Field Building Officer; PF

P erspective Fund , an impact focused non-fiction storytelling fund based in New York, is looking for a full-time staff member to lead the charge in supporting, growing and improving the media impact field through funding, convenings, and collaborating with relevant stakeholders (peer funders, filmmakers, nonprofits, etc.). Additionally, the Perspective Fund team is interested in exploring ways in which the non-fiction media field can develop new tools and methods to maximize impact.

The Perspective Fund Field Building Officer (FBO) will report to and work under the direction of Perspective’s Director, and work in close collaboration with the rest of the team, which currently includes a Film Impact Officer.

Vision

Achieve the maximum possible impact on the world by reaching key audiences and influencing the thinking and actions of that audience.

To ensure that impact strategy and implementation in the non-fiction media space is a viable and competitive career path that’s appealing for talented, ambitious people.

Goal

Bring a visionary approach to partnering with grantees, and the industry more broadly, to cultivate and increase the use of innovative approaches to maximize impact.

High Priorities

• Increase Perspective Fund’s ability to measure and analyze the “success” of media impact campaigns (in partnership with Metrics-focused consultants) and create an internal standard for how we define impact.
• Find and leverage new tools and distribution platforms to improve influence and engagement.
• Actively seek out expertise and test approaches from other fields to improve messaging, influence, mapping, distribution, etc.
• Lead the charge in growing the non-fiction media impact field and cultivating a more unified impact movement (by funding, convening and evangelizing).
• Collaborate with organizations and filmmakers to experiment and test innovative models & ideas.

Medium-term Priorities

• Support sustainable career opportunities and roles within the media impact space.
• Connect civil society with the media impact space to work collaboratively on large scale systemic problems, bridging the gap between outreach and movement building.
• Spearhead innovative models and structures which can be replicated, scaled and learned from by the field. Seeding innovative organizations and for-profit models through program-related investments and recoverable grants.
• Discover the “secret sauce” for navigating outreach in the age of streaming platforms.
• Increase Perspective’s internal capacity to add value and advise on outreach strategy and impact infrastructure.

Long-term Priorities

• Build and strengthen network of grantees to address the field’s challenges (see below) at various levels.
• Create an open channel of communication with grantees and partners to share learnings and rapidly elevate successful models and/or iterate promising experiments.
• Further develop the sophistication and effectiveness of outreach campaign strategies and execution.
• Normalize impact funding into production budgets/costs/fundraising so a portion of outreach costs are realized by everyone (investors, distributors, production specific donors), instead of a few philanthropic players baring the bulk of the financial responsibility.
• Expand our understanding and support for other forms of media beyond feature non-fiction.

Challenges of the field

• Redundancy in impact efforts and development.
• Vacuum of funding in the media impact space.
• Aversion to testable models as well as metrics/quantitative based approaches.
• Lack of alignment between film investors’, distributors’, filmmakers’, and grantmakers’ interests.
• Impact Producers and experts leaving the space because of a lack of career stability.
• Reliance on old models and complacency (while acknowledging there is value and existing low hanging fruit with existing models). Non-fiction media impact is lagging behind efforts to use misinformation and modern tools to influence public opinion.
• Lack of resources and access to leverage sophisticated tools/methods.
• Grantmakers’ and funders’ aversion to higher-risk innovation and experimentation.

• 7+ years of experience in the social…