Job Summary
For this role, Elevate seeks skilled institutional fundraising professionals with the confidence, flexibility, and persistence to coach clients on best-practices in fundraising strategy, grant writing, financials, and program evaluation while overseeing junior staff who produce compelling proposals and manage detailed grants calendars. Directors work independently to oversee 5-6 client teams at a time. They meet regularly with a dedicated Supervisor to report progress toward client goals, request support managing their teams, and to identify potential obstacles to a successful long-term client partnership for Elevate's Client Services department.
Strong candidates have at least four years of experience or comparable experience with the key tasks and responsibilities listed below and demonstrated ability to meet the key competencies for the role.
Key Tasks & Responsibilities:
Lead 4-5 client teams while overseeing the work of junior staff;
Develop and implement comprehensive institutional fundraising strategies in close partnership with clients that establish short- and long-term goals, prospecting priorities, and systems for cultivation and stewardship;
Lean on impeccable project management skills to ensure prospect research, cultivation, solicitation, and grand calendar management deliverables are completed on time and at a consistently high quality for each client;
Manage early career development professionals who are eager to learn from you about institutional fundraising;
Draft select proposals, reports, LOIs, and concept papers to ensure highly strategic writing on the most complex deliverables.
Contribute positively to Elevate's culture, commitment to equity and inclusion, and company values.
Key Competencies:
Fundraising & Nonprofit Expertise. You develop and clearly articulate strong institutional fundraising strategies for clients that work in at least two issue areas or funder landscapes. You demonstrate exemplary, strengths-based writing skills and work to understand the root causes of the challenges facing your client organizations' beneficiaries; demonstrate a command of program design sufficient to guide clients in the development of competitive funding proposals, even for programs and interventions that are new to you. You demonstrate a comfort with budgets, basic program evaluation, and other common grant attachments. You efficiently research well-aligned funding opportunities for different organizational needs and support the cultivation of funders with concise cultivation emails and talking points that demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the funding landscape and individual funder's interests. You work effectively with your teams and clients to maintain accurate, comprehensive, and regularly updated Salesforce records that support high quality grant calendars and data analysis.
Team Management. You demonstrate standard management skills which includes all standard Elevate processes (1:1s, task delegation, and oversight), consistent and timely feedback, and proactive approach to solving problems within the team. You identify potential performance challenges on your teams and discuss them with your supervisor. You facilitate an inclusive environment that's welcoming to all.
Problem Solving. You support team members who identify incomplete, inaccurate, or inconsistent program information that impacts the quality of our grants, helping to identify problems and develop solutions collaboratively. You check-in regularly with team members to ensure work products are on track for a timely submission and plan for contingencies in which needed information, data, or reviews are unavailable. You are comfortable addressing or adapting your strategy to common barriers to fundraising success, including, for example, minimal impact data or evaluation practices, weaknesses in organizational program/project budgeting, and limited staff capacity.
Consulting & Professional Communication. You independently present complex problems, goals, and ideas in a way that is accessible even to those unfamiliar with Elevate's work, such as program, finance, and evaluation staff. You introduce client points of contact to best-practices in fundraising strategy, budget development, measurement and evaluation, and organizational planning/sustainability. You proactively identify potential obstacles in the Elevate/Client relationship and work with a supervisor to address them.
Timeliness & Prioritization. You support your team while consistently delivering on projects, and communicate promptly to set expectations appropriately. You are accountable for the quality and timeliness of all work products you deliver to the client.
Information Processing. You independently implement an efficient and effective system for tracking and updating information relevant to your work. You independently identify information and data needs and fill them by finding what you need in Elevate's information systems (Dropbox, Salesforce, Google Groups, etc.), asking targeted questions in internal check-ins, and reaching out directly to the client. You recommend new tools and systems to better track information and data on your client teams.
Attention to Detail. You are accountable for all details in your team's work products. You catch details that other team members have overlooked or included in error. Clients rarely identify missing or inaccurate information that you did not already flag for their review.
Tools and Systems. You adhere to and consistently use Elevate's standard tools and systems; You know what information is logged in Salesforce by default and what information can be logged by request.
Continuous Learning. You proactively request feedback from others and are open to continuous constructive feedback. You consistently deliver useful feedback on both overall performance and specific deliverables to your peers and manager in a way that strengthens relationships and enables projects to advance more efficiently or effectively.
