About the Organization
The Center for the Arts (CFA) is the creative engine of the Sunapee region. The CFA is an impact-focused community arts organization whose mission is to drive cultural experiences that educate, entertain, and inspire, and contribute meaningfully to the region’s economic vitality. The CFA is a regional catalyst and focal destination for multi-generational arts education, creation, collaboration, and enjoyment. Through vibrant visual, performing, and literary artist communities drawn from the region and beyond, compelling arts spaces, engaging classes, and a diverse array of high-quality programs and events, the CFA enriches the cultural fabric of our communities and drives the regional creative economy.
About the Region
The Sunapee Region is composed of a dozen municipalities in west-central New Hampshire, centered around the pristine Lake Sunapee and Mount Sunapee. Renowned for its natural beauty, year-round recreation, and charming towns, the region offers a welcoming blend of culture, community, and a strong economy — all within a few hours of Boston, Portland, and Burlington. It is a place people choose to live, visit, and invest in, and the CFA is proud to be part of what makes it extraordinary.
The Opportunity
We are seeking an energetic, organized, and engaging Audience Development and Experience Manager to join our small but mighty team. The Audience Development and Experience Manager will be the driving force in creating awareness, repeat attendance, and passionate advocacy for the CFA’s programs and for the organization. Included in this job scope is full-spectrum oversight of marketing and communications, playing a key part in the organization’s development activities and events, responsibility for ensuring a superior audience experience for the organization’s constituents, and taking point on maximizing the insight and utility that the CFA can extract out of its data. This role sits at the intersection of best practice audience engagement experience management, development, and data analytics. The role is ideal for someone who is a brand builder and loves to have high impact in growing organizations, sees actionable patterns in information, loves engaging with a community, and is passionate about the role the arts play in the life of a community.
The Audience Development and Experience Manager reports directly to the Executive Director.
Primary Role Responsibilities
Driving Awareness, Attendance, and Advocacy for all CFA Programs and Content
• Managing content creation and overseeing content distribution for all exhibitions, programs, performances, and events
• Driving consistent and significant growth in program attendance and participation, as well as community followership and advocacy
• Actively tracking reach, engagement, journeys, behavior, advocacy, and other key metrics as a closed loop process for ensuring continuous improvement in segmentation, messaging, and related actions
Audience Experience Management
• Understanding and measuring what makes for great experiences for the organization’s various constituents
• Documenting and recommending policy, process, and system changes to reduce/eliminate experience detractors and/or frictions, while introducing other changes to elevate experiences
• Overseeing implementation of desired changes
Development Support
• Managing data in the central database (CRM) for interactions with donors, grant-making organizations, foundations, sponsors, and members
• Supporting the Executive Director and Development Committee of the Board with CRM analysis and actionable insight
• Supporting the same on development and leadership of related events
Data Management
• In addition to the above, ownership of data inputs, tracking and performance analytics around all programs, product, and content
Personal Characteristics
The ideal candidate is a warm, energetic, and highly organized self-starter who brings both heart and hustle to their work. They are tremendous at storytelling and effortlessly telegraph passion for the mission-driven organizations with whom they work. Highly creative, they also have a left-right brain balance in that they live in the data to ensure that targeted actions are generating desired results, and know how to test, validate and course-correct. Besides being tremendously proud of the community impact of their organizations, they obsess about ensuring a great audience experience for the various organizational constituents, from patrons to donors to artists to volunteers to sponsors and partners.
Key qualities include:
• Exceptional interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills
• A fanatical attention to detail and commitment to high-quality execution
• A deep enthusiasm and capability for brand building, including knowledge of and use of best practice techniques and tools
• Strong organizational and time management skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-moving environment.
• A collaborative and positive work style
• Comfort with data and CRM tools
• A passion for the arts and a belief in their power to enrich lives and strengthen communities
• Willingness to work select evenings and weekends as events require
Qualifications
We recognize that there are many ways to build relevant skills and experience. We will be looking for:
• Prior experience in marketing and communications, event management, development, customer experience management, community engagement, nonprofit operations, or a related field
• Proficiency with standard office and productivity tools, including CRM
• A demonstrated ability to build and maintain positive relationships with a wide range of stakeholders.
• A track record of taking initiative, following through, and delivering results. We place a high premium on people who Get Stuff Done – end-to-end, with quality
Location
This is a full-time position, working out of the CFA’s headquarters in New London, NH. The role requires regular on-site presence, including at events, and involves support and presence at a number of evening and weekend events. Some flexibility in scheduling is available outside of required presence at events.
Compensation & Benefits
This position pays $50,000 per year and is eligible for medical and dental benefits.
How to Apply
Interested applicants should:
• Email a resume and a brief cover letter summarizing relevant experience and why you are excited about this role to jobsearch@cfanh.org.
• Include “Audience Development and Experience Manager” in the subject line of your email.
• Be prepared to provide references upon request.
No phone calls, please.
The Center for the Arts is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to building a diverse and inclusive team. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.