Day in the Life of a Non-Profit Marketing Manager

What does your day to day look like in your role? Easy enough question, right?

As a Marketing Manager, however, this can be tough to answer because we often wear many hats that make our day to day look completely different. We are the ones putting out fires, answering numerous one-off requests, regularly put in charge of organizing assets, doing damage control, all while managing our company’s marketing programs.

Whew, it’s a lot and keeps you on your toes.

In my previous role, I served as the Marketing Manager of a local non-profit children’s museum. As others who have worked in the non-profit realm know, budgets are insanely limited and you’re pretty much doing four people’s jobs at once.

So, what would a typical Monday look like for me in this role? I’ve outlined it below.

8am: Fuel up. Breakfast, coffee…mentally preparing to open my Outlook. You’d think that Monday mornings would mean low email count, but you’d be wrong, especially in the non-profit sector when weekends essentially do not exist.

8:30-9am: Arrive to work, ready to start the day. Go through my ASANA task list to prioritize my projects, always leaving time for “drive-bys” as we called them- which were when other team members dropped by your desk with a surprise list of one-off tasks.

9am-Noon: Emails, emails, emails. Some social media scheduling and posting here and there, but mostly getting back to team members from other departments with updated logos, explainers on how and where to find certain assets, creative requests, and reporting data for ongoing donor campaign performance.

LUNCH BREAK: Would usually grab a “turkado” sandwich from the museum’s café and sit out on the patio that looked over our museum’s garden. A nice and necessary breather before diving into the rest of my tasks. Lunch would often come to an end with someone from the Development team asking for help finding the updated Donation Flyer on the share drive or realizing some new didactics need hanging up pronto and assisting the Exhibitions team in executing.

1-4pm: Try my best to multi-task getting our new year marketing strategy plan finalized, while working on analytics, calling our PR contractor to make sure our recent press release went out, and continuing to answer those one-offs from other teams. Sprinkle in a few meetings here and there as well.

5pm: Day is almost done! Working hard to get my  tasks finished without being interrupted. It’s near impossible, during the eight hour work day, which is why it usually turns into a ten-hour day. I’ve got to get it done somehow!

Being a non-profit Marketing Manager was an incredibly satisfying, exciting position that kept me on my toes and strengthened my project management skills. I would often finish the week feeling accomplished and deserving of the weekend, but still thinking through my lengthy to-do list that seemed never ending.

I’ve moved on from my role at the children’s museum and am happy to now be working at a company that actually solves some of the challenges I faced in my previous role. As a Marketing Manager at MarcomCentral, I get to help other organizations understand that there is a solution to the never-ending one-off requests. With our platform, all brand collateral is in one place and you can give access to all the people you support so they can get what they need, when they need it. You’re no longer the gatekeeper, hooray!

While different than my work in the non-profit sector, working as a Marketing Manager at a SaaS company has been equally fulfilling. Stay tuned for my Day in the Life at MarcomCentral!