Assistant Director, Leadership Giving

The Discovery Program utilizes an innovative approach leveraging data, donor engagement, direct marketing and fundraising workflows to engage and grow the pipeline of individual giving donors. This program, a component of Philanthropy’s leadership giving strategy, works closely with several internal stakeholders including direct marketing, prospect development and gift officers throughout Philanthropy’s Individual Giving team.   

The primary purpose of the Assistant Director, Discovery Program is to support MD Anderson’s mission and help achieve Philanthropy’s fundraising and engagement goals by providing a premium philanthropic experience for donors. This position leverages digital and virtual engagement to transition annual giving donors to a personalized, meaningful relationship with the institution, while passionately representing MD Anderson’s core values to advance philanthropic support for institutional priority programs, research and patient programming. This position reports to the Executive Director of Leadership Giving. 

This position will manage a cohort of 1,000+ annual giving donors to facilitate the progressive transition of donors through the donor continuum from the direct marketing program to individual giving. The Discovery Program will actively identify and frequently pre-qualify this segment of donors with a goal to develop donors’ lifelong relationships with MD Anderson, ensuring interested donors are involved at a level, and in opportunities, where they are joyfully engaged and best able to support the institution. The ideal candidate is adept in professional and sophisticated communications, an empathetic listener who handles interpersonal relationships maturely, thoughtfully (especially in sensitive situations), is urgent in their approach and can work with individuals from different backgrounds while responsibly handling confidential information. Additionally, the candidate must be organized, driven, apply creative and entrepreneurial thinking, possess a high degree of self-motivation and integrity, technologically savvy while skilled at navigating and using databases, familiar with CRM systems and entering contact reports. The donor concierge must provide excellent customer service, articulate a strong and compelling case for support and exercises analytical thinking skills with a spirit of collaboration.  

KEY FUNCTIONS 
 

Stakeholder Engagement (60%)  

Display the ability to serve and cultivate relationships with annual giving/leadership giving donors in an effort of donor-centric service and prequalification. Display social awareness, professional etiquette, and the ability to interact and build rapport with donors, faculty and other institutional stakeholders. Engage with varied constituencies with social fluency and garner their trust as to influence donor behavior.  Appropriately align donors to giving opportunities and orchestrate and facilitate meaningful engagements.   

·       Engage donors using a variety of mediums and channels including mass engagement and one-to-one communication (correspondence, phone, email, video conferencing, etc.) with proactive outbound outreach, while simultaneously serving as an inbound point of contact responding and triaging all requests. Execute monthly and quarterly touchpoint cadences across portfolio to ensure consistent and relevant donor communication.  

Collaboration and Teaming (30%)  

Actively partner with donors, peers, faculty, and divisional stakeholders on the investigation, transition and flow of donors for proper engagement and other projects. The donor concierge will develop networks and participate in cross-functional activities to deliver on stakeholder engagement.  Donor Discovery will be able to work cooperatively with all stakeholders, contribute to the success of collaborative work teams and support completion of initiative or project to achieve stated goals.   

·       Execute concierge program strategy while effectively collaborating across all Individual Giving teams and with Prospect Development, Gift Processing and Analytics & Reporting.  Proactively reach out to assigned gift officers to assist in donor relationship transition.   

Perception and Attentiveness (10%)  

Accurately assess interests of prospective donors; organize and present information in thoughtful and engaging ways, constantly shift between multiple activities and sources of information, maintain situational awareness, institutional awareness and adeptly navigate cross functional prospect teams in support of donor engagement and stewardship plans.     

·       Effectively capture donor data and utilize reporting features for data analysis to garner additional insights for targeted donor engagement and program enhancements.  Develop and maintain broad knowledge of the institution such as MD Anderson’s mission pillars, institutional strategy, strategic fundraising priorities, disease/physician-specific projects and programs and have the ability to offer suggestions of campaign priority alignment. Develop a network of contacts throughout the division and institution to access additional information. Demonstrate to donors the impact of their giving. Provide information on institutional developments and programs relative to their interests. Share upcoming opportunities to attend events, volunteer, participate in activities/services, or otherwise deepen their engagement with MD Anderson Cancer Center.