Director, Individual Giving, Development

About the role

The Director of Individual Giving will lead the strategy, growth, and execution of Vera’s individual donor program, with a focus on building a strong and sustainable individual giving pipeline. This newly created role is both a frontline fundraiser and a strategic manager, responsible for personally cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding a portfolio of approximately 75 prospects with capacity of $100,000 or more, while ensuring growth of individual revenue across individual giving channels.

The Director will manage and support the PMG Manager, Midlevel Manager, Associate Director (Digital), and Events Manager, ensuring that individual donor engagement is integrated, coordinated, and aligned with organizational fundraising priorities. The Director will create and implement strategies to identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward individual donors, with a particular emphasis on elevating donors throughout the pipeline and increasing long-term philanthropic investment in the organization’s mission.

Responsibilities

• Frontline fundraising
  • Manage a personal portfolio of approximately 75 qualified prospects and donors with capacity of $100,000 or more, creating tailored cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship plans for each relationship.
  • Identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward individual donors, with a focus on securing significant gifts, increasing donor retention, and upgrading donors over time.
  • Prepare and review donor briefings, proposals, solicitation materials, stewardship reports, acknowledgments, and other written materials needed to advance individual giving relationships.
  • Partner and engage organization leadership and programmatic staff on moves management and cultivation.
  • Maintain accurate and timely donor records, contact reports, next steps, and pipeline information in the organization’s CRM.
• Individual giving strategy and management
  • Develop and lead a comprehensive individual giving strategy that advances donors through the organization’s pipeline, from digital and event-based engagement to midlevel, major, and principal giving.
  • Partner with development leadership, executive leadership, board members, program staff, communications, and finance colleagues to shape compelling cases for support and donor engagement opportunities.
  • Ensure digital fundraising and donor communications strategies support acquisition, retention, segmentation, personalization, and donor movement across the pipeline.
  • Create systems and strategies that connect annual, midlevel, digital, events, and major gifts work into a cohesive donor experience and clear moves management pipeline.
  • Use donor data, wealth screening, engagement metrics, and prospect research to set priorities, identify upgrade opportunities, and evaluate progress toward revenue and activity goals.
• Cross-team collaboration
  • Oversee the PMG Manager, Midlevel Manager, Digital Associate Director, and Events Manager, providing strategic direction, coaching, accountability, and coordination across individual giving functions.
  • Monitor individual giving performance against goals, provide regular reporting, and recommend adjustments to strategy based on results, donor behavior, and organizational priorities.

Requirements

Required:

• Advanced degree and 12+ years of significant professional experience in individual and major gift fundraising, including managing other fundraisers. In lieu of degree requirement, applicable work or life experience may be considered.
• Ability to close 6 and 7 figure gifts and experience securing gifts from prospects.
• Minimum of 3 years of team management experience.

Preferred:

• Advanced degree preferred.

Skills

• Demonstrated success managing a portfolio of high-capacity prospects and donors, including relationships with seven-figure giving potential.
• Experience designing and implementing individual giving strategies that move donors through a pipeline from acquisition and midlevel engagement to major and principal gifts.
• Proven ability to supervise, coach, and align staff across multiple fundraising functions, including major gifts, midlevel giving, digital fundraising, and events.
• Strong understanding of relationship-based fundraising best practices.
• Experience partnering with senior leaders, board members, volunteers, and cross-functional colleagues to advance donor relationships and fundraising goals.
• Experience supervising, mentoring, and developing fundraising or donor engagement staff, with a track record of setting goals, managing performance, and building collaborative team culture.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to translate organizational priorities into compelling donor-facing materials.
• Proficiency with donor databases or CRM systems, reporting tools, and data-informed fundraising practices.
• Commitment to Vera’s mission and to building authentic, respectful, and long-term relationships with donors and colleagues.

Location

This role will report to Vera’s Brooklyn, NY office. Employees adhere to a hybrid schedule and are in-office on an alternating schedule that generally amounts to 10 days per month.

Pay

The compensation range for this position is $180,000 - $200,000. Actual salaries will vary depending on factors including but not limited to experience and performance.

Benefits

As an employer of choice in our field, supporting Vera staff—both personally and professionally—is a priority. Benefits include:

• Generous paid time off.
• A comprehensive health insurance plan.
• Student loan repayment benefits.
• Professional development training opportunities and up to $2,000 annually for education costs and fees relevant to Vera work.
• Employer-funded retirement plan.
• Flexible time.
• Merit pay.

Learn more about Vera’s benefits offerings.