The New York City Food Assistance Collaborative seeks an individual or agency to lead marketing and product engagement efforts for an innovative new mobile product. Plentiful is the first-ever app for food pantry clients, which makes food service dramatically more efficient and dignified. This is a unique opportunity for a motivated and creative individual or agency to make a major impact on hunger relief in New York City, while developing valuable skills and experience in social sector technology and client marketing. Plentiful has an active product team and a secured funding source, enabling a successful candidate to hit the ground running with all the resources and support needed to succeed.
Overview of Plentiful
Plentiful is a product of the NYC Food Assistance Collaborative, a body representing New York City’s major charitable food suppliers. Each year, these organizations distribute 130 million pounds of food to 1.4 million residents through a network of ~1,000 soup kitchens and food pantries. Despite the large scope of these operations, there are no reliable service statistics, since pantries often self-report them based on paper sign-in sheets. Plentiful provides that critical data, to improve City-wide services.
Plentiful works because it makes accessing charitable food easy and more dignified. Families use Plentiful to locate, register, and make reservations at their local food pantry, eliminating the need to wait in lines. Pantries use Plentiful to improve line management, communicate with clients, and track service statistics. Plentiful launched in December, 2016, and is adding new pantries to its platform quickly, with a goal of working in 150 pantries in 2017. Once proven successful in NYC, the Collaborative seeks to expand Plentiful to the tens of thousands of food pantries in other cities and states.
Key responsibilities and reporting relationship
The Product Engagement Manager will be primarily responsible for developing and executing activities that drive engagement for end users (clients) and pantries. The Product Engagement Manager will engage clients through various channels, including digital channels (SMS and Android app) and in-person materials (signage, brochures in pantries). The Product Engagement Manager will also enhance the pantry-facing website (plentifulapp.com) and develop email marketing tools to improve pantry acquisition and engagement.
The Product Engagement Manager will report substantively and day-to-day to Bob Shaver, a member of the Collaborative’s support team. The Product Engagement Manager will also receive support and direction from a product team made up of a Pantry Adoption Lead, a product developer (Big Human), and on-the-ground experts from charitable food distributors.
The Product Engagement Manager will:
- Establish and meet KPIs, including total clients registered and weekly active users
- Visit pantries and speak with clients to understand what factors drive or inhibit adoption
- Identify and execute strategies to improve client engagement on the platform, including pantry signage, SMS-marketing, incentives, social media, and other approaches
- Manage and enhance the plentifulapp.com website, including developing informational content, FAQs, and product testimonials
- Manage translation, QA, and plain language review for multiple languages (Plentiful is available in English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese). No language proficiency required.
- Carry out relevant email marketing with pantry users
- Maintain brand integrity across visual, web, and print media
- Produce limited print materials, such as registration cards and brochures
- Prepare updates for investors and other key stakeholders
Candidates should have:
- Demonstrated entrepreneurial drive, creativity, and confidence in uncertain situations
- Experience and comfort working with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds and economic advantage/disadvantage
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Experience managing a website with various forms of content, preferably on WordPress
- Experience with email marketing (e.g., newsletters), preferably on MailChimp
- Experience managing content across multiple languages
- A demonstrated ability to quickly identify a path forward in complex situations
- Experience working with social service organizations of varied levels of sophistication
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This is a one-year contract position for an individual or agency. Individuals should be willing to commit to a one-year temporary position, with the possibility of ongoing opportunities to support the growth of the product over time. Agency applicants must be willing to work on a monthly retainer. Interested applicants should forward a cover letter, resume, and/or agency qualifications, along with any questions to bobshaver@redstonestrategy.com
The New York City Food Assistance Collaborative aims to strengthen the food assistance system to alleviate hunger and increase nutrition for food-insecure people in New York City. The Collaborative brings together key distributors of emergency food, including City Harvest and United Way of New York City, as well as many of their city, state, and private funders. Read more about the Collaborative and its successes.
