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About Greenpeace Africa

Greenpeace Africa is working in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal; countries with the most urgent environmental issues – climate change, over-fishing and the destruction of the all-important rainforests—issues that affect the entire continent. The office was established in 2008 and has realised major campaign achievements in these campaign areas leading to the recent launch of its sustainable farming campaign ‘Food for Life’ in East Africa and the expansion of the forest campaign to Cameroon.

Greenpeace Africa works with local organizations in the various countries as their partners to let African voices be heard and African ideas be understood. By finding and assisting African expertise and leadership, they strive to establish real, sustainable solutions for the entire planet and a greener future for the continent.

About the Role

The Engagement Director will lead a team in developing and delivering an Engagement strategy that resonates with all Greenpeace Africa’s campaign activities, so a real passion and understanding of the work of Greenpeace is required. Core to this is leading and building a team who feel confident to create and innovate within their project areas and who have the necessary skills and oversight to create first-rate engagement strategies and content.

Beyond the team, the Head of Engagement plays an active role in contributing to the overall priorities and direction of Greenpeace Africa. In framing the engagement strategy for Greenpeace Africa, the strategy will be looking at promoting the cornerstones of its work: community leadership, solutions as the way to go and sustainability for Africa by Africans. Greenpeace Africa will sharpen its catalyst role so that its constituencies across Africa increasingly take ownership of a fight that belongs to everyone on the continent, a fight for an environment that is not abused for the benefit of a few.

Major Functions and Responsibilities

Strategic Direction:

• Designing and implementing an engagement strategy that includes traditional, digital, volunteer and community engagement plans to ensure a growing online and offline supporter base.
• Establishing and delivering upon ambitious goals to increase recruitment and engagement across email, social media and online.
• Keeping up-to-date with developments in the digital and NGO sectors, ensuring Greenpeace is ahead of the curve in email, social media and online communications.

Project Management:

• Improving the responsiveness, depth and quality of supporter relationships through strong communication as well as offline and online engagement.
• Working with Campaign Project Teams and other colleagues to ensure engagement potential of campaigns is identified and maximized, and to provide advice and leadership in this area.
• Collaborating with Programme, Actions and Fundraising teams to deepen relationships with nonfinancial and financial supporters.
• Developing and applying metrics to set out Greenpeace’s ambition and measure progress.
• Taking responsibility for testing, monitoring and improving performance of offline and online mobilization work including reporting this analysis to the Programme Director and other decision-makers in the global organization.
• Building and managing relationships with external suppliers.
• Ensuring quality control by setting standards, mentoring and advising, planning training programmes and helping assess staff and evaluate projects.
• Maintaining a detailed knowledge of Greenpeace campaigns and the position of the organization within the market where Greenpeace Africa operates.

 Team Management:

• Leading a team of passionate and dedicated Engagement staff and encouraging a collaborative working environment.
• Helping to foster and support a culture of creativity and innovation in the Engagement team and across the organization that delivers the innovative communication, offline engagement and digital engagement work for which Greenpeace is known for.
• Providing pastoral management to team members, including: evaluation, and skills development.
• Providing task management to specific staff, including: allocating work, setting objectives and standards for tasks, monitoring performance on tasks, evaluating results and giving feedback.
• Developing and maintaining relationships with Greenpeace international colleagues, collaborating on projects using a distributed operating model.
• Managing department budgets and resource allocation.

 Internal Leadership:

• Playing an active role as a member of the Senior management team (Director level), maintaining strong, productive relationships with other managers and team leaders.
• Acting as a champion for supporter-focused communications throughout the organization.
• Play an active role in campaign project teams to advise and lead on the Engagement elements of each campaign.
• Implementation of VBS studies carried across programme areas to ensure that GP Africa relates to its audiences.
• Ensuring that the engagement team understands and refines relationships with key audiences.
• Supporting fundraising strategies in line with “everyone is a fundraiser” approach.
• Identifying opportunities for fundraising and ensure all engagement staff have a fundraising objective.

Budgeting:

• Ensuring organizational and engagement budgets are developed, monitored and implemented.

Preferred Minimum Qualification

• Masters/Post graduate qualifications in marketing, advertisement, communications, media studies / journalism.

Preferred Minimum Experience and Requirements

• At least 8 years’ experience in marketing and managing supporter journey development, communication and offline / online mobilization.
• Fluency in English. French will be a strong added advantage.
• Understanding of supporter segmentation and supporter journey.
• Strong understanding of, and buy-in to, Greenpeace campaigns.
• Understanding of media landscape in Africa. In-depth understanding of Africa’s possible development paths, and the role that energy, agriculture / forest and water resources play in those.
• Knowledge and understanding in design and implementation of programme strategies.
• Track record in managing complex teams and dealing with diversity.
• Experience in working with large multicultural organizations.
• Willingness to travel frequently to all campaign locations.
• Understanding of the media and political landscape.