Beacon House was founded in 1991 to provide children in Northeast Washington, DC’s Edgewood neighborhood with a safe, nurturing, life expanding community in which to increase their academic achievement, discover their talents, and to grow into healthy adults who achieve their greatest potential. Our programs focus on closing the education achievement gap - and thus improving the economic trajectories - of children and youth ages 5-18 for whom generational poverty is most persistent. Beacon House is recognized as “One of the Best” nonprofits in Washington, DC by the Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington.
POSITION SUMMARY
The Director of Development (DOD) is responsible for bringing both structure and imagination to Beacon House’s growing number of fundraising endeavors. The DOD is a leadership opportunity that challenges candidates to increase Beacon House’s sophistication in development and communications in order to grow our private philanthropic revenue while also expanding and engaging our community of supporters.
The DOD will be Beacon House’s lead strategist and project manager focused on significantly growing our current ~$1M private philanthropic portfolio. The DOD position is both strategic and tactical and is responsible for designing, managing, and executing the annual development plan. The ideal candidate has a clear grasp of all core components of both institutional and individual fundraising, with particularly strong experience in individual giving, including major gifts, stewardship, and annual giving campaigns (direct mail and digital). This role requires experience with development operations, including CRM management, and budget-building.
The DOD will also be responsible for bringing new strategy and structure to Beacon House’s communications, with the goal of increasing engagement with and connection to our community. The DOD will collaborate with the programs team in the development and deployment of content.
The DOD can expect their work to more specifically include:
Fundraising (85%)
Strategy and Leadership (20%)
- Participate in overall management of the organization as a leadership team member
- Contribute positively to overall organizational climate and affirm Beacon House values
- Work closely with the Executive Director (ED) and board to establish and monitor annual and long-term revenue goals and budgets
- Develop, manage, and execute Beacon House’s development and stewardship plans to achieve annual revenue goals
- Update existing development and stewardship plans annually with new ideas, industry best practices, and data-driven analysis
- Ensure Beacon House’s development plan aligns with and is in service of the evolving organizational goals
- In partnership with the ED, set annual revenue goals
- Ensure a robust gift pipeline big enough to hit annual revenue goals by actively managing prospective and current individual donors, foundations, and corporations
- Project manage the ED’s and Director of Athletics and Mentoring’s fundraising work, directing them where and how best to spend their time and efforts on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis
- Cultivate relationships with all board of directors to support their strategic development efforts, provide training, and identifying and tailoring their best development contributions to Beacon House
- Monitor and report regularly on the progress of the development plan, providing actionable analysis for the ED and board of directors
- Identify suspected revenue gaps and develop tactics to generate new leads
- Clearly and effectively draft dynamic, reader-friendly, and high-quality writing that is free of typos, jargon, and lackluster prose
Individual Giving (40%)
- Lead strategy, execution, and evaluation of all annual direct response campaigns focused on developing new donors and retaining existing mid-level and smaller dollar donors
- Cultivate and expand Beacon House’s major donor community, The Lighthouse Society, by researching and designing relationship management plans for prospective and current major donors
- Serve as lead contact on a portfolio of major donors, as well as project manage the ED and Director of Athletics and Mentoring’s portfolio management
- Stand up and steward new donor communities, e.g., major donors, planned giving, and recurring giving
Institutional Giving (15%)
- Partner with the ED in serving as lead contact to major foundation funders
- Work with the contract grant writer to create and manage a grant calendar to track all upcoming applications and reports
- Research state and local government grant opportunities, and private foundation grant opportunities
- Craft thoughtful, tailored, and strategic grant requests and ensure the punctual submission of all grant applications and reports
Development Operations (10%)
- Oversee all development operations, ensuring timely and accurate execution of gift processing and reporting
- Lead Beacon House to full adoption of Salesforce as its fundraising CRM
- Work with the contracted Salesforce Administrator to create and update Salesforce dashboards and reports for progress-to-goal monitoring and keep the system up-to-date
- Establish and monitor annual and long-term revenue goals and budgets
Communications (15%)
- Partner with the ED to develop and execute a comprehensive communications strategy, ensuring consistent, effective messaging and impactful storytelling
- Create an annual communications calendar with the goal of deepening and expanding Beacon House’s connection with its community of supporters
- Lead the creation and management of the organization’s newsletter and oversee social media content development, serving as the project manager to curate, edit, and finalize materials in collaboration with the programs team and Executive Director
About You
To be maximally successful in this role, you need to be:
- A born project manager with a knack for working backwards from a deadline to create a plan
- Accustomed to working on multiple projects with different deadlines simultaneously
- A natural people person who appreciates that everyone has an important story to tell
- A dynamic, professional, and poised brand ambassador for Beacon House
- A reliable and friendly communicator who reaches out and follows up
- A practiced public speaker who can think on your toes
- A stickler for details and quality
- A caretaker of sensitive information about donors and others in the organization’s community
- A strong self-motivator
- A creative thinker willing to test out new ideas
You need to have:
- 8+ years of nonprofit development experience with a track record of leading increases in philanthropic revenue year-over-year
- Demonstrable experience as a fundraising generalist, with hands-on practice at major gifts, annual giving, institutional giving/grant writing, corporate partnership building, special events, and online giving campaigns
- Experience managing and improving development operations, ranging from CRM management to budget monitoring to gift processing
- Experience with managing direct reports, contractors, and/or volunteers to do their best work
- The ability to communicate easily, respectfully, and sensitively with stakeholders of all ages, generations, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds
- Enthusiasm to propose fresh ideas without prompting by leadership, openness to feedback on those ideas, and a persistence to bring those ideas to life
- A “teamwork” mindset and the ability to work cooperatively and effectively with others to set goals, resolve problems, and make decisions that enhance organizational effectiveness
- Excellent working knowledge of Salesforce or similar donor database
- A love for kids and excitement to work in a tight-knit, place-based community
- Understanding of and commitment to Beacon House’s mission
About Location, Compensation and Benefits
- This is an in-person role at Beacon House’s space in Ward 5, Washington, DC
- Beacon House provides health and dental insurance for employees and their families[1]
- Group Life, AD&D, Short-Term Disability, and Long-Term Disability coverage
- 403b retirement plan with matching
- Paid vacation/sick leave
- 10+ paid holidays
- Professional development reimbursement
- The salary for this role is $110,000-$130,000
TO APPLY
Interested applicants should submit a (1) resume, (2) cover letter and (3) a writing sample representative of development work to jobs@beaconhousedc.org with “Beacon House Director of Development” in the subject line.
