Speaker 1: Hey, what's up you guys? This is Gabby. Welcome back to my channel. I hope you guys are well out there. In this video, I am going to be continuing on my series about different job opportunities out there for macro social work. I currently work in the field of macro social work for those of you who don't know me and I understand that for social work students this is an area that's not really talked about that much in their programs and usually when people think about social work they think of someone who does direct practice, someone who does therapy, case management, something dealing with people one-on-one but there is a whole world out there for macro social workers who work on systemic issues and more macro level societal issues. So this series is all about exposing those opportunities for you guys and today's video which will be number three in this series so far is focused on community engagement and community outreach work. I think this is a great area for macro social workers so please continue on with this video if you are interested in learning more. Alright so if you are a community outreach or engagement manager or specialist most likely you are going to be working within a non-profit or a government agency that is specifically interested in a certain population of individuals who have certain issues. So let's say for example you're working for a non-profit who focuses on housing rights or let's say you're focused on a non-profit that is centered around providing youth with educational programs outside of the school. So for both of these causes there's going to have to be someone who is specialized in going out into the community spreading awareness about this issue and locating the people within this population to bring them into your facilities to provide them with different services. So for anyone who has done social work or any type of social impact work you may understand how difficult it may be to reach and spread a message to the target population that you're interested in because the population may have certain barriers in place that make it difficult for them to stay in the know of information that's most important for them. For example maybe your population has some type of language barrier if you're working around immigration rights for example or let's say the organization that you work for is focused on housing rights. The population you want to reach may not be easy to locate because they may be experiencing homelessness or they may be very transient moving from place to place. Working in community engagement and community outreach as a macro social worker will take a lot of creative skills a lot of marketing skills in order to actually reach the individuals you want to reach. It's going to be your job to stay well connected within the community connecting with other people who care about the cause that you care about and that your organization is focused on to identify where the population you're looking for exists while also creating a communication strategy around the best way to reach them. So for example if English is not their first language you may need to pull in some people who can create documents that are in the language that your target population speaks in and you have to think about where the target population you're interested in is getting the majority of their information. Are they getting it from social media? Are they getting it from the news? Are they still reading the newspaper or maybe they're still listening to the radio? That's your job to figure out as a community engagement slash outreach manager and in this role more likely than not you're going to be managing some type of volunteer engagement or canvassing project. You'll probably be organizing a team to go out and identify these individuals and spread information to the right people. So you're going to have to do some investigative work to figure out where the population you want to serve is located. Are they in the libraries? Are they in the schools? Are they in the grocery stores? Community centers? Another one of your jobs as a community engagement manager would be to put on different community events where you spread information and awareness about the issue that your organization is focused on and also provide people with services on how they can overcome those barriers or issues. So as you can see there's like an event management component to this job. You may be managing your own outreach events where you actually put on an event that's solely focused on spreading information about your cause or your job can involve showing up at other events with a table and information that you can pass out to people at those events. Either way event planning and organization is going to be a great skill for someone in this type of job. And I also want to say that anyone in community engagement or community outreach will have to focus on building empathy and learning about your target population as well. What does building empathy mean? Let me talk about it now. So when you're doing community outreach you have to go into it with fresh eyes because if you aren't currently a part of that target population that you're trying to reach you don't really know exactly what the best plan of action is to reach them. I mean even if you used to be a part of the target population so let's say you're someone who experienced homeless before a few years ago but today you know the landscape is different. So maybe people who are going through homelessness are living in different ways or spending their time doing different things in different environments. You probably won't really know what that is until you go through a stage of trying to build empathy and understanding of the target population you're trying to reach. So let's say you apply for a community engagement manager position and you get it. Even if they have a plan in place or a strategy in place around how to reach the target population you should go in with the mindset that you probably need to question what's already in place because maybe the plan they had at reaching the target population wasn't really effective or maybe it was 75% effective but it could have been much better. The reason you're probably hired in for that position is to improve the work that has already been done in the past and to actually bring in more people to take advantage of the services that you guys offer. So definitely go into that position asking questions, being prepared to learn more about the population you want to serve, wanting to build empathy and deeper understanding for the population and the struggles that this population is facing. Actually connecting with people within this target population to get to know them better, to understand their struggles better, to find out how they spend their time, where they spend their time, what excites them, what needs do they have, what you guys can be doing within your program to better meet those needs because maybe your program targets a certain audience but what you're providing is actually not really what they need. If that's the case it's going to make your job as a community outreach manager very difficult. So definitely go into this job with a lot of curiosity and open mind and look forward to refining and redefining your outreach strategy on a regular basis because what may have worked last month may not work for you this month. For example, if you have an organization that's focused on reaching youth, throughout the school year between August and May the perfect place to reach them may be at school but during the summer months they're not at school. So where do you go then if you want to connect with them? These are questions that you as a community outreach manager is going to have to figure out. All right so now I want to talk about what your daily duties of a community outreach manager or engagement manager may be. Okay so one thing you'll probably be doing a lot of is volunteer recruitment because as I mentioned before you'll probably be managing a team of individuals who are going to go out there and canvas, share information with, connect with the population that you want to serve. So you're going to have to learn and cultivate your skills with managing volunteers and keeping them engaged, keeping them excited about the cause and you'll probably be managing a budget as well because in order to implement these outreach strategies you may have to do some marketing, you may have to do some type of marketing campaigns and all of this costs money. So let's say for example you want to do a campaign where you connect with a local radio station to talk about one of the services that you guys are providing. You're going to have to pay money to that radio station or you may want to buy some social media ads to target the population you want to reach. So balancing and managing your outreach budget will be something that you do on a regular basis as well and relationship management is going to be a part of your duties also. You're going to want to stay in touch with other community members and community leaders who are working alongside the population you want to reach as well. So for example like I said before if you want to reach children you'll need to develop and maintain good relationships and connections with your local school district or other youth community centers as well. And as I mentioned earlier managing different outreach events is going to be a part of your daily duties as well. Organizing canvassing events and managing a social media account that is more likely than not going to be one of your job tasks too. Managing a Facebook page for example and making sure that this page is aesthetically pleasing and has constant updates and regular updates that are going to keep the followers engaged. In my past job I did a lot of community outreach work and managing our Facebook page was my least favorite part of the job. It's so time consuming and it can be very difficult when you have a lot of people who are messaging you with questions or maybe people are asking the same question and you have to respond via inbox over and over again. It can definitely be time consuming but this is a very important aspect of a lot of community engagement managers day-to-day jobs. Especially these days with social media becoming the place to go for your news and for information about what's going on in your community. Being active on social media in this role is also important because you're able to connect with more people in a shorter amount of time. It may take you six months of going to 15 community events for you to reach 200 people in person but on social media you could make one post that goes viral and reaches 5,000 people in your local community in just a few days. So I think social media savviness in this specific role is very important. Alright so you may be wondering what is the average salary for someone who does community engagement or community outreach work. So the average salary for someone who does this type of work is about $60,000 a year and this is specifically if you're doing more management work. Of course if you're a community engagements associate or community outreach specialist you'll probably get a lower salary than this and of course you have to think about the type of atmosphere and location you're working in as well. So for example if you're doing this type of role in a larger non-profit you're probably going to get a higher salary than someone at a smaller non-profit and if you're working within a government agency doing this type of role you may get a little bit more than if you're working at a non-profit. So different considerations but $60,000 is about the average that you would make doing this type of work. So if this is a role that sounds interesting to you I want to talk about what type of skills it will be good for you to develop so that you can really shine when you apply for these type of jobs. And I hope by now you guys know that I'm using those two terms interchangeably community engagement manager versus community outreach manager because these terms really are used interchangeably to mean the same type of job. When you're doing research to try to find jobs like this make sure you play around with both terms. Okay so anyways what type of skills would you need for this type of job? So I think it's important for you to understand the fundamentals of marketing. Although you're not working for a corporation or a huge company when you're doing this role you still have to understand how to create messages and images that are going to pull people in and get them excited about whatever you're selling. And in this case what you're selling is a certain social service or a certain benefit that your target population could use some assistance with. And your messaging needs to be convincing because even though whatever you're serving may be very helpful for the target population if there's someone who's dealing with oppression in a certain area more than likely they're dealing with a bunch of issues in other areas as well. So they may be really focused on just surviving day to day. So signing their child up for an after-school program it may be a great idea but doing that may be competing with a bunch of other priorities they have. So creating messaging that will really help them to understand the importance of signing their kid up for an after-school program and the benefit that their child is going to see from being a part of this program. Being able to paint a picture for your target population around why they should take the time in their day to come to your organization and seek this specific service is going to be your job as someone in this position. So having marketing skills will be very very useful for you. And you can get this by taking an online course via Udemy or Coursera something like that or reading books, watching YouTube videos. It doesn't have to be formal education. You don't have to have a bachelor's degree in marketing to get this type of job. Often you will see that they are looking for someone with this kind of background but even so definitely still apply as a social worker and just sell them on why you still feel you are good for this job based on the experience you got in marketing and your passion about whatever the issue is. Often social workers don't apply for certain jobs because it may not say blatantly in the job description that they are looking for someone with a social work degree but still apply anyway if you are interested in that specific job especially as a macro social worker because often we end up working for jobs that are non-traditional and outside of the box of what a traditional social work job may be. And another skill as I mentioned already is social media management. You definitely have to you know have some type of understanding of how to manage different social media accounts through Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. wherever your target population may hang out. And also project management skills is going to be important as well because you're going to be managing different campaign projects having a passion for a certain cause. If you want to do this type of role it's going to be hard work it's going to be a lot of dedication so I would advise you to do this work for a non-profit that you really care about and who has a mission that you really believe in because that's going to make your job much easier. And as I mentioned before having the skill of relationship management is going to be really important. Also having strong written and oral communication skills you'll probably be doing different presentations and talking to people at events so being able to pass on information about your organization in a clear and concise manner is going to be really really important for you. And also as I mentioned strong investigative skills is going to be important because you don't want to go in this specific position thinking that you have all the answers on how to reach this target population. Your outreach strategy is going to have to be in a constant state of change and you need to have your finger on the pulse of the community and the people that you're trying to reach to truly understand the best way to reach them. You're going to have to ask questions, you're going to have to do research, you're going to have to get out there and actually talk to the people that you're trying to help. All right you guys so I hope this video was able to help you to better understand another area that you could possibly go in as a macro social worker. This is a very important job within a nonprofit or within a government agency because you can be doing a lot of great amazing work at your nonprofit but if no one knows about it then it doesn't really matter. You're not really helping anyone. Sometimes you may find that the person doing community outreach work isn't doing it under the actual title of a community outreach manager. At some smaller nonprofits it may be intertwined with other type of work or done by a specialist of a different name but oftentimes nonprofits will actually have this as a title of certain specialists within their organization as well. Either way I hope this was helpful in helping you to better understand a certain pathway or area that you can go in with this degree and specialization in macro social work. Thank you so much for watching and if you have any recommendations on other macro social work jobs you would like me to talk about, please leave them in the comment section below and I will talk to you guys in my next video. Thank you so much for watching.