Development Coordinator

About the Role: 

The primary mission of the Development Coordinator is to develop and execute a broad donor experience strategy and support the Development Team (a sub-team within the Sustainability Team) in day-to-day operations. 

The Development Coordinator will report directly to the Vice President of Development and work primarily with the Sustainability and Executive Teams.

What You’ll be Doing: 

The responsibilities of the Development Coordinator will include but are not limited to, the following:

Strategy (20%): 

• Donor Experience: develop a comprehensive experience strategy for events, communications, and stewardship that engages key donors.
• Prospect Research: streamline our process and deliverables to ensure we’re targeting the right prospective donors at the right time, leveraging the right resources.

Execution (80%): 

• Donor Experience - Events (20%)
• Serve as the owner of Merit America events, including developing the high-level vision and working with leadership to create the overall plan, agenda, and run of show. Initial events are expected to include small and large donor-hosted gatherings and opportunities for donors to get to know our learners.
• Oversee all events logistics with administrative staff support to coordinate venues, catering, accommodations, communications, and materials production.
• Maintain accurate, up-to-date records and attendee data to track event effectiveness.
• Manage estimates, billing, invoicing, and contracts to ensure events are on budget.
• Donor Experience - Communications (40%)
• Collaborate cross-departmentally to improve and execute a calendar of consistent, high-quality stewardship moves. 
• Serve as point of contact with the marketing team to identify opportunities to share org-wide news and stories with donor audiences. 
• Draft communications such as email appeals, newsletter content, and annual reports.
• Sourcing learner and alumni stories for use in personalized donor-specific stewardship.
• Manage donor acknowledgment process, including gift processing and prompt thank you letters.
• Prospect Research: (30%)
• Conduct research to identify and qualify new donor leads.
• Conduct relationship mapping to help identify paths to connect with new leads. 
• Prepare meeting briefs for senior leaders.
• Maintain accurate records in the Salesforce database. 
• Other duties as assigned: (10%) 
• Assist with grant writing, reporting, tracking, and pulling data.
• Provide general administrative support to the Development Team.
• Identify opportunities for consolidation and standardization of systems and tools for the organization.
• Support with Sustainability Team and Executive Team offsites as needed.

What Makes a Successful Candidate: 

We know that women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities are often less likely to apply to a position if they don’t match 100% of the job qualifications.  Don’t let that be the reason you miss out on this opportunity!  We encourage you to apply if you can demonstrate many of these skills and competencies.  Below are the skills that are relevant for thriving in this role:

Must Haves: 

• Proven experience planning small and large events for a range of stakeholders, including donors, staff, partners, and alumni
• Proven experience working within a development department, including responsibility for data entry, reports, and research
• A track record of successful execution of both virtual and in-person events
• Exceptional organization and communication skills
• Demonstrated project management skills
• Experience managing budgets and contracts
• Be energized by our organizational mission - to provide a pathway to family-sustaining careers for low-wage workers.
• Proven history of living within our values
• Sense of deep personal responsibility for our collective success
• Commitment to DEIJ

Nice to Have: 

• Experience with Salesforce
• Event facilitation experience
• Experience measuring and evaluating the success of events

Other Logistics 

• This position is full-time: 4 days/week
• Location:  Remote
• Salary:  $75,700

Our goal is to have competitive and equitable compensation.  We have a market-based compensation approach which means that we benchmark each role from reputable data sources. We compare our benchmarks against similarly sized non-profit organizations with comparable annual budgets and geographical areas. We pay the same rate for the same roles and adjust to comply with statutory mandates.