Development Strategist, Working Families, Brooklyn, NY
Kristin Burgess
Working Families
The Working Families Party and Working Families Organization are seeking a Development Strategist to help our organizations sustain, cultivate and grow the gift size and quantity among our base of individual donors. Working Families seeks to build a new multi-racial working-class political alignment in America. We believe that middle class, owning class and wealthy people will benefit from building multi-racial working-class political power and have a role to play in resourcing the Working Families vision. This person will report to our Development Director and work closely with key staff and donor leaders to implement cultivation and acknowledgement activities, lead efforts to increase class awareness and giving among supporters, and manage systems to identify and track our prospects and pledges.
In addition to a significant online small donor base that contributed over a million dollars in 2018, foundations and unions have historically provided the lion’s share of our funding. Our biggest gap is among medium and high dollar individual donors. The primary growth focus for the development department between 2019-2021 is to significantly increase and improve our medium and high donor programs. In the long term we believe Working Families can and should be funded primarily by a mass base of individuals and this role will be laying groundwork towards that long term goal.
It is important to note that our Development Department is new at Working Families and the Development Strategist will be the second staff member in the department joining the Development Director. The first several months will include building systems and programs from the ground up and may include adjustments to responsibilities.
Key Job Responsibilities:
- Working with the Development Director to develop fundraising goals for individual donor strategies and to evaluate the success of activities.
- Planning online and in-person programs and events that deepen the commitment of donors to the Working Families vision in order to renew/increase their own gifts and to fundraise from their peers.
- Leading acknowledgement and cultivation initiatives (such as mailings, phone banks, and peer-to-peer texting campaigns) that result in higher renewal rates, larger contributions, and multi-year commitments from supporters.
- Providing coaching and support to staff to increase their confidence in raising money from small, medium and high dollar individual donors, and shifting towards a membership culture across the organization with consistent membership asks in the field and multiple staff holding major donor programs.
- Maintaining our individual donor database of current and prospective donors and their pledges.
Key Qualifications:
- Individual donor competency: Experience leading individual donor programs that include multiple different activities and has set both realistic and ambitious goals.
- Detail oriented: A commitment to maintaining thorough tracking systems where no detail falls through the cracks.
- Team leader: Ability to lead collaborative projects that rely on many participants following through, and to support others to build confidence and break through hang ups.
- Independence: The ability to work independently and remotely (our organizations are spread out across the country).
- Mission alignment: Alignment with the Working Families vision and an organizing approach to fundraising.
Salary for this role will be $60,000 to $75,000, depending on experience. A competitive benefits package includes health, dental, vision, and life insurance, a 401(k) retirement plan, paid holidays, and generous vacation and sick time. Opportunities for additional training and advancement are available.
Start Date: Fall or Winter of 2019
We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to economic, racial and social justice. Women, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, and members of other historically disenfranchised populations are strongly encouraged to apply.