Want to apply your skills to directly helping society? Do you fantasize about getting paid a reasonable wage to make the world a better place? Benetech® is Silicon Valley's deliberately nonprofit tech company, and we apply technology to directly assist the causes of literacy, accessibility, human rights and the environment.

• Marketing Program Manager (#MPM)

Bookshare

Benetech's Bookshare project has exciting new opportunities for you to use your technical skills for social good. We have just received a major five-year award from the Office of Special Education Programs of the U.S. federal Department of Education to fully support — for free — all schools and students with qualifying print disabilities in the United States, K-12 and post-secondary, with access to the entire Bookshare collection of accessible electronic books and to software for reading those books.

To support this award, we are hiring for the following Bookshare positions:

• Education Program Manager (#EPM)
• Webmaster - contract (#WM)
• Library Collection Development Manager (#CDM)

Fellowship Opportunities

Benetech fellowship positions are an opportunity to engage in meaningful and socially compelling projects in a six month to one year term. This is an excellent opportunity to be part of a dedicated and successful professional team. It provides an environment where an individual can apply his or her professional knowledge and at the same time make a difference in the lives of people helped by Benetech's mission, “technology serving humanity.” Fellows work at Benetech’s Palo Alto, California, office and receive a $600/week stipend and medical benefits.

• ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) Strategic Fellow (#ASF)

ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) Strategic Fellow (#ASF)

This is a three month fellowship for an experienced professional with excellent analytical and writing skills to develop a strategy and manage the implementation for soliciting funds for Benetech’s programs based on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

This person will research, organize and prepare proposals that support Benetech's goals to increase outreach of our programs throughout the United States. S/he will collect, manage and synthesize ARRA information; develop a prioritized plan mapping Benetech opportunities to appropriate funds, in conjunction with management; develop project budgets and proposals; and support additional program and funding activities as appropriate.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Work closely with Business Development staff to identify program priorities and needs to pursue through the ARRA.
• Research ARRA funding opportunities to identify prospects and to assist in developing proposal strategies. Write grant proposals to solicit, retain and maximize financial support and program impact.
• Plan and coordinate proposal development, including research, data collection, writing, budget and supporting materials.
• Identify and cultivate partners to enhance our outreach initiatives.
• Coordinate with Marketing on survey input to assess needs and opportunities and outreach programs as required.
• Write for organization communications as needed, including support materials, white papers and content development for outbound communication.
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required, with a concentration in English, journalism, communications or marketing preferred;
• Excellent writing and communications skills required with demonstrated successful writing experience in a professional setting.
• Excellent research, planning, conceptual, analytical and strategic-thinking skills
• Excellent computer skills, including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint and general ease with software and technology.
• Knowledge of public education field or government funding is a plus
• Personal belief in our mission and enthusiasm about working for a nonprofit.
  

- Back to Top - | - Back to Employment Opportunities -

Bookshare Library Collection Development Manager (#CDM)

Benetech has a unique and exciting opportunity for a Manager of Collection Development for Bookshare, the world's largest library of digital electronic books for the blind and print disabled. This position is responsible for managing the staff of the Collection Development team as well as the outsourcing partners Bookshare has contracted with to scan and proofread thousands of books for the collection.

This position is on-site in Palo Alto, California, and reports to the Director of Literacy Operations.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Manage the Collection Development staff including staff meetings, weekly 1:1s and performance reviews.
• Function as a member of the Bookshare Operations Management Team.
• Measure, analyze and report metrics in Collection Development for reporting to the Department of Education and other funding sources on progress against goals.
• Closely manage to the Collection Development budget, providing input on internal & external cost efficiencies, forecasts and actuals.
• Work closely with the Benetech Procurement Specialist and executive management to manage business relationships with the outsourcing partners.
• Assist in setting policy regarding various Collection Development functions including website management, and management of the submission process by members, universities, publishers and others.
• Work closely with Engineering on conversion processes, site fixes, bug reporting and QA testing relevant to Collection Development and the members it serves.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree plus a minimum of three years in a management position with direct staff on a software, documentation, library or publishing project.
• Interest in disability technology and issues and in library collections.
• Demonstrable experience in partner management and the assessment of contractual deliverables.
• Ability to multi-task and provide consistent high attention to detail.
• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Familiarity with OCR technologies or the management of digital content is a plus.
• Experience with Wiki content management and with bug tracking and reporting systems is highly desired.

- Back to Top - | - Back to Employment Opportunities -

Education Program Manager (#EPM)

Right now, the Bookshare team has an immediate opening for an Education Program Manager. The position provides the right individual with an opportunity to make a difference, helping students with print disabilities around the country gain access to reading materials.

You'll join a motivated team as a key member and assume responsibility for initiating and building programs in states across the US. You'll design, run and track national outbound communications campaigns and build relationships with state leaders, district administrators and teachers. You'll use online conferencing tools to train schools and teachers, getting them to sign up and helping them learn to download books. You'll attend conferences and events to spread the word about Bookshare. You'll develop collateral and other tools to help schools and teachers.

Essential duties

• Strategize, plan and execute outreach programs to promote Bookshare membership and book utilization in selected states. Programs should include outbound email, webinars, and direct contact.
• Build solid relationships with state and district education leaders
• Learn the structure of the educational organizations in your states
• Apply creativity to the outbound emails, collateral and presentations you develop to support your programs
• Train and assist teachers with use of Bookshare in the classroom
• Track, measure and report on the results of your programs. Develop new program ideas from analysis of results.
• Use CRM application to track contacts, pull segments marketing lists, track results
• Act as a spokesperson for Bookshare at conferences and events
• Assume responsibility for management of web copy

Qualifications

Required

• Minimum of 5 years of program management
• Proven experience designing integrated campaigns and tracking results
• Demonstrated success with planning and organizational skills
• Proven success in building and maintaining relationships
• Experience with email marketing
• Ability to write creative, quality marketing copy
• Examples of imaginative new ideas in collateral and presentations
• Development and delivery of training programs
• Excellent public speaking skills for conference presentations
• Well-organized; able to manage multiple details
• Solid expertise with office applications, such as Excel and PowerPoint.
• Flexibility to travel to events and conferences
• Solid written and oral communication skills
• Energy, enthusiasm, and a positive attitude

Highly desirable

• Experience with schools or teaching experience
• Development of webinars
• A passion for making a difference

- Back to Top - | - Back to Employment Opportunities -

Marketing Program Manager (#MPM)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 has the potential, if the funds are spent wisely, to reinvigorate education in the US with better teachers, better instruction, better facilities, and more of the right equipment for students. Already, schools are being bombarded with special promotions from all vendors. Too easily, schools could spend their stimulus funds on products and programs that sit in closets, never used, unfortunately wasting the funds received.

As a well-known, loved, non-profit provider of digital books for students with print disabilities in US schools, Bookshare is in a position to participate in this reinvigoration. Our collected expertise can provide schools with much-needed information and guidance through professional development on ways to improve special education programs. Unlike in the for-profit sector, Bookshare's new revenue-generating programs focused on the federal funding will have a unique value proposition, in that proceeds will be used to provide more services to students with print disabilities.

In this position, you will lead Bookshare's initiative to develop and define new revenue-generating programs targeted towards long-lasting improvements in special education, truly benefitting students. In coordination with partners, you will use your program management skills to launch new Bookshare offerings, ensuring that all key components are ready on time. You will collaborate across teams internally with engineering, membership, support and state program managers to put in place the processes, systems, and messages needed for success. You will communicate with schools through outbound email and the website, and directly with key educators to schedule Bookshare's offerings around the country.

This is a six month to one year temporary employee position, reporting to the Director of Marketing.

Essential duties

• Define new professional development services focused on assisting schools with the flow of federal government funds
• Strategize, plan and execute creative marketing campaigns to promote Bookshare's offerings
• Manage Bookshare's web presence to promote offerings, capture interest and orders
• Develop marketing collateral including brochures and presentations to introduce and support these new offerings.
• Manage non-profit partner relationships for joint development, promotion and delivery of offerings
• Leverage existing relationships with educators at the state and local level to promote benefits of Bookshare's offerings and bring in customers
• Manage relationships with network of trainers for program delivery
• Generate revenue and track results
• Use CRM to manage all contacts and activity

Requirements

• Minimum of 8 years program management experience
• Proven success in launching new programs
• Experience with outbound email marketing techniques and tools
• Experience with online conferencing technology
• Excellent writing skills, including creative writing
• Well-organized, able to multi-task and juggle all details
• Prior experience selling revenue-generating training or services as a services or training marketing manager
• Strong presentation skills, both online and in front of groups
• Schedule management to track when and where trainings are happening, and who is delivering them
• Experience managing a team of contractors, such as trainers
• Experience with professional development

Highly desirable

• Experience with schools or teaching experience
• Prior experience marketing and selling programs to schools
• Familiarity with assistive technology
• A passion for making a difference

- Back to Top - | - Back to Employment Opportunities -

Webmaster (#WM)

Benetech has an immediate opening for a contract web master to support the Marketing and Operations teams to keep the Bookshare site content fresh and to work on social networking initiatives on the site. The ideal candidate will have experience in an engineering organization in order to fit within engineering team processes and cycles for changes that touch the code. In addition to Bookshare, the webmaster may assist with the Benetech and Human Rights sites as requested.

This position is a part-time, contract position for an unspecified length of time. Candidates must have the flexibility to support Bookshare/Benetech on a daily basis, with a variable amount of time per day. Most likely, the candidate will have other clients and can balance client workload to accommodate the variable schedule.

Essential duties

• Manage content on the Bookshare website
• Maintain public-facing pages including:
  • making copy edits,
  • implementing new pages within established style sheets & refreshing pages,
  • creating new style sheets to restructure pages, using solid UI design concepts
  • posting media such as webinars, videos, graphics and MP3s)
• Support social networking marketing programs

Qualifications

Technology and Technical Capabilities

• Very strong experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and emerging concepts like Ajax. You must understand many browser compatibility issues. (Candidates that know ARIA are strongly urged to apply.)
• Capable of extending the current look and feel of our site(s) in order to keep them fresh, and implementing new designs as provided
• Basic Java skills strongly encouraged
• Experience with some kind of dynamic templating solution like JSP (we use Freemarker)
• Familiarity with Web 2.0 tools and widgets - integrate Bookshare sites with social networking sites and similar
• Basic UNIX command line
• Understands basic web security concerns. E.g., cross-site scripting
• Able to use knowledge of various browsers (e.g., Firefox, IE, Safari) and security concerns (e.g., cross-site scripting) when verifying work.

Tools and Collaboration

• Comfortable with Mac OS or Linux
• Experience with any brand of revision history management tool (we use Subversion)
• Experience with bug tracking systems and the implied interactions with QA
• Understanding and implementation of accessible page design

Interpersonal & Content Skills

• Ability to manage multiple inputs and speak up when problems and questions occur
• Comfortable sharing ideas in a group of 12 people
• Meticulous, thorough with copy edits, including proofreading to be sure copy edits are implemented correctly
• Strong writing skills & thorough documentation of technical work
• Prompt turn-around; able to make changes within 24 hours if necessary
• Works well under pressure with multiple simultaneous assignments
• Team player eager to contribute to the overall goal

Bonus

• Strong understanding of web accessibility issues and how to fix them
• Manipulation of images to optimize for web; flash animation
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, although marketing will provide oversight
• Basic SQL
  

- Back to Top - | - Back to Employment Opportunities -