Director of Development

Healdsburg Museum • Healdsburg, CA, US • $70k - $90k / year • 3m ago

About the Museum

Founded in 1976 by City Clerk Edwin Langhart and the Healdsburg Historical Society, the Healdsburg Museum is a regional history museum that documents, preserves and presents the history of Healdsburg and northern Sonoma County through exhibitions, research, and educational programs. The Museum, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is housed in the historic 1911 Carnegie Public Library at 221 Matheson Street in Healdsburg, CA. The Museum has a small full-time staff and a team of volunteers, led by an Executive Director/Curator and an Assistant Curator and overseen by a Board of Directors.

About the Position

This is a new position on the Museum’s staff, coming as the Museum begins a new era of growth, triggered in part by a major multi-year principal gift, a robust period of strategic re-envisioning updating the Museum’s role in the community, and an evolution of the Museum’s culture of philanthropy. As such, this position offers the candidate the opportunity to play a catalytic role in charting the Museum’s future. Because of that, and the inherent need to identify and build key relationships as well as the supporting infrastructure, it is understood that it will take three years to build a mature and stable development program that effectively serves the Museum’s mission. While historically the Museum focused primarily on its membership base, the time has now come to build a diversified portfolio that optimizes and balances income from major donors, institutional donors, events, memberships and legacy gifts.

Duties and Responsibilities:

The Director of Development (The Director) is responsible for the planning and implementation of the annual Fundraising Plan, working in close collaboration with the Board and Staff. The plan will set specific goals in each of the income sectors, identify income areas for growth, set monthly benchmarks enabling management and Board to monitor performance against plan, and set correct and measurable strategies that will prioritize efforts to meet and/or exceed these goals.

The Director will engage the Board in the fundraising process, working with a Board Development Committee that will meet monthly with the primary task of monitoring performance against plan, and guiding Board members in their own individual participation in the plan.

The Director will provide frequent reporting and analyses of performance against plan, monitoring key performance indicators like renewal rates, average gifts in each sector, lifetime giving, yield analysis, anniversary dates of major gifts, etc.

The Director will establish Practices and Procedures for the optimum use and long-time integrity of data-entry for recently installed new donor management software, Bloomerang,

Personally Identify, cultivate, and engage a portfolio of high-value donors and prospects in the individual, corporate, and foundation sectors to move to their optimum giving levels in collaboration with the ED/Curator and Board members.

For memberships, develop strategies that grow the membership family, improve retention rates, and integrates members as part of the donor family, and in a way that also identifies a distinct role (eg: as in where membership money is used, benefits, etc.).

Organize events of various sizes and formats as needed to cultivate and/or steward prospects and donors to build relationships, and, in some specific cases, raise funds.

Work in the community to develop strategically valuable partnerships which can lead to funding, prospect identification, and community champions.

To drive events, as part of the planning process, the Director will identify the variety of activities and events needed to meet the goal, with some events (like those that may be needed to bond major donors) small and intimate for cultivation and stewardship, and other medium and larger events with net-profitable income goals.

Collaborating with staff leadership and Board members to direct the strategic identification, cultivation, and solicitation of donor prospects and implementing effective fundraising strategies.

Consulting with the Curators to compile data to craft compelling narratives to support initiatives on behalf of the Healdsburg Museum.

Cultivating positive relationships with individual, family and business donors and other key stakeholders in the community.

Overseeing membership-related campaigns, setting goals for membership programs and working with staff to maintain new member recruitment and retainment systems.

Collaborating with Museum staff to maximize social media fundraising and membership opportunities.

Other duties may be assigned by the Executive Director and Board.

The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications:

• Strong affinity for the Healdsburg Museum’s mission.

• 5 years of fundraising experience with knowledge of fundraising best practices.

• Proven experience closing gifts from individuals, corporations and/or foundations.

• Excellent references from a previous non-profit organization client.

• Exceptional interpersonal skills. Effective oral and written communications skills. Proven ability to effectively articulate clear and compelling messages, including the use of storytelling.

• Excellent attention to detail and commitment to accuracy.

• Database experience mandatory. Core computer skills in Microsoft programs including Word, Excel, PowerPoint.

• Demonstrated ability to work as part of a team and with people from a variety of different racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, educational, religious, sexual, gender, and generational backgrounds.

• Board and/or Board committee exposure and experience a plus.

• Flexibility to work occasional evenings and weekends.

• Spanish language fluency a plus.