Creative Director, PromiseBrands (Volunteer)

Mentor A Promise is a New York City–based nonprofit serving children and youth (ages 5–18) experiencing housing instability, grounded in the belief that every child is a Promise—full of potential, dignity, and possibility. We deliver consistent, high-quality programming across mentorship, literacy, social-emotional learning, and creative expression in shelters, schools, and community spaces, creating structured environments where students can grow, be seen, and build lasting skills. Through signature experiences like The Imagination Studio, The Kitchen Table, The Sound Lab, and The Story Space, we nurture academic development, emotional well-being, and creative voice, all within a trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and accessibility-centered framework. Our work prioritizes dignity-protective storytelling, consent-driven engagement, and deep community partnership, ensuring that how we serve is as intentional as whom we serve. We are not only addressing immediate needs - we are building pathways to confidence, belonging, and long-term opportunity, so every child has the support and foundation to carry their promise forward.

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Creative Director, PromiseBrands (Volunteer)

PromiseBrands | Creative Direction, Brand Expression & Cultural Storytelling

Organization Mentor A Promise (MAP)

Division PromiseBrands

Location Remote, with NYC collaboration as needed

Type Volunteer Creative Leadership Role

Commitment Approximately 5–10 hours per week

Minimum Commitment 6-month Commitment Required

Reports To Chief of Brands

Works Closely With PromiseBrands creative team, PromiseVoice, PromiseStudios, PromisePages, PromisePublic, PromiseGiving, PromiseBridge, and Executive Leadership

About Mentor A Promise

Mentor A Promise (MAP) is a New York City–based nonprofit supporting children and youth ages 5–18 experiencing housing instability through mentorship, education, literacy, social-emotional learning, creative expression, career development, advocacy, and community-centered opportunity.

MAP is building more than programs. We are building an organization, creative identity, and collection of experiences capable of changing how people understand youth, housing instability, opportunity, and community.

PromiseBrands exists to give that work a distinctive creative identity.

About PromiseBrands

PromiseBrands is MAP's brand and design division.

It brings together brand strategy, visual identity, graphic design, campaigns, fashion, product and merchandise design, creative experiences, and other forms of brand expression.

PromiseBrands asks a larger question than, "What should this look like?"

It asks, "What should people feel, understand, and remember when they encounter Mentor A Promise?"

Role Overview

MAP is seeking an exceptional Creative Director to lead the creative direction and execution of PromiseBrands.

Reporting directly to the Chief of Brands, the Creative Director will translate MAP's brand strategy, positioning, and organizational priorities into distinctive creative concepts, campaigns, visual systems, products, digital experiences, and cultural expressions.

The Chief of Brands owns the overall direction of PromiseBrands, including enterprise brand strategy, positioning, priorities, audience direction, and long-term brand development.

The Creative Director turns that strategy into creative work.

This person should be equally comfortable discussing strategy with the Chief of Brands, presenting a major campaign concept, directing a designer, reviewing a digital experience, or challenging a creative idea that is not yet strong enough.

We are looking for someone who understands that great brands are not built by making everything look the same.

They are built by making everything mean something.

Leadership & Decision Rights

The Chief of Brands and Creative Director operate as strategic and creative partners with clearly defined responsibilities.

The Chief of Brands owns the brand.

The Creative Director owns the creative expression of the brand.

The Chief of Brands establishes the strategic direction, positioning, priorities, audiences, and desired outcomes.

The Creative Director determines how those priorities become compelling creative ideas and leads the team responsible for bringing them to life.

The Creative Director should have meaningful creative authority within that framework while remaining accountable to the Chief of Brands for alignment with the broader PromiseBrands strategy.

This structure is designed to create clarity—not layers of approval.

Key Responsibilities

Creative Vision & Direction

• Establish and continuously elevate the creative vision for PromiseBrands within the strategy established by the Chief of Brands.
• Translate MAP's mission, positioning, and organizational priorities into compelling creative expression.
• Set standards for concept development, art direction, design, campaigns, products, and brand experiences.
• Lead creative development from initial concept through final execution.
• Ensure work is distinctive, intentional, emotionally intelligent, and worthy of MAP's mission.
• Push MAP beyond predictable nonprofit creative conventions.
  
  

Brand Strategy Partnership

• Serve as the Chief of Brands' senior creative partner.
• Translate brand strategy into creative platforms, systems, and experiences.
• Contribute creative insight to major brand and positioning discussions.
• Help evolve MAP's visual identity and creative guidelines.
• Maintain creative coherence across MAP's expanding ecosystem of programs, divisions, initiatives, and properties.
• Identify opportunities for MAP to express its brand in unexpected and culturally relevant ways.
  
  

Strategy establishes where the brand needs to go.

Creative direction determines how people experience it when we get there.

Integrated Campaigns

Lead creative development across

• Digital
• Social media
• Websites
• Brand campaigns
• Print
• Environmental design
• Experiential activations
• Events
• Partnerships
• Merchandise
• Fashion and textiles
• Fundraising campaigns
• Community campaigns
• Public-interest initiatives
  
  

Develop ideas capable of becoming integrated experiences rather than collections of disconnected assets.

Concept Development & Storytelling

• Generate and direct original creative concepts grounded in MAP's strategy and audiences.
• Turn complex organizational ideas into simple, memorable creative expressions.
• Use storytelling to build emotional connection rather than relying solely on information.
• Collaborate with writers, designers, photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, strategists, and other creative professionals.
• Determine the strongest creative medium for an idea rather than forcing every idea into the same format.
• Present and defend creative concepts based on strategy, audience, craft, and intended impact.
  
  

The idea should determine the tool—not the other way around.

Build & Lead the Creative Team

• Recruit exceptional designers and creative specialists.
• Mentor and develop emerging creative talent.
• Establish strong creative critique and review practices.
• Set clear expectations for creative quality and execution.
• Build an environment where people can challenge ideas without diminishing one another.
• Delegate meaningful ownership to creative team members.
• Identify talent and capability gaps as PromiseBrands grows.
• Develop future creative leaders.
  
  

The Creative Director's job is not to be MAP's best designer.

It is to build a creative organization capable of producing work better than any one person could create alone.

Creative Operations

• Establish clear workflows from creative brief through final delivery.
• Strengthen briefing, concept development, critique, approval, and production processes.
• Partner with the Chief of Brands to prioritize creative resources.
• Balance creative ambition with organizational capacity.
• Improve timelines, ownership, feedback loops, and creative accountability.
• Reduce unnecessary revisions by ensuring teams understand the strategy before creative development begins.
  
  

Digital & Brand Experience

• Help shape the creative direction of MAP's digital presence.
• Collaborate on website and digital-experience design.
• Consider the complete audience journey rather than isolated creative assets.
• Explore emerging technologies and creative formats when they genuinely improve the experience.
• Ensure digital brand experiences remain accessible, intuitive, contemporary, and human.
  
  

Products, Fashion & Physical Brand Experiences

Lead or provide creative direction for PromiseBrands initiatives involving

• Apparel
• Fashion
• Textiles
• Merchandise
• Objects
• Packaging
• Environmental graphics
• Event experiences
• Limited creative collections
• Mission-centered products
  
  

Physical products should have a creative reason to exist beyond placing MAP's logo on an object.

Cross-Division Creative Leadership

Partner with PromiseVoice on communications, marketing, campaigns, and audience engagement.

Partner with PromiseStudios on photography, film, animation, motion design, and creative production.

Partner with PromisePages on publishing and literary projects.

Partner with PromisePublic on advocacy and public-facing campaigns.

Partner with PromiseGiving on fundraising and donor-facing initiatives.

Partner with PromiseBridge on partnerships, collaborations, and external brand opportunities.

The Creative Director strengthens these teams through creative partnership without absorbing their specialized responsibilities.

Creative Standards & Quality

• Establish a high creative standard for work carrying MAP's brand.
• Review significant brand-facing creative work.
• Strengthen typography, composition, art direction, visual systems, storytelling, and conceptual quality.
• Identify work that feels generic, unclear, derivative, unnecessarily complicated, or disconnected from strategy.
• Provide clear, constructive creative feedback.
• Know when an idea needs refinement—and when it should not move forward.
  
  

Not every creative idea needs to become a MAP project.

Responsible Storytelling

Because MAP works with children and families experiencing housing instability, creative excellence must never come at the expense of dignity.

• Protect children's privacy and identities.
• Respect consent and media permissions.
• Avoid exploitative, sensationalized, or deficit-based representations.
• Maintain appropriate intellectual-property and creative-rights practices.
• Collaborate with safeguarding, privacy, compliance, and legal teams when necessary.
• Ensure lived experiences are represented with care, accuracy, and context.
  
  

A powerful campaign is never worth compromising the dignity of the people whose experiences made it possible.

Ideal Candidate

We are interested in accomplished creative leaders with backgrounds such as

• Advertising
• Brand design
• Creative agencies
• In-house creative organizations
• Brand strategy
• Integrated campaigns
• Digital experiences
• Art direction
• Product design
• Experiential design
• Entertainment or cultural marketing
  
  

Strong candidates will demonstrate

• Significant experience leading creative and brand work
• A strong portfolio of conceptually driven creative work
• Experience developing integrated campaigns across multiple channels
• Exceptional visual and conceptual judgment
• Ability to translate strategy into compelling creative ideas
• Experience directing multidisciplinary creative teams
• Ability to recruit, mentor, and develop creative talent
• Strong presentation and communication skills
• Comfort working with senior and executive leadership
• Understanding of digital, social, experiential, product, and traditional creative channels
• Curiosity extending beyond a single creative discipline
• Ability to move fluidly between strategic thinking and creative execution
  
  

Senior agency, major-brand, in-house creative leadership, or comparable experience is highly valued.

What Success Looks Like

Success means people begin recognizing MAP's work before they even see our name.

PromiseBrands develops a clear and distinctive creative point of view.

The Chief of Brands can establish ambitious brand priorities knowing there is a creative leader capable of transforming those priorities into exceptional work.

Designers receive stronger direction. Teams receive better briefs. Ideas improve before production begins. Campaigns connect across channels. Creative talent grows.

MAP develops recognizable campaigns, products, experiences, and creative properties.

And PromiseBrands evolves from a team that produces creative assets into a creative organization that builds lasting brand equity.

Why This Role Matters

Some organizations communicate what they do.

Great brands create something people remember.

MAP has stories to tell, programs to grow, communities to engage, ideas to introduce, products to imagine, and a mission that deserves creative work equal to its ambition.

The Chief of Brands will help determine what MAP should mean in the world.

The Creative Director will help make people see it, feel it, and remember it.

We are not looking for someone simply to make MAP look better.

We are looking for someone who can help make MAP unmistakable.

What You'll Gain

• Opportunity to shape the creative direction of a growing social-impact brand
• Senior creative leadership experience
• Direct partnership with the Chief of Brands
• Opportunity to build and mentor a multidisciplinary creative team
• Ability to develop campaigns, products, experiences, and brand systems
• Collaboration across design, film, photography, publishing, communications, advocacy, and innovation
• Portfolio opportunities through significant mission-driven creative initiatives
• Professional references and recommendations based on demonstrated contribution
  
  

Commitment

• Approximately 5–10 hours per week
• 6-month commitment required
• Participate in regular PromiseBrands leadership meetings
• Meet regularly with the Chief of Brands
• Maintain consistent communication with the creative team
• Provide timely creative review, feedback, and direction
• Recruit, mentor, and develop creative talent
• Own agreed creative priorities and follow through on commitments
• Maintain MAP's safeguarding, privacy, intellectual-property, and brand standards
  
  

How To Apply

Interested candidates should apply directly through Idealist and submit

• Resume or CV
• Cover Letter
• Portfolio or website demonstrating relevant creative work
  
  

Applicants should highlight experience in creative direction, advertising, brand strategy, integrated campaigns, design leadership, digital experiences, team development, or multidisciplinary creative work.

This is an unpaid volunteer leadership position.

At this time, MAP volunteer opportunities are limited to individuals based in the United States due to legal, safeguarding, data-privacy, compliance, and programmatic requirements.

Don't simply make the brand beautiful. Make it unmistakable. Turn strategy into ideas, ideas into experiences, and experiences into a brand people remember.