Using a portfolio model, the Prospect Strategy & Research team institutes and conducts prospect development best practices for all development, event, and board activities across the organization. This position provides the unique opportunity for team members to telecommute or work from one of Teach for America’s 51 regional offices.
As the Manager, Prospect Strategy & Research, you will directly impact our organization’s fundraising efforts by identifying and evaluating a pool of potential and current donors. With a client facing focus, your prospect development work will contribute strongly to our ability to make strategic decisions regarding fundraising initiatives and campaigns. You will directly manage and execute prospect development activities for a portfolio of fundraising teams, allowing fundraisers to focus on building strong relationships with current and potential donors. Some specific work examples include: defining prospect development strategies, assessing prospect and donor pipelines, and researching and documenting board member and champion networks.
Prospect Strategy and Research (60%)
- Evaluate prospect development knowledge and capacity of fundraisers assigned to your portfolio. Provide tailored guidance and trainings to improve and support prospect research.
- Work with aligned staff to implement strategies to ensure prospect development efficiency and effectiveness.
- Employ prospect research and management best practices to create a healthy and robust pipeline for regions to increase base of support and knowledge of prospects.
- Engage in development strategy discussions with fundraisers.
- Systematically maintain prospect and donor information in Salesforce, including updating and maintaining biographical, philanthropic, and affiliation data from internal and external sources.
- Monitor information sources and distribute relevant news about prospective and current donors, and fundraising trends.
- Provide strategic advice, suggest prospects, and provide background information for events.
Prospect Management (25%)
- Help develop and implement new donor-centric prospect management system.
- Assign current and newly-identified potential donors to appropriate fundraisers and help monitor their progression through the development cycle.
- Evaluate prospecting, assignment, and qualification activities in order to propose improvements.
- Participate in moves management meetings.
Analysis (15%)
- Present prospect development data in an engaging and accessible way to increase comprehension and usability.
- Utilize internal and external data to support and inform organizational priorities and campaigns. Including but not limited to: wealth screening, data mining, relationship and geographical mapping.
- Help develop and employ methods to determine effectiveness of current prospect research activities and identify opportunities for improvement.
- Minimum of 2-4 years of prospect development experience preferred
- Strong ability to interpret and synthesize data and information from multiple sources to develop insights and recommendations
- Ability to think critically and strategically while making timely decisions and demonstrating good judgment
- Strong written, verbal, and virtual communication skills
- Excited by challenges and opportunities for problem solving
- Superb organization, detail-orientation, and project management skills
- Strong training and relationship management skills, preferred
- Proficiency with online research databases or screening services, required
- Proficiency with Salesforce or other CRM database, required
- Proficiency and comfort with Microsoft office applications, including Access, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, is required