About this role
As Special Projects Manager, you will:
- Develop briefs: translate stakeholder requirements into clear, actionable creative and technical briefs, and push back constructively when asks are unclear, conflicting or unscoped.
- Oversee project performance and progress: work with internal and external stakeholders to define what success looks like for each project, integrate those goals into design and content strategies, and develop/execute comms projects that reflect them.
- Identify, onboard and manage agencies and contractors: i dentify the skill gaps required to make a project shine, then source and steer talent to fill those gaps through web development agencies or individual freelancers.
- Own quality assurance: define what "done" looks like — reviewing deliverables against brief, brand guidelines and accessibility standards (WCAG), running structured review rounds, and holding the final quality bar before anything ships.
- Product innovation: ideate and develop digital products to help achieve FLI’s mission and meet org objectives.
- Run special projects: deliver multi-month initiatives such as international creative contests end to end.
- Steward brand coherence: work with the website development agency to maintain our design system and keep high-volume output visually consistent.
Required experience and qualifications:
- Based in a timezone between West Coast, USA and the UK (UTC-8 to UTC+1).
- Proven ability to coordinate complex, multi-stakeholder projects — comfortable navigating competing priorities, securing alignment from senior colleagues, and turning messy input into clear direction.
- A track record of building or significantly improving delivery processes — intake, review, QA or approval workflows — not just operating within them.
- Project management experience across design, communications and/or digital/web projects, ideally including managing external agencies.
Required skills and qualities:
- Genuine interest in FLI's mission and the issues we work on — able to represent our work credibly to agencies, judges, contest entrants and partners.
- Sharp quality instincts and the confidence to send things back when they're not right (ideally provable with a portfolio of shipped work you've quality-assured).
- Calm under deadline pressure; comfortable saying no and offering alternatives.
Preferred qualifications, skills and qualities:
- Experience running participatory or multi-stakeholder projects — contests, awards, grant rounds, festivals or similar.
- Familiarity with website delivery: CMS platforms and enough technical literacy to triage issues and talk credibly with developers.
- Working knowledge of SEO and digital audience growth: technical and on-page fundamentals, analytics tools (e.g. GA4, Search Console), and how content and campaign decisions affect reach.
- Nonprofit, policy, advocacy or campaign experience.
Exact compensation will vary depending on experience and geography.
For US hires, additional benefits include: health insurance, 24+ days of PTO per year, paid parental leave, 401k matching in the US, a work from home allowance for the purchase of office supplies or equipment, and a professional development budget.
Exact benefits will depend on location.