Director of Development Communications
for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule). So we can have About the role
. Then we need to include content from "About the Role:" paragraph. Then we have "Specific Duties:" which includes subheadings like Lead Development Communications Strategy, Develop Donor Focused Messaging, etc. Those could be considered responsibilities. We could group them under a Responsibilities
with - items. But we need to preserve all substantive information. The posting includes many details under Specific Duties with bullet-like sentences. We could turn each bullet into
- . However we need to decide whether to keep subheadings as part of list items or separate headings. The instruction: Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. So we can create a
with each duty as - . The subheadings like "Lead Development Communications Strategy" could be bolded within
- or we could keep them as part of the text. Probably keep them as part of
- text.
Then we have "Provide Copywriting and Editorial Support" and "Strengthen Visual Branding" also under Specific Duties. So all those are duties.
Then "Required Qualifications:" -> we can put under
Qualifications
with - .
Then "Success in This Role:" maybe could be a
paragraph.
Then "How to Apply" and "About the Mercatus Center" and "Employee Benefits Review" etc. We need to include benefits if present. The posting includes "Employee Benefits ReviewSalary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience. In addition, Mercatus provides excellent benefits to all individual employees, including full health and dental coverage, unlimited paid time off, long-term disability and life insurance, a 403(b) retirement savings program, parking/travel benefits, and twelve free credits per year at George Mason University."
We need to include Benefits section only if posting actually states them. It does state benefits. So we should have
Benefits
with - items.
We must not include Pay or Schedule sections unless posting actually states them. It says "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's not a specific number, but it's still mention of salary. The instruction: never emit a heading followed by filler/placeholder text (e.g. "commensurate with experience", "not specified", "N/A", "varies", "TBD") and never create Pay/Schedule/Benefits sections unless the posting actually states them. For Pay, they say "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's basically placeholder; it's not a specific figure. According to instruction, we should not create Pay section if it's just "commensurate with experience". So we should omit Pay section.
Schedule: not mentioned, omit.
EEO statement etc should be removed as boilerplate.
Also remove "How to Apply", "About the Mercatus Center" maybe? The instruction: Remove cookie/navigation/legal/EEO/equal-opportunity/scam-warning boilerplate, duplicated lines, and application instructions. "How to Apply" is application instructions, should be removed. "About the Mercatus Center" is organizational description; is that considered boilerplate? It's not explicitly listed but could be considered part of job posting description; but they said preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. The "About the Mercatus Center" is substantive info about the organization. Might be worth keeping as a paragraph under maybe a section? But they didn't give a heading for that. Could just put as
after the qualifications. However they said "Prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones." Might be okay to include as a paragraph under maybe "About the Organization" but not listed as allowed heading. The allowed headings list includes About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. No "About the organization". So we might incorporate that info into the About the role section or as a paragraph after qualifications. But the instruction says use
for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule). It doesn't forbid other headings, but they gave examples. Safer to stick to those headings only. So we can put the Mercatus description as a
under About the role or maybe under a generic
after qualifications. But we need to preserve all substantive info; we can include it as a paragraph within About the role section.
Thus structure:
About the role
[combined text from About the Role paragraph + Mercatus Center description]
Responsibilities
- Lead Development Communications Strategy: ... (list subpoints)
...
But we need to break down the Specific Duties into list items. The Specific Duties includes headings: Lead Development Communications Strategy, Develop Donor Focused Messaging, Create Development Communications Products, Provide Copywriting and Editorial Support, Strengthen Visual Branding. Under each heading there are multiple sentences. We could make each heading a separate - containing all its sentences. Or we could break each sentence into separate
- . The instruction: Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. It doesn't forbid having subheadings inside
- . I'd make each major duty as a
- with the detailed sentences inside.
Thus:
- Lead Development Communications Strategy: Creates and implements an overarching development communications strategy aligned with fundraising goals and organizational priorities. Establishes and communicates priorities, timelines, workflows, and project plans across development communications. Coordinates with development leadership and cross-functional partners to ensure communications meet or exceed the team’s needs. Assesses and secures the talent, tools, processes, and other resources necessary for the success of development communications. Maintains high standards for accuracy, clarity, consistency, quality, and timeliness.
Similarly for others.
Then Qualifications: list each qualification as - .
Then Benefits: list each benefit as
- .
We also have "Success in This Role:" paragraph; we could include as a
after Qualifications or maybe as a separate section? Not in allowed headings. Could put as
after Qualifications.
We must not include EEO statement, E-Verify, etc.
We must not include "How to Apply", "About the Mercatus Center" as separate sections; we incorporated Mercatus description into About the role.
Check for duplicated lines: none.
Now craft HTML.
We need to ensure we don't include any markdown fences.
Let's write.
First, About the role paragraph: combine:
"The Director of Development Communications leads the strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of development communications for Mercatus Center. This role translates Mercatus research, policy work, organizational priorities, and impact into compelling communications that support fundraising, donor engagement, stewardship, and major-gift activity. The Director partners closely with development leadership, major gift officers, executive leadership, subject-matter experts, marketing and design to ensure donors receive timely, relevant, and high-quality communications tailored to their interests and priorities. This position reports to the Vice President of Development."
Then add Mercatus description: "The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is where top classical liberal scholars solve real-world challenges. Grounded in the tradition of market-oriented thinking and classical liberal ideas, we equip high-agency talent to apply bold ideas that shape institutions, inform policy, and help people flourish."
Combine into one
.
Now Responsibilities
with five - items.
Let's extract each duty text.
From posting:
Lead Development Communications Strategy
Creates and implements an overarching development communications strategy aligned with fundraising goals and organizational priorities.
Establishes and communicates priorities, timelines, workflows, and project plans across development communications.
Coordinates with development leadership and cross-functional partners to ensure communications meet or exceed the team’s needs.
Assesses and secures the talent, tools, processes, and other resources necessary for the success of development communications.
Maintains high standards for accuracy, clarity, consistency, quality, and timeliness.
Develop Donor Focused Messaging
Hosts regular messaging meetings with Mercatus experts and executive leadership to identify current projects, activities, accomplishments, and outcomes relevant to donors.
Translates complex policy, research, and organizational information into clear, persuasive, and donor-centered messaging.
Develops state-specific and interest-specific communications tailored to individual donors and donor audiences.
Coordinates with state engagement, outreach, marketing, and other internal teams to incorporate relevant updates and insights.
Provides regular reports, updates, and ready-to-use messaging that help Mercatus major gift officers communicate Mercatus’ value, outputs, and outcomes.
Create Development Communications Products
Develops and maintains a broad range of high-quality fundraising, stewardship, and donor communications, including:
Prints newsletters, typically three to four times per year.
Mid-year updates, letters, and end-of-year reports.
Annual appeal prospectuses and digital annual appeals.
Regular reports for high-value donors and priority initiatives.
Ready-to-send emails highlighting policy wins, media coverage, research, events, and other organizational updates.
Media and research highlight PDFs and related donor-facing materials.
Fundraising proposals for Mercatus major donors.
Digital communications, including email newsletters, special announcements, webinar invitations, and event invitations.
Evergreen materials, such as brochures and booklets.
Additional collateral to support donor engagement, including postcards, leave-behinds, magazine or book excerpts, and other materials.
Provide Copywriting and Editorial Support
Writes and edits development emails, direct mail, lift notes, thank-you notes, proposals, reports, and other donor communications.
Provides copywriting and copy-editing support for major gift officers, development operations, and other development colleagues.
Ensures that original development communications products receive a thorough editorial review by someone other than the author before distribution.
Establishes and maintains editorial standards for development communications.
Strengthen Visual Branding
Formats documents and develop or coordinate maps, charts, graphics, and other visual elements for donor audiences.
Partners with marketing and design colleagues to ensure that development communications are consistent, polished, visually appealing, and aligned with the Mercatus brand.
Works with marketing and design teams to build and maintain a repository of high-resolution images for development use.
Helps identify opportunities to capture high-quality photography at important events and activities, including through freelance photographers when appropriate.
Develops new visual collateral and branded products to support fundraising and donor engagement.
We need to keep the bullet list under Create Development Communications Products as part of the same
- . Could keep as is with line breaks or semicolons.
Now Qualifications
items:
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and work experience.
5 or more years of professional experience in marketing, communications, fundraising, development communications, or a related field.
Demonstrated experience developing and executing communications strategies.
Exceptional writing, editing, proofreading, and storytelling skills.
Experience translating complex ideas or technical subject matter into clear, compelling communications for varied audiences.
Experience creating communications for donors, funders, executives, or other high-priority stakeholders.
Strong project management skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, and stakeholders.
Excellent interpersonal, collaboration, and relationship-building skills.
Strong judgment, attention to detail, initiative, and follow-through.
Ability to work effectively with senior leaders, subject-matter experts, fundraisers, designers, and cross-functional teams.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office.
Experience with Salesforce, Canva, and email marketing platforms is a plus.
Familiarity with policy, research, nonprofit, philanthropic, or mission-driven organizations is preferred.
Now Benefits items:
full health and dental coverage
unlimited paid time off
long-term disability
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. So we can create a
- with each duty as
- . The subheadings like "Lead Development Communications Strategy" could be bolded within
- or we could keep them as part of the text. Probably keep them as part of
- text.
Then we have "Provide Copywriting and Editorial Support" and "Strengthen Visual Branding" also under Specific Duties. So all those are duties.
Then "Required Qualifications:" -> we can put under
Qualifications
with- .
Then "Success in This Role:" maybe could be a
paragraph. Then "How to Apply" and "About the Mercatus Center" and "Employee Benefits Review" etc. We need to include benefits if present. The posting includes "Employee Benefits ReviewSalary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience. In addition, Mercatus provides excellent benefits to all individual employees, including full health and dental coverage, unlimited paid time off, long-term disability and life insurance, a 403(b) retirement savings program, parking/travel benefits, and twelve free credits per year at George Mason University." We need to include Benefits section only if posting actually states them. It does state benefits. So we should have
Benefits
with- items.
We must not include Pay or Schedule sections unless posting actually states them. It says "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's not a specific number, but it's still mention of salary. The instruction: never emit a heading followed by filler/placeholder text (e.g. "commensurate with experience", "not specified", "N/A", "varies", "TBD") and never create Pay/Schedule/Benefits sections unless the posting actually states them. For Pay, they say "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's basically placeholder; it's not a specific figure. According to instruction, we should not create Pay section if it's just "commensurate with experience". So we should omit Pay section.
Schedule: not mentioned, omit.
EEO statement etc should be removed as boilerplate.
Also remove "How to Apply", "About the Mercatus Center" maybe? The instruction: Remove cookie/navigation/legal/EEO/equal-opportunity/scam-warning boilerplate, duplicated lines, and application instructions. "How to Apply" is application instructions, should be removed. "About the Mercatus Center" is organizational description; is that considered boilerplate? It's not explicitly listed but could be considered part of job posting description; but they said preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. The "About the Mercatus Center" is substantive info about the organization. Might be worth keeping as a paragraph under maybe a section? But they didn't give a heading for that. Could just put as
after the qualifications. However they said "Prefer a few substantive sections over many thin ones." Might be okay to include as a paragraph under maybe "About the Organization" but not listed as allowed heading. The allowed headings list includes About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule. No "About the organization". So we might incorporate that info into the About the role section or as a paragraph after qualifications. But the instruction says use
for section headings (e.g. About the role, Responsibilities, Requirements, Qualifications, Skills, Benefits, Pay, Schedule). It doesn't forbid other headings, but they gave examples. Safer to stick to those headings only. So we can put the Mercatus description as a
under About the role or maybe under a generic
after qualifications. But we need to preserve all substantive info; we can include it as a paragraph within About the role section. Thus structure:
About the role
[combined text from About the Role paragraph + Mercatus Center description]
Responsibilities
- Lead Development Communications Strategy: ... (list subpoints) ...
- containing all its sentences. Or we could break each sentence into separate
- . The instruction: Use
- for any list of duties/requirements/benefits. It doesn't forbid having subheadings inside
- . I'd make each major duty as a
- with the detailed sentences inside. Thus:
- Lead Development Communications Strategy: Creates and implements an overarching development communications strategy aligned with fundraising goals and organizational priorities. Establishes and communicates priorities, timelines, workflows, and project plans across development communications. Coordinates with development leadership and cross-functional partners to ensure communications meet or exceed the team’s needs. Assesses and secures the talent, tools, processes, and other resources necessary for the success of development communications. Maintains high standards for accuracy, clarity, consistency, quality, and timeliness. Similarly for others. Then Qualifications: list each qualification as
- . Then Benefits: list each benefit as
- .
We also have "Success in This Role:" paragraph; we could include as a
after Qualifications or maybe as a separate section? Not in allowed headings. Could put as
after Qualifications. We must not include EEO statement, E-Verify, etc. We must not include "How to Apply", "About the Mercatus Center" as separate sections; we incorporated Mercatus description into About the role. Check for duplicated lines: none. Now craft HTML. We need to ensure we don't include any markdown fences. Let's write. First, About the role paragraph: combine: "The Director of Development Communications leads the strategy, execution, and continuous improvement of development communications for Mercatus Center. This role translates Mercatus research, policy work, organizational priorities, and impact into compelling communications that support fundraising, donor engagement, stewardship, and major-gift activity. The Director partners closely with development leadership, major gift officers, executive leadership, subject-matter experts, marketing and design to ensure donors receive timely, relevant, and high-quality communications tailored to their interests and priorities. This position reports to the Vice President of Development." Then add Mercatus description: "The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is where top classical liberal scholars solve real-world challenges. Grounded in the tradition of market-oriented thinking and classical liberal ideas, we equip high-agency talent to apply bold ideas that shape institutions, inform policy, and help people flourish." Combine into one
. Now Responsibilities
- with five
- items. Let's extract each duty text. From posting: Lead Development Communications Strategy Creates and implements an overarching development communications strategy aligned with fundraising goals and organizational priorities. Establishes and communicates priorities, timelines, workflows, and project plans across development communications. Coordinates with development leadership and cross-functional partners to ensure communications meet or exceed the team’s needs. Assesses and secures the talent, tools, processes, and other resources necessary for the success of development communications. Maintains high standards for accuracy, clarity, consistency, quality, and timeliness. Develop Donor Focused Messaging Hosts regular messaging meetings with Mercatus experts and executive leadership to identify current projects, activities, accomplishments, and outcomes relevant to donors. Translates complex policy, research, and organizational information into clear, persuasive, and donor-centered messaging. Develops state-specific and interest-specific communications tailored to individual donors and donor audiences. Coordinates with state engagement, outreach, marketing, and other internal teams to incorporate relevant updates and insights. Provides regular reports, updates, and ready-to-use messaging that help Mercatus major gift officers communicate Mercatus’ value, outputs, and outcomes. Create Development Communications Products Develops and maintains a broad range of high-quality fundraising, stewardship, and donor communications, including: Prints newsletters, typically three to four times per year. Mid-year updates, letters, and end-of-year reports. Annual appeal prospectuses and digital annual appeals. Regular reports for high-value donors and priority initiatives. Ready-to-send emails highlighting policy wins, media coverage, research, events, and other organizational updates. Media and research highlight PDFs and related donor-facing materials. Fundraising proposals for Mercatus major donors. Digital communications, including email newsletters, special announcements, webinar invitations, and event invitations. Evergreen materials, such as brochures and booklets. Additional collateral to support donor engagement, including postcards, leave-behinds, magazine or book excerpts, and other materials. Provide Copywriting and Editorial Support Writes and edits development emails, direct mail, lift notes, thank-you notes, proposals, reports, and other donor communications. Provides copywriting and copy-editing support for major gift officers, development operations, and other development colleagues. Ensures that original development communications products receive a thorough editorial review by someone other than the author before distribution. Establishes and maintains editorial standards for development communications. Strengthen Visual Branding Formats documents and develop or coordinate maps, charts, graphics, and other visual elements for donor audiences. Partners with marketing and design colleagues to ensure that development communications are consistent, polished, visually appealing, and aligned with the Mercatus brand. Works with marketing and design teams to build and maintain a repository of high-resolution images for development use. Helps identify opportunities to capture high-quality photography at important events and activities, including through freelance photographers when appropriate. Develops new visual collateral and branded products to support fundraising and donor engagement. We need to keep the bullet list under Create Development Communications Products as part of the same
- . Could keep as is with line breaks or semicolons.
Now Qualifications
- items:
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and work experience.
5 or more years of professional experience in marketing, communications, fundraising, development communications, or a related field.
Demonstrated experience developing and executing communications strategies.
Exceptional writing, editing, proofreading, and storytelling skills.
Experience translating complex ideas or technical subject matter into clear, compelling communications for varied audiences.
Experience creating communications for donors, funders, executives, or other high-priority stakeholders.
Strong project management skills and the ability to manage multiple priorities, deadlines, and stakeholders.
Excellent interpersonal, collaboration, and relationship-building skills.
Strong judgment, attention to detail, initiative, and follow-through.
Ability to work effectively with senior leaders, subject-matter experts, fundraisers, designers, and cross-functional teams.
Proficiency with Microsoft Office.
Experience with Salesforce, Canva, and email marketing platforms is a plus.
Familiarity with policy, research, nonprofit, philanthropic, or mission-driven organizations is preferred.
Now Benefits
- items:
full health and dental coverage
unlimited paid time off
long-term disability
- items.
We must not include Pay or Schedule sections unless posting actually states them. It says "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's not a specific number, but it's still mention of salary. The instruction: never emit a heading followed by filler/placeholder text (e.g. "commensurate with experience", "not specified", "N/A", "varies", "TBD") and never create Pay/Schedule/Benefits sections unless the posting actually states them. For Pay, they say "Salary is competitive and will be commensurate with experience." That's basically placeholder; it's not a specific figure. According to instruction, we should not create Pay section if it's just "commensurate with experience". So we should omit Pay section.
Schedule: not mentioned, omit.
EEO statement etc should be removed as boilerplate.
Also remove "How to Apply", "About the Mercatus Center" maybe? The instruction: Remove cookie/navigation/legal/EEO/equal-opportunity/scam-warning boilerplate, duplicated lines, and application instructions. "How to Apply" is application instructions, should be removed. "About the Mercatus Center" is organizational description; is that considered boilerplate? It's not explicitly listed but could be considered part of job posting description; but they said preserve ALL substantive information; do NOT invent or summarize away detail. The "About the Mercatus Center" is substantive info about the organization. Might be worth keeping as a paragraph under maybe a section? But they didn't give a heading for that. Could just put as
- .
Then "Success in This Role:" maybe could be a