Development Director

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Development Director will lead Greenlight’s fundraising strategy and its recently-expanded fundraising team, helping to resource Greenlight America and Greenlight Action’s combined $20 million fundraising goal for 2026. This position will be responsible for partnering with our CEO to co-create and implement our institutional giving strategy, which is our primary revenue source.

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The Development Director will offer high-level strategy and leadership for the fundraising team as we scale our programmatic operation. They will also be a “do-er,” helping to draft persuasive proposals, showing good judgment to make evidence-based recommendations of outreach and moves management approaches, and improving internal fundraising processes.

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A successful candidate for this position will be a proven senior fundraiser who is especially experienced in institutional fundraising and adept at writing about climate and clean energy. They will be a project manager at heart–organized, process oriented, able to manage multiple competing priorities with high quality work, and execute fundraising responsibilities both individually and by leading a 4-person team to excel.

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The position is remote and reports to the Senior Director, Partnerships.

PRIMARY ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Partner with the CEO to develop our institutional giving strategy that details how to secure specific foundation giving through relationship management and tailored pitches. Lead implementation of that strategy, including managing up to the CEO to ensure prompt follow-up and no dropped balls.
• Oversee proposal development and grants management. This includes ensuring high quality products from the team as well regularly drafting pitches or reports yourself to meet specific donors’ interests.
• Develop and lead our outreach strategy to current and prospective donors. This includes helping to develop a stronger pipeline of prospects, creating strategies for building stronger relationships with prospects and existing donors, tracking timelines closely to ensure timely renewal conversations and approaches, and more.
• Oversee development and implementation of a more robust stewardship plan to ensure regular outreach and updates shared with our donors.
• Initiate new fundraising projects to meet our fundraising and outreach goals. Also oversee existing fundraising initiatives, such as donor-facing events and annual reports.
• Supervise three staff–an institutional giving manager, senior associate, and associate–to succeed in their responsibilities. Coach and develop the staff members’ skills and build a strong team culture.
• As our fundraising program matures, explore major gifts or other fundraising streams, with an eye toward result-oriented experimentation.
• Other duties as assigned.

EXPERIENCE AND QUALIFICATIONS

We are especially interested in candidates with the following qualifications:

• 6+ years of fundraising experience, with at least 3+ years in institutional/foundation fundraising.
• High familiarity writing about climate and clean energy, as evidenced by 2+ years of experience working at climate or clean energy organizations, companies, or campaigns.
• Demonstrated experience meeting $5 million+ annual fundraising goals.
• Superlative project manager who excels at driving work forward themselves as well as helping to triage and direct a fundraising team’s work (managing up, down, and across). Has exceptional organizational skills to track multiple deadlines at once and plan for smooth execution of fundraising responsibilities.
• Strong grant writing and editing skills, including the ability to learn, adopt, and help refine an organizational voice, and to write compelling case statements tailored to specific donor interests.
• Experience preparing budgets and managing restricted grant budgets, including by collaborating across programmatic and finance teams to ensure proper grant spenddown.
• Sharp fundraising strategist, who is able to develop both high-level annual fundraising strategies as well as make and execute donor-specific strategies.
• Adept at data management, including ability to ensure strong fundraising team data management culture and practices, improve processes, and create or iterate on systems to easily find information about a large portfolio of donors.
• Excellent oral communication skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills and collaborative team player.
• Ability to think creatively, take risks, objectively evaluate results, and iterate.
• Passion for accelerating the clean energy transition.

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Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of and relationships with climate and clean energy donors–the more donors and more years of experience, the better!

The base salary range for this role is $105,000-$140,000, commensurate with experience. We offer an excellent benefits package which includes 100% employer paid premiums for medical, dental, and vision insurance, unlimited paid time off, monthly technology stipend, and retirement contributions through 401k and Roth plans.