Development Operations Manager

Overview

Description

 Student Leadership Network supports young people growing up in diverse underserved communities to gain access to educational opportunities that help prepare them to lead successful lives. In 1996, Student Leadership Network (SL Network) opened the United States’ first all-girls public school in 30 years – The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem. What started with one school has grown to a network of 36 public schools, including 13 all-girls schools nationwide, and has expanded to support college access and success in co-educational settings across the country. Over the last 25 years, SL Network has impacted more than 44,000 students through three life-changing programs: The Young Women’s Leadership Schools (TYWLS), CollegeBound Initiative (CBI), and Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN). To learn more, visit www.student leadership network.org.  

Do you love being organized? Does it give you the energy to work collaboratively to think of the best practices and ways to optimize systems in service of a mission-aligned nonprofit? Student Leadership Network is looking for a Development Operations Manager to help the department operationalize systems and processes to help frontline fundraisers to meet their goals. Reporting to the Senior Managing Director of Growth Strategy and Development, this role will collaborate with the development team, the programs teams, the marketing and communications team, the data team, and the finance team. They must be highly organized, have strong analytical skills, superb written and oral communication skills, outstanding attention to detail, and the ability to multitask, meet deadlines, follow up, and achieve results. This role will maintain and improve administrative systems, database management, policies and procedures, and infrastructure to manage the department’s day-to-day operations and financial functions. This person will also support the Director of Institutional and Corporate Giving in the grant-writing process. This role is an excellent opportunity for someone who wants to work with a fantastic team of committed professionals dedicated to educational equity!

Primary Roles and Responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Develop and lead strategy to optimize and refresh our CRM systems to support successful fundraising operations across different revenue streams.

• In partnership with SL Network’s data and research team, mastermind the use of Salesforce and serve as the superuser to capture, report, and analyze fundraising data.
• In collaboration with the finance, research, and programs teams, help develop dashboards and reporting mechanisms for fundraising goals, institutional grant application renewals, reporting, and programming covered to be shared with the program and finance teams.
• Work collaboratively with the development team and other departments to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Salesforce.
• Develop and execute a protocol for CRM data entry to ensure accurate, consistent record-keeping and analysis. 

Provide team coordination and project management for a growing, ambitious, and energetic development team in service of a bold mission. 

• Serve as the development team’s lead for creating systems and executing cross-team activities. 
• Work with the department to define project scope and timelines, set team direction, and track project progress for fundraising-related communications and initiatives.
• Manage the department-wide calendar, which will capture department meetings, internal meetings, major external meetings, the team’s days out of the office, and deadlines.
• Plan and organize department meetings and retreats.
• Support the Senior Managing Director of Development with calendar management and preparing for donor meetings.
• Provide oversight and management for a seasonal intern(s).

Manage Selected Fundraising Initiatives to draw on your creativity and build development skill sets

• Manage the build-out and execution of digital fundraising campaigns through Salesforce and Mobile Cause.
• Work with the team and CEO to plan and execute special projects and events (open houses, strategy sessions, funder breakfasts, school visits, learning symposiums, etc.) 
• Collaborate with the Director of Institutional and Corporate Giving as needed to prepare and submit high-quality grant proposals and reports, including compiling requested attachments, and proofreading content. 
• Draft letters of inquiry and other materials for donor cultivation. 
• Manage reporting process for current grants, including tracking deadlines, writing narrative reports, working with members of the Program teams to report on project activities, and coordinating with the Finance team to track grant expenditures. 
• Collaborate with the Director of Individual Giving to create and implement appeals.
• Assist with prospect research using traditional donor research methods as well as iWave software, as needed by the team.
• Identify funding opportunities and institutional prospects, create succinct research summaries, and communicate your findings to the team. 

Serve as the backbone for fundraising reporting analysis and high-quality record-keeping to help a growing organization achieve national scale. 

• Act as the development team’s key resource for data, reports, systems, and cross-team activities. 
• Provide timely, regular, and accurate reports for Development and Leadership team meetings, Board meetings, forecasting, and measuring progress against annual fundraising goals.
• Provide data analysis and reporting to inform development strategy, understand donor behavior and track the success of the development team.
• Create and maintain tools to track and report progress towards individual and team development goals.
• Oversee the integrity of the department’s data in Salesforce and reconcile its communication and donation data transfer across other platforms used by the development and finance teams.
• Ensure that we can efficiently pull accurate mailing and contact lists from Salesforce. 

Analyze, re-conceptualize, and execute top-notch gift processing and acknowledgment system to ensure our supporters feel appreciated in a timely manner. 

• Manage all gift-entry (individual, event, corporate, foundation, matching, and campaign gifts) and acknowledgment processes, making recommendations for automation and data collection improvements where appropriate.
• Ensure SL Network donors can make gifts easily and be acknowledged quickly. Oversee all systems and collaboration with the finance team to ensure that development records are accurate and complete.
• Maintain accurate and complete records of gifts for reporting and auditing purposes (including monthly financial reconciling and proper gift-coding entry in Salesforce) in consultation with the Managing Director of Finance and Administration.

Requirements

• Detail orientation with excellent organizational, time management, and follow-up skills.
• 2+ years experience in a role that required nearly-daily Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database use is a must; Salesforce strongly preferred.
• Superb multi-tasker who can manage multiple priorities and projects from concept to implementation while anticipating future deadlines. 
• Customer service orientation toward high net worth donors, Board members, internal and external stakeholders, peers, and funders alike. 
• High level of discretion and professional judgment.
• Proficient use of MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and Google Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive). 
• Sharp analytical skills; can figure out the inputs that lead to desired outputs, figure out what’s missing, what’s superfluous, and how to do it better.
• (Internal) Great rapport across all SL Network departments, ability to build relationships, and become the trusted go-to person for the department.
• Evidence of improving a system with measurable results.
• Curiosity, drive, and savviness to leverage technology to build capacity, problem solve and maximize efficiency with the ability to provide technical training to others. Aptitude and motivation to become a database wizard.
• Ability to work independently with minimal oversight and thrive under pressure.
• Resourceful, results-oriented team player with a positive “can-do” attitude and a sense of humor.
• Interest in learning about the Development profession; flexible and adaptable, open to change, feedback, and improvement.
• Must be willing to share COVID-19 Vaccination Status
• Bachelor’s Degree preferred.