Program Manager (Canada)

Application deadline:
March 20, 2022

**This is a permanently remote, full-time position.**

Who We Are

Art With Impact Canada (AWIC) is a nonprofit that promotes mental wellness by creating space for young people to learn and connect through art and media. We partner with colleges and universities to offer students arts-based workshops that are designed to raise awareness about mental health, increase empathy on campus communities, and reduce the stigma around reaching out for support.

AWIC is the sibling organization to Art With Impact, which runs programs in the United States. While each organization has its own Board of Directors and finances, the Executive Director, mission, and programs of the two organizations are the same, and you will be working closely with team members from both organizations. Since 2015, AWIC has run over 120 workshops in seven provinces reaching almost 7,000 young people.

Job Overview

AWIC is hiring a Program Manager (PM) to establish, grow, and nurture the relationships with our core partners who host our mental health workshops. The PM will manage the end-to-end of our workshop process, including finding the right person to speak with at potential schools, articulating how our stigma-reduction work supports the diverse mental health needs of students, planning ~40 booked workshops per academic year, and maintaining positive working relationships with our partners for years to come.

Who You Are

Advocating for the value of arts-based wellness initiatives to help young people with their mental health needs sounds like the job you were destined for. You get energized at the idea of connecting with mental health advocates at colleges and universities to learn about their goals and pain points in order to “sell” and book workshops. Beyond the human side of things, you’re a project management nerd who regularly achieves Inbox Zero and loves crossing things off your to-do list to get things done.

What You’ll Do

As AWIC’s Program Manager you will play a key role in our organization’s impact since you will be setting the stage for each and every one of our programs at colleges and universities throughout the country. Some of what you’ll do includes:

OUTREACH AND BOOKING (~40%)

  • Research, identify, and compile lists of prospects—aka, “Amazing humans who are passionate about mental health!”—at colleges and universities across Canada.
  • Create and implement mass email outreach campaigns that target specific offices and groups, such as Counseling Centers, Student Associations, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Offices, Disability Services, and more.
  • Manage a pipeline of ongoing communication, including back-and-forth email exchanges and one-on-one / group calls that bring potential campus partners to the point of booking workshops with us.
  • Maintain organizational ties with previous partners via regular check-ins, with the goal of generating new workshop bookings and additional collaborations with other departments.

WORKSHOP COORDINATION (~60%)

  • Act as each workshop host’s point of contact with AWIC from the point of booking through evaluation and debrief.
  • Host kickoff calls with each school’s contact person, taking them step-by-step through the planning process and explaining what a partnership with us entails.
  • Have phone calls with students who will serve on the panel at each workshop, listening compassionately to their lived experience mental health stories, and helping them prepare a 5-minute version of their story to share at the workshop
  • Project manage additional logistics such as assigning booked workshops to our facilitators in each region, helping schools with marketing / campus outreach, filling out paperwork, serving as tech support (for virtual workshops), and handling evaluation data collection and analysis.

Skills and Experience

  • Strong organizational and project management skills with an ability to multitask and manage various concurrent projects with tight deadlines.
  • Proficiency with spreadsheets (we’re a bunch of Excel nerds) and online tools, such as Google Workspace (i.e., “G Suite”), WordPress, Mailchimp, and task-management software—or a track record of learning new software and systems on the job.
  • Excellent oral communication skills speaking about specialized topics, and strong writing skills, including the ability to proofread and edit your own work.
  • High EQ maintaining an ability to collaborate with partners who hold extremely different personalities, communication styles, and work ethics.
  • Familiarity with common organizational structures within higher education institutions (i.e., departments and offices) and how to identify decision makers.
  • Ability to work independently and virtually, managing time well, and keeping team members informed and up-to-date.
  • Lived and / or professional experience with mental illness and / or maintaining mental wellness, and a deep belief in the power of art to destigmatize mental illness for young people.

We value an inclusive work culture with a diversity of students and stakeholders, and therefore are looking for applicants who can reflect some of the identities of those we serve. Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, first-generation college students, LGBTQIA+, and immigrants are especially encouraged to apply.

You will work from home with weekly video meetings with the Managing Director and other team members, as needed. When it’s safe, occasional travel will be required for our annual in-person retreat in San Francisco and Voices With Impact film premiere in Los Angeles.

Compensation and Benefits

Art With Impact Canada’s Program Manager salary is $60,000 CAD / year. In addition, we offer the following benefits and perks:

🏥  Health insurance stipend: We offer $440 CAD / month towards health insurance.

💻  Permanently remote: We are a distributed team living across the U.S. and Canada, so you’ll get to do it from the comfort of your own home (jammies all day FTW!), neighborhood coffee shop, or co-working space.

🏠  Home expenses reimbursement: $75 CAD / month toward cell phone and / or other work-from-home related expenses.

🪑  Home office setup: $500 CAD / year to deck out and set up equipment for your remote working space.

🧘‍♀️  Wellness stipend: $500 CAD / year to support your own wellness, whatever that looks like for you!

🌴  Minimum vacation: 2-week per year mandatory vacation during the end-of-year holidays, 2 additional weeks of vacation at a time of your choosing, seven Canadian holidays (plus your birthday!), and an unlimited PTO policy for additional R&R.

✈️  Annual retreats: When we can, we meet twice per year in Los Angeles and San Francisco for a film festival and all-staff retreat.

How to Apply

To apply, please record a 60-second video clip* of you talking about what you see as an interesting or notable connection between mental health and social / racial justice. Upload the video to YouTube or Vimeo, as an unlisted or public video.

*This role requires being able to hold conversations surrounding mental health through daily phone and video calls with workshop hosts. Your video submission will help us get a sense of your comfort level in speaking to these topics. If you have accessibility concerns and would like to apply, please email us and we will work with you to arrive at a solution.

Note: If your video’s settings are set to “private,” please be sure to give us a password to access it. Applications with private / un-viewable videos will not be considered.

Please send an email to Andrew Kirschner, Managing Director, at [email protected], and include the following materials:

  • Video link
  • Resume and cover letter (combined into one PDF)
  • Your pronouns

The subject line of your email should read: AWIC Program Manager application from [Your Name]

For those with whom we would like to continue the conversation, we will send you a short practical exercise to get a sense of your critical thinking and project management skills. Candidates with strong responses will go through two interview rounds with different members of our team. We’ll ask for references from our top candidates, and make an official offer.