Marketing and Communications Manager

The work involves managing both the marketing and communications functions simultaneously — sometimes including PR, internal communications, and content production alongside campaigns and brand work. At smaller organizations and nonprofits where a single person owns both functions, this means wearing multiple hats across different audiences and channels. A typical week might involve writing a donor email, reviewing ad creative, briefing a press release, and preparing talking points for the executive director — in any order, often simultaneously.

The breadth is the defining characteristic. Unlike a marketing manager who focuses on demand generation or a communications director focused on external relations and media, this role spans both. That breadth creates real value for organizations that don't have the scale to hire separately for each function. It also creates genuine challenge: the depth any one person can develop in any individual area is limited by the scope they're covering.

Stakeholder management tends to be more complex here than in a pure marketing or comms role. You're serving multiple internal audiences simultaneously — leadership, programs, development, HR, and sometimes the board — and translating organizational messages across a range of contexts. Getting fluent at moving between those different audience modes, quickly, is a skill that develops over time.