Executive Director, Advancement

About The Opportunity

The university is seeking a highly entrepreneurial, energetic, and collaborative individual who has 8+ years of progressive major gifts fund-raising experience, preferably in higher education. Proven track record in soliciting and closing major and principal gifts. Demonstrated ability to strategically lead a team, manage a comprehensive program, and hold fundraisers accountable for meeting ambitious fundraising goals. Data- and metric-driven mindset. Tested ability to work closely with all constituencies. Strong interpersonal skills necessary for building relationships with external (donors, prospects, trustees) and internal (deans, faculty, staff, colleagues) constituents. Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills. Excellent attention to detail. Ability to travel frequently (anticipated 60% of the time).

Job Summary

The Executive Director, Advancement (ED), as part of an interdisciplinary advancement team, reports to the Senior Associate Vice President of Development, and partners with colleagues at the Assistant, Associate, and Senior Associate Vice President level(s), as well as with the Vice President for Development and the Senior Vice President for Advancement. Multidisciplinary collaboration is now indispensable to transformative research and learning, and in this context, the Executive Director will provide structure and strategy to teams who will be integral to Northeastern’s ambitious fundraising to support its leadership in global experiential higher education.

Responsibilities

• Develop a sound program to facilitate and increase principal and major giving. Working with an interdisciplinary focus, the ED will identify, qualify, and visit an assigned pool of approximately 80 prospects, suspects, and donors to assess their interest in the university and their capacity to make gifts.
• Discover, cultivate, and solicit alumni, parent, and friend prospects and donors. Utilize virtual meeting technologies and travel as needed to qualify new parent prospects and to build relationships with existing parent prospects and donors.
• Actively solicit at $500K-$5M gift level. Utilize Advancement data management system (Ascend) to log activity, create call reports and progress reports, and maintain data integrity of prospect portfolio.
• Meet/exceed standard performance expectations (i.e. 80 personal contacts per year) as defined by supervisor.
• Collaborate with and guide other content expert colleagues within the global network to significantly increase major and principal gift commitments from prospects and donors.
• Oversee and provide strategic prospect management and direction to their colleges/programs/campuses. As part of their portfolio, the ED will identify, develop, manage, and support for their college/program/campus leadership prospects (at least 10 per unit), including but not limited to developing solicitation strategies, partnering on each dean’s travel to cultivate and solicit prospects and donors, and serving as the primary resource for these deans to advance strategic fundraising priorities for the college and university across the global network.
• Manage a small team of individual gift fundraisers; participate in the hiring, orientation, and training of direct reports; provide guidance, feedback, coaching, and mentorship to direct reports; and lead by professional example to promote their professional and personal development. A focus of this role includes daily management and professional development of the team members who report directly to this position, including annual goal setting and performance evaluation. Provide indirect management to additional team members as applicable.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree required; Master’s Degree preferred.
• Data- and metric-driven mindset.
• Strong interpersonal skills necessary for building relationships with external (donors, prospects, trustees) and internal (deans, faculty, staff, colleagues) constituents.
• Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to travel frequently (anticipated 60% of the time).
• Must possess high degree of independent initiative and innovation, negotiation, interpersonal, and networking skills, and ability to build trust with keen communication skills.

Benefits

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Compensation Grade/Pay Type 115S Expected Hiring Range $157,130.00 - $227,840.00 With the pay range(s) shown above, the starting salary will depend on several factors, which may include your education, experience, location, knowledge and expertise, and a pay comparison to similarly-situated employees already in the role.