About Make Me Visible
Make Me Visible is being built for people who become invisible when families, healthcare systems, employers, professionals, law enforcement, courts, and other institutions fail them.
The platform centers on evidence, witnessing, continuity, protection, accountability, and real advocacy. Its purpose is to help ensure that vulnerable people are not abandoned simply because one system refuses to listen, act, investigate, or preserve what happened.
Make Me Visible is developing relationships across advocacy, law, investigation, media, funding, policy, healthcare, research, and institutional accountability. Those relationships require more than a contact list. They require disciplined research, thoughtful communication, accurate records, responsible follow-through, and a clear understanding of what each person could meaningfully contribute.
The Fellowship
Make Me Visible is seeking a Relationship Development Systems Fellow for a fast-paced, hands-on, 3.5-month educational experience.
The fellow will learn how to design and operate a supervised research, messaging, contact-management, and email-outreach system. The objective is to understand how organizations identify relevant decision-makers, develop credible approaches, manage relationships, test messaging, protect sensitive information, and turn initial contact into a documented next step.
This is not a generic outreach-assistant position built around sending as many emails as possible. It is not mass emailing, purchasing unverified lists, collecting famous names, or copying the same message to hundreds of people.
The fellow will help develop the structure supporting Make Me Visible’s relationship development. Other team members may focus on specific legal, media, advocacy, investigative, funding, policy, healthcare, or institutional relationships. This fellowship focuses on ensuring that the research, qualification, messaging, records, follow-ups, reporting, and handoffs operate reliably.
The fellow’s work will complement Make Me Visible’s relationship-development efforts without replacing an employee or independently controlling the organization’s external relationships.
Audiences You Will Study
The fellowship may include supervised research involving:
- Investigative journalists and editors
- Documentary producers and podcast hosts
- Disability-rights and civil-rights organizations
- Patient advocates and victim-support organizations
- Legal-aid organizations and pro bono attorneys
- Investigators and accountability professionals
- Social-impact investors and angel investors
- Philanthropists, foundations, and family offices
- Policy leaders and researchers
- Healthcare organizations and patient-safety professionals
- Universities, clinics, and public-interest programs
- Institutional partners with authority, resources, credibility, or access
What You Will Learn and Contribute
Relationship Mapping
- Identify the types of relationships Make Me Visible needs to develop
- Separate contacts according to the purpose of the relationship
- Determine what Make Me Visible could responsibly ask from each audience
- Identify who has decision-making authority, subject-matter credibility, resources, public influence, investigative ability, or the power to open a meaningful door
- Map alternative routes when direct access is unavailable
- Distinguish a relevant contact from a visible but ineffective contact
Research and Qualification
- Research people and organizations before proposing outreach
- Review a person’s actual work, reporting, funding history, advocacy, institutional authority, or professional background
- Verify names, titles, organizations, public contact information, and current responsibilities
- Identify outdated positions, duplicates, unsupported assumptions, and guessed information
- Document why each contact matters
- Identify the specific role that person could play
- Apply a consistent qualification rubric before a contact enters the active system
- Use public and approved research sources responsibly
Messaging Development
- Develop separate message structures for different relationship categories
- Draft concise and personalized first-contact messages
- Explain why Make Me Visible is approaching that particular person
- Connect each message to the recipient’s demonstrated interests or work
- Develop follow-ups that add new value instead of repeating the original email
- Prepare responses to common questions
- End each message with one appropriate and manageable next-step request
- Revise messages based on feedback and actual response patterns
- Communicate about vulnerable people without sensationalizing or exploiting their experiences
Email Operations
- Learn how professional email campaigns are structured and monitored
- Develop an approved process for initial contact, follow-up, response handling, and handoff
- Use approved accounts, tools, templates, and contact records
- Help maintain accurate sender information and appropriate opt-out procedures
- Maintain suppression and do-not-contact information
- Avoid deceptive subject lines, guessed addresses, purchased lists, and indiscriminate sending
- Test subject lines, timing, message length, and calls to action in controlled batches
- Monitor deliverability, responses, referrals, and next actions
- Escalate technical, privacy, or compliance concerns promptly
Contact and Relationship Records
- Help develop a contact database that records:
- Who the person is
- Their current role and organization
- Why they matter
- The evidence supporting their relevance
- The public source of their contact information
- The purpose of the proposed relationship
- When and how they were contacted
- Which message they received
- Their response
- The next action and responsible team member
- Follow-up dates
- Introductions, meetings, commitments, outcomes, and closure reasons
- Maintain complete relationship history during handoffs
- Prevent duplicate, conflicting, or inappropriate outreach
- Record opt-outs and contact restrictions accurately
Follow-Through and Handoffs
- Monitor every approved response
- Identify positive, neutral, negative, and referral-based responses
- Route opportunities to the appropriate team member
- Preserve the context and purpose of the relationship during handoff
- Track whether the next action occurred
- Identify leads at risk of becoming inactive
- Develop an alternative path when the obvious route fails
- Close records responsibly when no further action is appropriate
Reporting and System Improvement
- Produce weekly reports distinguishing activity from progress
- Track qualified contacts, approved messages, responses, referrals, conversations, pending actions, commitments, and completed outcomes
- Analyze why contacts opened, responded, declined, referred, or remained silent when reliable data is available
- Identify weaknesses in contact selection, messaging, timing, deliverability, or follow-through
- Recommend specific changes based on evidence
- Document system improvements so another person can understand and continue the process
What This Fellowship Is Not
This fellowship is not:
- Purchasing a list and calling it research
- Collecting famous names without knowing why they matter
- Guessing email addresses without verification
- Copying the same message to unrelated audiences
- Sending unapproved mass emails
- Measuring success only by the number of messages sent
- Ignoring a lead after the first unanswered message
- Contacting people without preserving the history of the relationship
- Using confidential information to create a more dramatic pitch
- Continuing to contact someone who has asked not to be contacted
It is not enough to state that someone did not respond. The fellow will learn to examine whether the wrong person was selected, the message was weak, the request was unclear, the timing was poor, another introduction route exists, or another organization has greater authority to act.
Make Me Visible values credible relationships, opened doors, documented next steps, and responsible follow-through—not inflated activity numbers.
Educational Structure and Supervision
Each fellow will receive:
- An Individual Fellowship Plan identifying learning goals
- Orientation covering Make Me Visible’s mission, audiences, confidentiality, responsible outreach, and contact-data handling
- Weekly instructional and relationship-development meetings
- Defined assignments connected to specific learning objectives
- Regular access to a designated supervisor
- Feedback on research, qualification decisions, messages, tracking, and reporting
- Opportunities to revise and strengthen work
- A midpoint evaluation and final skills assessment
- Coordination with an academic institution when credit is requested
- A final summary of the skills and professional competencies demonstrated during the fellowship
Fellowship Milestones
Weeks 1–2: Foundations and System Mapping
- Complete confidentiality and responsible-outreach orientation
- Review Make Me Visible’s audiences and relationship objectives
- Learn the difference between a contact, lead, relationship, opportunity, and completed outcome
- Study approved contact-research and email practices
- Establish an Individual Fellowship Plan
- Map the proposed relationship-development workflow
Weeks 3–5: Research and Qualification System
- Develop a contact qualification rubric
- Define required research fields and source standards
- Build a structured contact-database framework
- Research an initial supervised group of contacts
- Remove duplicates, outdated roles, and unsupported entries
- Present qualification decisions for review
Weeks 6–8: Messaging and Follow-Up System
- Develop separate message structures for selected audiences
- Draft initial messages, follow-ups, and response pathways
- Define appropriate calls to action
- Create quality-control and approval steps
- Revise messages following review
- Prepare a controlled pilot plan
Weeks 9–12: Supervised Pilot and Analysis
- Participate in approved outreach using controlled batches
- Monitor responses, referrals, opt-outs, and next actions
- Maintain accurate relationship records
- Route positive responses through the approved handoff process
- Analyze contact selection, messaging, timing, and response patterns
- Recommend evidence-based improvements
Weeks 13–15: Optimization, Capstone, and Handoff
- Refine the research, messaging, follow-up, and reporting system
- Complete a written operating guide
- Present findings, limitations, results, and recommended next steps
- Produce a redacted portfolio-quality work sample
- Complete a final skills assessment
- Complete a responsible system and documentation handoff
Measurable Learning Deliverables
By the end of the 3.5-month fellowship, the participant should be able to demonstrate meaningful progress through work such as:
- A relationship-development map
- A contact qualification rubric
- A documented research standard
- A structured contact-database framework
- Audience-specific messaging for at least three relationship categories
- Initial-message and follow-up sequences
- A response-routing and handoff process
- A quality-control and approval checklist
- A weekly reporting dashboard
- A controlled and supervised outreach pilot
- A written analysis of what worked, what failed, and what should change
- A relationship-development operating guide
- A final capstone presentation
- A redacted portfolio-quality sample
- Documented improvement between the initial and final skills assessments
Every material statement about a contact must be connected to a reliable source. Work will be evaluated for accuracy, judgment, relevance, organization, confidentiality, initiative, responsiveness to feedback, and completion of agreed learning milestones.
Meetings, funding, sponsorships, partnerships, introductions, media interest, legal assistance, and other outcomes controlled by third parties cannot be guaranteed and will not be the sole measure of performance.
What Success Looks Like
Success means the fellow can demonstrate that:
- Contacts were selected for specific, documented reasons
- Names, positions, organizations, and public contact information were verified
- Messages were tailored to each audience and recipient
- Every approved outreach attempt was recorded
- Responses and follow-ups were handled promptly
- Positive responses were routed without losing context
- Opt-outs and contact restrictions were respected
- Weekly reports separated activity from meaningful progress
- Unsuccessful approaches produced thoughtful changes
- Another team member could understand and continue the system
- The fellow developed stronger research, writing, analytical, and operational judgment
Non-Negotiable Work Standard
Make Me Visible is being built for people who have already experienced dismissal, silence, abandonment, and institutional inaction. The team cannot repeat those patterns internally.
Fellows must research independently, make thoughtful recommendations, document their work, communicate blockers promptly, and ask focused questions when leadership input is genuinely required.
Initiative does not mean making unauthorized decisions. It means investigating the problem, proposing a credible path forward, identifying risks, and continuing to work when the first route does not succeed.
Repeated missed deadlines, unverified contacts, inaccurate claims, generic work, incomplete records, mishandling of confidential information, unexplained silence, or failure to respond to feedback may result in reassignment and may lead to the fellowship ending under the written agreement.
Urgency matters because the mission is urgent. Urgency does not excuse careless research, inaccurate information, excessive outreach, or irresponsible messaging.
Who Should Apply
Apply if you:
- Are pursuing or recently completed studies in communications, public relations, business, marketing, information systems, public policy, law, nonprofit management, research, or a related field
- Have experience with research, relationship development, email operations, CRM systems, advocacy, partnerships, or business development
- Can verify what you find and document the supporting source
- Can identify the individual with actual authority instead of contacting the first visible employee
- Understand personalization, follow-up timing, contact organization, response management, and responsible handoffs
- Can write like a thoughtful person rather than a sales template
- Can communicate about vulnerable people without exploiting or sensationalizing their experiences
- Can turn a broad objective into an organized process
- Continue searching when the obvious route does not work
- Accept substantive feedback and improve the work
- Can explain what is working using evidence
Prior experience building a complete cold-email system is helpful but not required. Strong research, careful writing, sound judgment, organization, and a willingness to learn are more important than exaggerated claims of expertise.
What You Will Gain
This fellowship provides supervised experience in:
- Relationship mapping and audience segmentation
- Contact research and qualification
- Decision-maker identification
- CRM and contact-database design
- Personalized email development
- Follow-up sequence design
- Email operations and deliverability fundamentals
- Response management and opportunity routing
- Reporting and performance analysis
- Controlled message testing
- Privacy-conscious contact handling
- Advocacy, partnership, media, funding, and institutional outreach
- Translating a mission into a repeatable operating system
- Receiving substantive feedback and improving work through revision
Fellows will not be given meaningless administrative assignments simply to fill time. Work will be connected to defined learning objectives and supervised opportunities to build practical, transferable skills.
By the end of the fellowship, participants should leave with a functioning system they helped develop, stronger professional judgment, tangible evidence of their capabilities, and a deeper understanding of how disciplined relationship development can create meaningful pathways for vulnerable people.
Important Fellowship Boundaries
The fellow will not:
- Send external messages without authorization
- Purchase, scrape, or upload unapproved contact lists
- Use guessed contact information as verified information
- Contact anyone who has opted out
- Place confidential legal, medical, financial, or personal information in outreach systems
- Upload protected information to personal accounts, unapproved platforms, or AI tools