Fund Development Director

Position Summary

EduCare Foundation is seeking a full-time (40 hours / week) fundraising professional to manage philanthropic fundraising efforts. The ideal candidate will have a deep commitment to youth development, education, and social justice, and will have skill sets at the intersections of individual giving, major donor giving, campaign management, communications, grant management, and corporate philanthropy, as well as a proven track record for meeting and exceeding annual non-profit financial goals.

Essential Duties and Key Responsibilities include the following:

• Develops and implements an ongoing comprehensive, strategic fundraising plan with specific, measurable performance metrics that will enable EduCare to diversify and increase funding:

o Aligns fundraising plan with EduCare’s long term visionary strategic plan and shorter term

operational strategic plan.

o Monitors the plan’s performance metrics, and frequently reports interim results to EduCare’s President, Leadership Team and Board of Directors.

• Guides the strategy, operations and growth of EduCare’s giving and major donor efforts. Key work includes identifying and cultivating new donors, relationship-building and stewardship, leading campaigns, and growing our base of donors.

o Develops and manages a portfolio of current and prospective individual donors to cultivate, solicit, and steward. Creatively solicit and encourage new gifts, renewed, increased and major gift donations.

o Builds and implements a strategy to grow our network of individual donors, including major

donors. This strategy will include building new avenues for donor base expansion, researching

prospects, developing talking points, building relationships, drafting correspondence, and

participating in donor meetings. Will also support EduCare’s staff in cultivating relationships.

o Leads the design and coordination of three fundraising campaigns per year. This includes an end-of-year fundraising appeal, a spring/summer appeal, and a monthly giving campaign. Duties include crafting compelling appeal language, and developing segmented email and mailing lists.

Responsibilities also include tracking and reporting results of appeals and campaigns, adjusting strategies as necessary.

o Coordinates acknowledgement of all gifts and pledges; builds ongoing relationships with donors utilizing a mix of stewardship strategies.

o Plans, organizes, and executes fundraising events if they are included in the fundraising strategic plan.

• Expands EduCare’s institutional giving portfolio, which includes identifying and applying for new foundation and corporate giving opportunities and sponsorships, submitting high quality and timely reports to our funders; and stewarding positive relationships with a growing base of institutional funders.

o Researches and identifies new institutional (foundation and corporate) giving opportunities.

o Prepares compelling grant asks, and corporate gift pitches.

o Manages the timely submission of required reporting.

o Cultivates relationships with funders to secure repeat and increased gifts.

• Manages EduCare’s database / CRM software, which is currently Salesforce.

o Keeps records current for all donors and prospects, and institutional funders.

o Analyzes data to discover new development opportunities and set objectives to align with broader organizational goals.

o Identifies trends in giving to ensure all donors and institutional funders are managed by the

appropriate revenue stream.

o Tracks, analyzes, and reports on results from allocated campaigns. Ensures analysis of results of all campaigns and uses data to develop and influence future activity and anticipates and adjusts effective contingency plans.

• Strengthens EduCare’s communications outreach, which includes leading the effort to grow our individual donors and institutional giving base; co-creating appeal letters; contributing to the annual report; and ensuring that inspiring stories from our students and staff reach current and prospective donors.

o Identifies and implements ways that are aligned with our content strategy to grow our email list and establish website and social media conversions.

o Leads efforts to grow our donor and institutional giving base through tactics including designing and producing appeal letters, brochures, and annual reports.

o Works with the Communications team to ensure that inspiring stories from our membership reach current and prospective donors.

o Represents EduCare externally, advancing our mission and visibility by participating in Los Angeles area professional fundraising groups, chambers of commerce, conferences, etc.

o Travels frequently to school sites in order to interact with staff; communicate fundraising activities and successes; to experience the services that EduCare provides; and to clearly understand funding needs. Will take interested donors and institutional funders to observe programs at the school sites.

• Organizational governance responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

o Participates in Leadership Team meetings, Management Team meetings, Communications Team meetings, and regular Fund Development and Board of Directors meetings.

o Engages the Board of Directors in meaningful fundraising activities.

o With the Finance Team, creates the annual fundraising revenue and expense plan to incorporate into EduCare’s annual organizational budget.

o Participates in staff-wide meetings and trainings, and strategic planning processes.

Performs other duties or projects as assigned.

Qualifications and Skills

Combination of formal education, and paid work experience will be considered to meet the following:

• Minimum of 3-5 years' experience with fundraising, individual donor programs, community organizing, and annual giving programs.

• Minimum of 3-5 years' experience with grant management and corporate giving including identifying, applying and reporting on institutional gifts.

• Experience in educational or youth-related non-profits highly preferred.

• Strong relationship building skills; listening to and taking an interest in others.

• Demonstrated ability to encourage, train, and support people as collaborators, fundraisers, and donor organizers.

• Proven ability to design and implement effective strategies to create high gift conversion from mass donor appeals, individual donor/prospect outreach, and specialized fundraising campaigns.

• Experience in creating and expanding a planned giving program.

• Experience and skill creating and managing online, and social media based fundraising campaigns.

• Proficiency in building networks, whether through fundraising or community organizing.

• Excellent productivity skills; self-motivated with accuracy and attention to detail.

• A well-developed and creative narrative strategy; an ability to work with the Communications team to build campaigns, appeals, and newsletters that represent EduCare’s work and vision.

• Solid writing and editing experience.

• Technical proficiency with Google Workspace and CRMs (EduCare uses Salesforce and Mail Chimp).

• Impeccable honesty, integrity, and fiduciary qualities. Interest and ability to professionally and enthusiastically represent EduCare in the public eye.

• Demonstrates persistence and resilience by the ability to learn from mistakes, receive and give feedback to others, and make any needed course corrections.

• Committed to building a culture of self-direction, mutual accountability, creativity, respect, and joy.