The Director of Development will lead Teach For America-Greater Delta (Arkansas) to raise $6 million annually in order to (1) support a teaching corps of high-impact first and second-year teachers each year, (2) grow the scale, strength, and impact of our local alumni movement, and (3) strengthen our role as a key partner and leader in the local movement to end educational inequity. As Director of Development, you will set vision and execute strategy to build the support necessary to fuel our work within the Arkansas community and to create a meaningful experience for current and potential supporters. In your role, you will build relationships and networks within the community externally and know our programmatic work internally in order to share our impact and organizational values with donors and supporters. You will report directly to our Deputy Executive Director.
Prospect Research and Opportunity Development (20%)
- Through research and fieldwork, prospect individuals and institutions who are currently, or who have the potential to, invest in education and social reforms within Arkansas
- Through immersion with regional management, colleagues, corps members, and alumni, learn and understand our organizational vision and strategy in order to identify the intersection of philanthropic priorities with our work
- Develop consensus with the Deputy Executive Director and national development partners on the types of donors that are strategic to pursue
- Serve as an active and engaged member of the Development, Ops, and Whole Team working in partnership with colleagues to achieve our goals, increase our impact, and cultivate allies across the regional footprint and beyond
Revenue Strategic Planning and Goal Management (20%)
- Create a project management plan and laterally manage team engagement and operations to ensure we have a robust and vetted donor pipeline as an input into our annual planning process
- Contribute to and synthesize our team’s vision and strategy for how Teach For America-Greater Delta builds an ever-growing network of diverse private and public sector champions to meet the region’s fundraising goals
- Analyze goal progress, diagnose root causes for your operation’s successes and gaps, propose course adjustments in strategy and operations, and demonstrate continual adaptation and learning
- Develop strategies and solutions to address root causes, and propose and execute the strategies across our broader team to meet these goals
- Optimize, in some cases design, and maintain the IT systems that we use to project plan, analyze progress towards goals, and course adjust, ensuring that annual giving campaigns are effectively deployed across stakeholders and efficiently deployed across various actors on our regional team
Donor Experience and Information Management (20%)
- Set vision for the donor experience, designing strategies to increase proximity of supporters and the efforts of educational equity
- Set vision and direction for communications and outreach to our donors and decide, in collaboration with the Deputy Executive Director, how to deploy staff capacity to meet our donor stewardship and experience needs
- Prioritize key actions for you, your Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director, such as external meetings, event appearances, and/or correspondence, and prepare/support them to execute your cultivation and stewardship plans
- Use Salesforce to retain accurate and complete information about our donors and your stewardship strategy, including giving data, contact data, affiliations, correspondence records, grant documentation, historical touch-points with Teach For America, and your strategic insights
Cross-Functional Mobilization and Executive Leadership (20%)
- Play a key role in setting vision and strategy for the functional team and collaborate with leaders from other teams to execute regional strategic plan
- Operate with a high level of personal responsibility for the region’s functions as a whole, keeping the health of the enterprise as a top priority
- Influence and compel others across the regional team to build understanding and investment in your work’s vital impact on our broader mission, such as managing the alumni and new donor giving campaigns that require activation of all functional teams and investment of our regional team
- Propose, develop and initiate strategies and channels for sharing Development insights regionally, and for integrating Development perspectives into programmatic decision-making
- Internalize the work of other functional teams through conversations, collaborations, and shared field time so that you can accurately articulate the efforts of our leaders
- Partner with the Leadership and Learning team to develop a cohort of 2CM interested in a leadership pathway related to development, non-profit giving, and the business sector to complete capstone projects (grant writing, campaigns, narrative capture, etc.).
Lead Across the Continuum and Build the Movement (10%)
- Collaborate with other regional functional teams to share stories of our work in ways that move our collective work forward toward our vision and goals
- Build and maintain relationships with principals and other school staff and/or school district personnel that foster partnership
- Maintain systems for data collection that ensure we can report out on progress and goals in a way that supports our collective work as a region
- Engage with all Leadership and Learning teams and regional and community leaders to plan for the participant journey, including but not limited to collaborating on planning for summer engagement with new corps members, identifying partnership opportunities in the schools and districts, community engagement and ensuring the alignment of programming across journey
- Engage with the entire staff to support design of participant experiences to ensure excellence and cohesion across the continuum
Region-wide and Organization-wide Responsibilities (10%)
Teach For America thrives on cross-functional partnerships throughout our organization. Our staff members are skilled in working across layers, understanding and managing through the reality of competing commitments, navigating these situations with grace, and being culture leaders within our regional team. We do this by upholding an orientation towards flexibility and generosity while also remaining deeply committed to a sense of possibility and achievement. While some days we work independently to achieve milestones, realizing our goals requires regular collaboration at all levels. Everyone shows their support for region-and-organization-wide initiatives by actively engaging in the following:
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness professional development
- Corps member induction
- Corps member professional development days
- Corps member hiring events
- Corps member acceptance confirmation
- Regional staff recruitment and talent cultivation
- Cross-functional special projects
- Corps member selection interviews
- All staff leadership development and team building
- Regional social events with staff, corps members, and alumni
- At least five years of work experience is strongly preferred.
- Knowledge of or experience in Teach For America is preferred.
- Knowledge of the philanthropic landscape in Akransas preferred.
- Prior experience managing a market, portfolio of clients/constituents, or operation towards measureable goals (i.e. registration goals, sales goals, billings, media/brand mentions, recruitment goals, organizational efficiency goals, etc.) is required; prior experience in fundraising is preferred.
Work Demands
- Willingness and ability to participate, occasionally, in events that fall on nights and/or weekends.
- Willingness and ability to travel at least once per year for professional development purposes.
Skills
- Ability to remain organized and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment, with strong strategic and operational planning skills.
- Interest and skill in working across layers and collaborating with others to achieve outcomes.
- Ability to create strategic proposals that compel corporations and individuals to invest in the organization while also foreseeing, avoiding, and mitigating risks to the organization’s funding and public perception; skill in understanding the perspectives of others and developing communications to build trust, rapport and support, with exceptional customer-service instincts; strong interpersonal writing skills, effectively tailoring writing for different audiences.
- Ability to use Microsoft Excel to organize and analyze priorities, goals, tasks and data. Some prior experience with Salesforce is ideal; comfort in learning and using new IT systems like Salesforce is required.
- Drive and commitment to continuously develop and better yourself, your team, and Teach For America.
- Dedication to furthering Teach For America’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness through personal identity exploration.
- Dedication to and consistent embodiment of our organization’s core values.