POSITION Director, Donor Communications
EXEMPT
DEPARTMENT Donor Experience
SUMMARY DESCRIPTION OF POSITION
The Director, Donor Communications is a member of Donor Experience and reports to the Executive Vice President, Donor Experience. This position works with a cross-departmental team including Donor Relations, Business Intelligence Group, and Creative Services to engage and expand the Federation’s donor base via traditional and contemporary outreach methods.
The Director, Donor Communications plans and manages Federation’s fundraising efforts relating to all community supporter programs. This position is responsible for assessing programs and benefits, developing donor acquisition and retention strategies, and stewarding relationships with Federation supporters. The Director, Donor Communications is responsible for all aspects of the Federation’s direct response fundraising, which includes: direct mail, telemarketing, texting, and digital campaigns. Additional responsibilities include all Federation’s methods of acknowledgements and donor recognition.
PRINCIPAL DUTIES:
AREAS OF WORK & OVERSIGHT
• Recommend, develop, and execute direct response fundraising strategies, formats, and campaigns to acquire and retain donors through data-driven outreach and mass solicitation, including but not limited to direct mail, texting, telemarketing, website marketing, and social media campaigns; actively explore new strategies and creatively plan and implement.
• Create and execute donor conversion, retention and upgrade strategies.
• Evaluate and manage monthly giving, tribute, memorial, and matching gift strategies.
• Manage year-end and other targeted appeals; develop new appeals and tactics to increase response and expand donor base.
• Create and manage methods of acknowledgements and recognition.
PLANNING & COLLABORATION
• Liaise with internal staff and outside vendors, providing resources and direction, and communicate with internal stakeholders. Support and collaborate with Digital Marketing colleagues.
• In conjunction with Creative Services and Fundraising teams, collaborate in development of timetable for campaigns and messages; manage the digital fundraising components at selected events.
• Work with Creative services to develop timely messaging for all acknowledgements and thank you letters.
• Work with the Creative Services team to ensure website capabilities and fundraising related content is current, aligned, and optimized in support of fundraising objectives.
• Work with necessary stakeholders and staff to ensure all communications are in line with organizational messaging.
• Work closely with Database team to ensure good data hygiene.
• Act as liaison to Accounting team to ensure proper coding and tracking of gifts.
EXECUTION
• Determine audience segmentation and ensure coding and suppressions are being applied.
• Create appeal codes for all mailings and e-mails; ensure all source codes are created and applied to donor records for tracking purposes.
• Implement and monitor test plans, metrics and analysis of fundraising campaigns to increase response and upgrade rates
• Segment donors and prospects from Blackbaud CRM to achieve fundraising revenue objectives. Propose segmentation strategies.
• Provide quality control for all direct solicitation efforts throughout development, approval and printing processes, including final proofing of copy, design and print production.
• Identify and manage direct response campaign costs and make recommendations on how to best deploy allocated resources for each campaign, whether internal or via external vendors.
• Maintain awareness of industry trends, benchmarks and innovations, using them to further inform recommendations.
ANALYSIS
• Develop and maintain a framework for tracking, evaluating, and optimizing campaign performance and engagement metrics; analyze and translate anecdotal or qualitative data into recommendations and plans.
• Partner with Data Analytics Manager to understand campaign performance to determine which strategies should are most effective and which ones should be eliminated.
• Leverage key learnings across direct response programs to stimulate lift in response.
• Establish test and learn culture that helps to drive response rates.
ADDITIONAL DUTIES
Be available to supervisor for additional assignments, as required, including assisting with the Campaign.
EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED POSITION
• Direct response fundraising/sales experience; experience using online tools, processes and techniques for donor development, engagement, recruitment, retention, conversions and list building is required.
• Experience with developing and performing A|B and multivariate email tests, analyzing results and implementing learnings from tests.
• Experience with complex data sets and knowledge of CRM technology (Blackbaud CRM preferred)
• Comfort in a data-driven environment that is supported by strong quantitative skills and proficiency in performing analyses in Excel
• High level of competence in use and knowledge of CRM-driven fundraising tools.
• Solid project management skills that demonstrate the ability to manage priorities, set and meet deadlines, and manage budgets while maintaining accuracy and efficiency of the deliverables.
• Ability to think both strategically, tactically, and creatively.
• Experience in cross-departmental coordination in a busy organization.
• Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Deep experience in a relevant fundraising/sales/marketing role related to nonprofit organization membership and/or development experience; cross-channel marketing experience preferred.
• Proven track record of driving positive results.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills that allow you to clearly articulate ideas and results in a constructive way.
$73,061 to $107,935