s largest foundations is funding a large government program to increase uptake of improved sweet potato varieties across Tanzania and Uganda, through market-based interventions, education campaigns, and community outreach. IDinsight will use process monitoring to refine the interventions and then conduct a randomized controlled trial on the revised program. This work will inform whether, how and where this model is scaled up.
