Major Gift Solutions, LLC
Associate Director of Development
Job Description
June 25, 2024
*All applicants must fill out the questionnaire linked here to be considered for this position:
https://forms.gle/77HpjLHYsw5MbMe47
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The Associate Director of Development at Major Gift Solutions (MGS) is a full-time position, reporting directly to the founding owner of MGS. You will be the third member of a 3-person team at a growing firm, responsible for all aspects of client interface and fundraising services provided by Major Gift Solutions for our clientele.
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40+ hours per week, flexible schedule
9am to 4pm Central M-F virtual availability required
Work will be fully remote
Some in-person meetings will be required
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Salary commensurate with experience
Health insurance available
Profit-sharing retirement plan
Periodic bonus structures depending on client expectations and workflow
Three (3) weeks paid vacation, available after an initial 90-day period.
Five (5) additional sick days, per Illinois law, available after an initial 90-day period
Holiday schedule - 13 paid holidays per year
Offices closed last week of the year
Retirement match
Membership in Association of Fundraising Professionals and Association of Consultants to Nonprofits
:
- College degree required. Graduate degree preferred.
- At least five (5) years nonprofit experience or equivalent required, preferably in fundraising.
- Proficiency in Google suite.
- Proficiency in Office, including knowledge of managing mail merges. Familiarity with email marketing platforms (Mailchimp, Constant Contact) and Canva is a plus.
- Must be able to make direct phone calls to donors.
- Organized.
- Fast-paced.
- Ability to follow instructions.
- Comfortable in a startup environment.
- Excellent people skills. Kind and polite demeanor, especially when interacting with MGS clients and donors who give to our clients
- Ability to write. This includes letters, thank yous, blog posts, marketing material, and nonprofit donor outreach.
- Familiarity with donor Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.
- Good penmanship (for handwritten donor communications) is strongly preferred.
:
As the third member of a 3-member team, the Associate Director of Development will be a key partner in the work of client management and business success. The mission of Major Gift Solutions is to drive philanthropic revenue for our clients, most of which are small nonprofits (annual revenues between $250,000 and $2 million). To do this, we spend time getting to know our clients’ unique needs and create fundraising strategies appropriate for their situations. What makes Major Gift Solutions unique in the consultancy space is that we actually do the work of fundraising with and for our clients. This includes work in areas such as communications, online donor interface, email marketing, annual fund strategy, major gift fundraising, stewardship and gift acknowledgements, grant writing, and board development, among others.
Your job will be to work with the team at Major Gift Solutions, building on the processes and systems they have developed over the last four years of client work and helping develop further processes and systems that will allow Major Gift Solutions to serve its clients in the best possible way.
The following list of activities is a sampling of the type of work you will be expected to carry out. As your comfort-level and expertise continue to grow, you will be expected to manage these tasks on your own, ultimately becoming the primary client relationship manager for a portion of the clients served by Major Gift Solutions.
- You will be responsible for managing relationships with anywhere from 2 to 4 clients at a time.
- Attend client meetings - Client meetings are designed to analyze client fundraising strategy, provide feedback and critique, and create a list of deliverables managed by Major Gift Solutions. The Associate Director of Development will attend these meetings, take notes as appropriate, and be prepared to facilitate timely delivery of assigned tasks.
- Be a key partner in major gift portfolio outreach and cultivation. An important part of small nonprofit fundraising is major gift fundraising. To help our clients maximize potential around these gifts, Major Gift Solutions is directly involved in major gift fundraising for our clients. This includes managing major gift donor portfolios, helping design a moves management strategy, organizing major gift outreach and follow-up, hosting major gift fundraising meetings for our clients, recording major gift fundraising activity in the client’s database, and being a productive partner in the goal of generating major gift fundraising revenue.
- Help manage and maximize client database information. Major Gift Solutions works with a variety of donor CRM platforms. This includes Little Green Light, Neon One, Bloomerang, Altru, and others. The Associate Director of Development will partner with MGS leadership and work directly with clients to ensure client databases are appropriately managed - recording donor interaction, updating donor contact information, ensuring gifts are accurately recorded, facilitating moves management, etc.
- Monitor client email addresses. For the majority of clients Major Gift Solutions serves, the MGS team holds an email account with an individually named address - for example, development@client.org or even first.name@client.org. You will be responsible for helping monitor all client email accounts, evaluate which email messages require response, responding when assigned, and advising as appropriate.
- Help drive philanthropic revenue by filling your own calendar with donor meetings and helping schedule donor meetings for clients. The primary way to drive revenue for our organizations is to engage directly with donors. This is a unique and valuable service we provide for our clients. Your goal will be to fill your calendar with as many donor meetings as possible, consistent with client contracts.
- Assist nonprofits by helping write compelling gift acknowledgements and managing the timely delivery of the same. Work directly with clients to help manage processing of gifts - interact with clients to evaluate documentation that accompanies gifts, ensure donation is recorded appropriately in donor database, draft gift acknowledgement with appropriate tax-related terminology, deliver gift acknowledgements to donors in a timely way.
- Assist nonprofits by writing compelling appeal communications - emails, newsletters, mailed appeals, blog posts, etc. The primary medium for small nonprofit appeals is electronic communication. You will work within client CRM’s or email management platforms to construct, send, and monitor the responses to electronic appeals.
- Write grants as needed. The Associate Director of Development will be expected to create grant-application timelines and tracking systems with the purpose of creating philanthropic revenue from the successful application of grants.
- Manage mail merges - Understand how to format spreadsheets in Excel and Google sheets for the purpose of merging recipient information into emails and Word documents. Mail merges are used to create gift acknowledgements, electronic appeals, mass mailings, and major gift outreach strategies.
- Write donor proposals. As a major gift fundraiser, the Associate Director of Development will work with Bill Myatt to write compelling funding proposals on behalf of our clients. These will be written for major gift donors and will include such portions as executive summary, program details, mission, giving opportunities, and stewardship - branded on behalf of our clients.
- Other duties as required.
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* Keep in mind that each relationship manager at Major Gift Solutions is responsible for managing anywhere from 2 to 4 client relationships at a time.
- Host two virtual client meetings a month.
- Prepare agenda ahead of time. Send agenda to client at least 24 hours ahead of meeting.
- Take notes during meeting. Send followup email with deliverables and next steps at least 24 hours after meeting.
- Be attentive during meeting. Engage authentically with clients regarding fundraising strategies. Continue conversations around previous deliverables to help move fundraising projects forward.
- Monitor fundraising goals: revenue, cash-in, pledges, donor visits, donor retention, new donors.
- Analyze gift processing and gift acknowledgement strategy. Provide consulting where appropriate. Assist with facilitation of timely and appropriate recording of gifts and delivery of gift acknowledgements.
- Attend 4 donor visits a month - either individually or with nonprofit leadership.
- Apply to as many as 3 grants each year.
- Help write a major gift fundraising proposal that can be replicated and sent out to multiple major gift prospects.
- Help facilitate annual fund, or “entry-level” fundraising strategy - i.e., donations ranging from $1 to $1,000 annually. With most small nonprofits, this strategy is primarily electronic.
- Analyze current donor outreach strategy - evaluate items like timeliness of communications (once weekly, once monthly, etc.), open rates, response rates.
- Analyze retention rates - how many donors who gave two years ago gave again last year; how many donors have given multiple years in a row? On average, how many years in a row do your donors give?
- Analyze monthly giving and advise on best practices.
- Help draft appeal language as needed.
- Prepare fundraising reports at least on a quarterly basis.
- Be available to meet with board members and provide reports on fundraising activity.
:
Major Gift Solutions is a nonprofit consultancy startup with potential to grow quickly. There are over 1 million nonprofits in the United States, designed to help make our society better. They are run by driven and talented individuals, but the leadership of those nonprofits is often in need of assistance in the area of fundraising. Nonprofits that are solely dependent on government funding or large grants will eventually find that they are unable to sustain growth.
Major Gift Solutions exists to help those nonprofits locate and land philanthropic gifts from individuals. We offer services that include 1-on-1 coaching, designing electronic solicitations and direct mail solicitations, guiding nonprofit executives in their efforts to land large philanthropic gifts, assisting with budgeting and planning for fundraising efforts, board development and board reporting, planned giving, stewardship, and capital campaigns.
We prioritize the client experience. Our philosophy is that happy clients are good for business. We are not a typical fundraising consultancy, which charges high rates for minimal return on the nonprofit client’s investment. Our contracts with clients are typically long-term agreements. We do some project-based work, but our experience tells us that the most successful fundraising strategies are developed over long periods of time. We work with our clients to ensure they develop sustainable fundraising practices.
*For more information, reach out directly to William Myatt, Founder and CEO of Major Gift Solutions at .
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $70,000.00 - $85,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Retirement plan
- Vision insurance
Schedule:
Application Question(s):
- Did you complete the online questionnaire linked here? (Applicants who do not complete this portion of the application will not be considered.) https://forms.gle/77HpjLHYsw5MbMe47
Work Location: Remote