Community Manager

The basics

• Level of effort: About 75% of full time, roughly 30 hours a week, with some flexibility
• Duration: ASAP until April 2027, with likelihood of extension until April 2028 dependent on performance and funding continuity
• Contract type: A consultancy: an independent contractor engaged by TechChange, Inc.
• Reports to: Head of Delivery
• Works with: The partner's leadership, who set strategy and direction for the initiative; the partner's product, communications and partnerships teams; and TechChange's events, platform and design team
• Hours: Available during US Eastern working hours, since the partner and most members are in the US
• Compensation: Approximately $65 - $85/hour

What you will do

• Manage the community day to day and run the community engagement plan.
• Orient and cultivate new members. Welcome them, onboard them, follow up, and help each one find the right level of involvement, from attending, to using the data model, to contributing. This is the core of the job.
• Keep the community active. Regular touchpoints, re-engaging quiet members, and curating resources and discussion.
• Host and organize the community calls, the quarterly learning sessions and the working groups, including scheduling, agendas, notes and follow-through.
• Take part in the Developer and Governance working groups as a subject expert. The partner's product team owns the data model.
• Run the feedback loop with the partner's product team: bring member input to them, and tell members what happened to it.
• Draft member-facing governance documents, such as working group charters and participation guides, for the partner's approval.
• Turn working group outputs into artifacts, such as meeting reports and summaries, with the partner's support.
• Track community health: repeat participation, engagement density, member satisfaction and indicators drawn from CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics in Open Source Software). These are the role's measures. Institutional adoption of the standard is the partner's measure.
• Plan outreach with the partner's communications team, including targeted outreach to grow membership. Follow the partner's norms for what gets shared and how it is tagged. TechChange's design and amplification support carries it out.
• Make the community known in related spaces, for example the CHAOSS Slack and FOSDEM (the Free and Open Source Software Developers' European Meeting), and share what the community is learning there.
• Keep the project cadence with the partner, by chairing regular team meetings, managing the project plan and timeline, and preparing funder-facing versions of reports.
• You might also represent the community at external events and convenings, with some travel expected. Examples for illustration only, not yet confirmed: the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) webinar (November), the Complete College America convening (December) or the 1EdTech Learning Impact Conference (February), and the community side of a hackathon.

How the work runs

Example working norms, for illustration. The final norms will be agreed with the partner.

• Weekly meetings with the partner's teams
• Live weekly touchpoints in the community
• Report-backs to TechChange and the partner's senior leadership every two weeks, on a sprint cadence

Must have

• A track record in community of practice management/leadership and community engagement, with preference for communities working on open-source or open standards. Has run a professional, technical or open-source community: hosting calls, moderating, onboarding members, bringing in new contributors and building ways for them to take part, and keeping a steady rhythm of activity.
• Knowledge of the subject. Data models and data standards, and postsecondary or workforce education. Can comfortably hold a technical conversation in the data model. Ideally this knowledge comes from hands-on technical work, such as engineering, data science or standards development.
• Social sector experience and ethos. Has worked in or alongside nonprofits, foundations, public education or other mission-driven organizations.
• Senior enough to carry the role. Credible with senior people in higher education and edtech, and comfortable being the recognizable contact for university leaders, vendors and researchers. Seniority here means being known in their community, for example as a speaker, organizer or board member, rather than a job title.
• A strong organizer and writer. Tracks actions to closure without being chased, and writes clear, fast agendas, summaries, member updates and reports.
• Comfortable working within someone else's brand. The partner has the final say on membership, communications and branding.

Strongly preferred

• Open-source or standards community experience. Has worked in open-source or standards communities, including on GitHub.
• A background in developer relations.
• Experience with the CHAOSS community, or a willingness to engage in it.
• Familiarity with FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) or health data interoperability.
• Experience working with, or reporting to, a major foundation.
• Experience in an education data standards or interoperability initiative, such as 1EdTech, the Learner Information Framework (LIF) or Ed-Fi.
• Experience with a nonprofit that provides the organizational home for an open-source project or standard, such as Apereo or Lyrasis. The initiative is working toward a permanent home for its standard, so this is directly relevant.
• Experience running virtual convenings and community platforms.
• Experience with Kolab, TechChange's virtual collaboration platform, where this person will run the community day to day, or with a similar platform.

The kind of person we're looking for

• A senior-level "doer." A person with gravitas and expertise who runs the engagement day to day, not someone who advises on it.
• Calm and steady under pressure. Polished but not polarizing.
• Takes initiative and brings recommendations, not just questions.
• Patient about member commitment and attentive to the give-and-get dynamic.
• A strong relationship manager. Understands the ecosystem, knows the different players and their roles, and moves easily between them. Keeps complex work moving without needing a lot of direction.

What this role is not

• Not a strategy or advisory seat. The partner holds strategy and direction. The role works to the theory of change and key performance indicators (KPIs) agreed with the partner, yet will be TechChange's representative setting out the community engagement strategy and best practices.
• Not a thought leadership role. The partner and TechChange can both produce thought leadership from the work. Yet this role ensures aligned communications and provides input on messaging to motivate community participation and drive demand for the data standard.
• Not the partnerships or door-opening lead. The partner's partnerships team engages institutions and systems, and represents the team at marketing and sales-oriented meetings and events. The Community Manager hands warm relationships forward and receives them, and uses their own network and connections to promote community membership.
• Not a creator of original content. The partner drafts the core content and messaging. TechChange provides input.
• Not the owner of the data model or technical decisions. Those stay with the partner's product team.

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