Senior Director of Development

Overview

CalMatters is seeking an experienced and strategic Senior Development Director to join our team. This role will be crucial in driving our development efforts, ensuring that our organization continues to grow its resources and meet its strategic goals. The Senior Development Director will manage a team of professional fundraisers and will report directly to the Chief Development Officer.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership: Working with the CDO, CEO, and EIC, develop and implement a comprehensive development strategy for foundations, major donors and mid-level giving that aligns with organizational goals and builds on our existing strategy.
• Team Management: Supervise and mentor CalMatters development directors and the development manager, providing coaching and professional development.
• Fundraising and Donor Relations: Oversee major gift initiatives, cultivate relationships with key donors and funders, manage and build on our donor event strategy, and ensure a pipeline of prospective supporters.
• Collaboration: Work closely with the editorial and product departments to align development efforts with organizational programs and project needs.
• Budgeting and CRM Management: Using Salesforce, build and monitor an annual revenue budget that meets leadership’s goals.

Specific Duties

• Build and execute a comprehensive fundraising strategy for mid-level and major gifts as well as foundations.
• Identify, research, cultivate, engage, solicit and steward existing and prospective donors and foundations.
• Develop a donor communications plan designed to inform and engage major donors.
• Lead the creation of compelling fundraising materials to cultivate donors and inspire greater support.
• Design engagement and solicitation strategies that lead to increased giving.
• Plan fundraising and engagement events that effectively communicate the mission, purpose, and value of CalMatters’ work.
• Manage and strengthen development processes and systems, including recordkeeping, gift acknowledgments, renewals, grant reporting, and grant deliverable oversight.
• Lead, manage, and inspire a high-performing development team to achieve and exceed organizational revenue goals.

Qualifications

• Five or more years in development roles at a senior management level.
• Proven track record of leading successful development initiatives and creatively engaging donors and funders.
• Experience leading a high-functioning development team of three or more people.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to engage a variety of stakeholders and work collaboratively across teams.
• Familiarity with nonprofit media and journalism fundraising is a plus.
• Ability to stay focused, highly organized, pay close attention to details and produce reliable results.
• Adaptable and able to work in a fast-paced and constantly changing environment.
• Be based in California with the ability to occasionally travel

How you’ll be evaluated

• Mutually developed annual KPIs will focus on meeting revenue goals, effectively managing the team, identifying and cultivating new prospects, engaging the board of directors in fundraising, and more.

CalMatters is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom dedicated to explaining California policy and politics. Our sponsors support our mission while connecting with one of the most engaged civic audiences in the state. Our headquarters is in Sacramento; this is a remote position with occasional travel and you will be based in California.

If you are energized by building partnerships that align mission and revenue, we would love to hear from you.

Compensation And Benefits

The salary range for this position is $155,000.00 to $170,000.00 per year.

We offer a complete benefits package with medical, dental and vision insurance — we cover 95% of the cost for employees and dependents — from a range of HMO and PPO providers. We also offer paid family leave and will match contributions of up to 4% of your salary to our 401(k) program and provide life insurance at no cost.

The salary range above is our best estimate, in good faith, of what we expect to pay for this position. Our final salary figure will consider the candidate’s experience and skills, as well as our commitment to pay our staff equitably.

How To Apply

CalMatters is committed to becoming an antiracist organization. We are an expanding and collaborative newsroom, successfully forging a new model for sustainable, intelligent, nonprofit journalism. We do our best to center justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in all that we do—of which hiring is just one part. We encourage you to ask us about what concrete steps we are taking in service of these ideals. We strongly encourage applicants who are people of color, LGBTQ, and people with disabilities, regardless of national origin, alienage, and/or former incarceration status.

If you’re interested, provide a resume and a cover letter below. In your cover letter, using your own words, let us know how you would approach this role. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, don’t hesitate to contact jobs [at] calmatters.org.

About CalMatters

CalMatters, now in its eleventh year, is an award-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan news venture dedicated to explaining the policy and politics of America’s biggest state and the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2024, we merged with The Markup, a nonprofit national news publication that challenges technology to serve the public good.

We produce vivid, original multimedia journalism, data-driven news analyses and watchdog accountability reporting on calmatters.org and themarkup.org, and we distribute our work at no cost to more than 250 media partners. Our success metric isn’t clicks — it’s impact. Products at CalMatters/The Markup serve millions of people. For example:

• More than 1 in 5 California voters head to the polls informed by CalMatters’ nonpartisan Voter Guide.
• Blacklight, our real-time privacy inspector, has been used over 18 million times and helped journalists, nonprofits, and academics hold tech accountable.
• Digital Democracy, our unprecedented, custom-built AI tool that tracks everything you’d want to know about state legislators has unearthed stories and prompted legislators to call for change.

We offer a complete benefits package with medical, dental and vision insurance — we cover 95% of the cost for employees and dependents — from a range of HMO and PPO providers. We also offer paid family leave and will match contributions of up to 4% of your salary to our 401(k) program and provide life insurance at no cost.

The salary range above is our best estimate, in good faith, of what we expect to pay for this position. Our final salary figure will consider the candidate’s experience and skills, as well as our commitment to pay our staff equitably.