National Development Manager

At Summer Search, we believe our world is better off when everyone can discover their purpose. Yet, for too many bright young people, our society creates unjust obstacles that unfairly block their search.

Through a combination of year-round mentoring and transformative summer experiences, Summer Search aims to unleash the potential of young people while also building a toolkit for navigating and challenging systemic barriers to higher education and career opportunities. Since our founding in 1990, Summer Search has reached more than 7,500 young people and currently serves more than 3,800 high school and college students in five regions across the country – San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Seattle.

Our alumni become the kind of leaders our country needs -- civic leaders, advocates, industry leaders, teachers, mothers and fathers. Their collective leadership ripples out into the community and future generations and contributes to a more equitable society.

THE OPPORTUNITY

At a time of growth and experimentation, Summer Search is seeking a National Development Manager to play a critical role on the institutional development team. This position will support the acquisition and engagement of new corporate and foundation partners, with responsibilities in qualifying a robust pipeline, crafting proposals and other materials, liaising with staff across the Summer Search network, and ensuring the institutional team stays on track to meet its ambitious goals. This is a great opportunity for an emerging development leader to gain a front-row seat to all aspects institutional fund development at a national, multi-site organization. 

Specifically, the Development Manager will:

• Oversee the short- and long-term tracking towards the annual institutional revenue and partner acquisition goals, keeping team focused on deadlines and deliverables and providing high-touch back-end support on all donor activity.
• Lead a robust effort to research and qualify donor prospects, including vetting an identified $6M pipeline. Conduct thorough research to understand prospects’ giving and corporate social responsibility (CSR) priorities, and how they fit with Summer Search priorities and programs. Build individualized outreach and cultivation plans, including mapping board, staff, and alumni networks to identify and leverage personal connections.
• Ensure accurate and timely upkeep of all donor data in Raiser’s Edge (RE) database, facilitating gift acknowledgements, tracking donor relationships and actions, building donor profiles, conducting audits, and generating reports.
• Run scheduled and ad hoc reports, running queries and pulling data from RE database, manipulating in Excel, and presenting in a highly readable format.
• Proactively communicate updates and progress to key stakeholders across the Summer Search network, including CEO, COO, and a robust network of national and regional development leads. Ensure timely and transparent information sharing between the national and regional teams, coordinating opportunities for collaboration in donor cultivation and stewardship.
• Co-create proposals, reports, concept papers, and support execution of drafting and coordinating donor and prospect correspondence, preparation of materials for donor meeting, and timely follow-up.
• Facilitate the engagement of program staff in institutional development, collecting highlights/examples of student and alumni success, keeping abreast of programmatic activities, and leveraging program staff time for the most high-impact donor touchpoints.

WHO YOU ARE

• You are committed to Summer Search’s mission and values. You believe that all young people should have the opportunity to fulfill their potential. You thrive in an organization that values authenticity, relationships, well-being, learning, personal growth, and an unwavering commitment to racial equity and inclusion.
• You are a proactive and self-led development professional. You bring 3+ years of relevant work experience with hands-on experience supporting a busy development team. You are eager to build your expertise in institutional (corporate and foundation) giving. Experience at a national and/or multi-site nonprofit is a plus.
• You are an excellent task and project manager, with a strong sense of follow-through. You succeed at managing multiple workstreams and motivating, coordinating, and directing others to stay on track. You possess strong attention to detail and capacity to balance competing priorities. You proactively communicate updates across departments and teams.
• You are an exceptional researcher and fact-finder. You bring enjoyment and expertise in prospect research and qualification, leveraging all information at your disposal to analyze a prospective donor’s fit with an organizational mission. Experience qualifying corporate and foundation prospects is a plus.
• You are an adaptive, flexible, and willing team player. You are comfortable with ambiguity and can succeed in a highly entrepreneurial and fast-paced environment. You build positive, effective, collaborative cultures and teams wherever you work.
• You are a skilled writer with the ability to appeal to an audience’s interests and priorities. You bring experience in crafting proposals, letters of interest, concept paper, reports, and other donor-facing communications. You are adept at packaging data and stories in order to create powerful written narratives.
• You are a tech savvy development operations expert. You understand the technical aspects of fund development, including pipeline and moves management. You bring competency in CRM databases (Raiser’s Edge NXT preferred) and Microsoft Office applications, with proficiency in PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. SharePoint experience is a plus.
• You are committed to equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism. You are energized to join an organization that is on a journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization. You are committed to dismantling racism within yourself and your colleagues.

OUR COMMITMENT TO EQUTIY, DIVERSITY, AND INCLUSION

Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) is at the root of everything we do. Our vision is that Summer Search students become critically conscious leaders who increasingly invest in themselves and their communities. We support this vision through programmatic, operational, and talent practices centered in critical consciousness and cultural humility.

We commit to anti-oppression at all levels in the organization. We effectively hire, retain and promote People of Color so that all staff have equitable opportunity to advance to their fullest potential. Program staff are skillful in discussing race, identity, social/cultural context with students and supporting the development of their critical consciousness.

All staff and boards hold equity work as a crucial priority, are willing and able to navigate conversations about race and identity, and increasingly reflect the racial and other identities of the students we serve. We reflect critically on key organization decisions and actions to ensure we create increasingly equitable and just outcomes, especially for our students and staff of color.