Senior Manager, Development and Donor Experience

Who We Are

Impact Justice advances safety, justice, and opportunity through boundary-breaking work that honors and empowers people and is changing expectations about what we can accomplish together. We imagine, build, and scale innovations, leverage research and other knowledge to connect the desire for change with informed action, and work to shift the narrative so that decision-makers and the public understand what’s at stake and what’s possible.

The Role

The Senior Development Manager is a new role within Impact Justice’s growing Development team. The role’s key responsibilities are to strengthen donor and funder communications and engagement, enhance development team systems, and support revenue growth. With the Director of Development and other key Executive and Leadership team staff, the Senior Development Manager will increase individual and philanthropic support for the organization’s mission, through relationship-building work that’s typical at Impact Justice and through new efforts—like donor salon events, donor prison visits, and donor email series.

Who You Are

You’re a fundraiser, communicator, and connector who would love to join a small-but-mighty team working to raise funds to support a wide array of creative criminal justice reform work. You consider yourself a generalist who can get up to speed on a variety of issues and projects. You’re a quick study and a self-starter who can work independently as effectively as you can in a team.

You’re a relationship-first person who is always strategizing about ways to deepen connection with donors. You understand the development/donor lifecycle and you have some real world experience of putting this knowledge to use to drive gifts and awards from individuals and private funders.

The challenges of pulling off a new donor event or launching a donor email series are exciting to you. You’re a confident writer who’s open to feedback. You’re not too precious about your drafts; you appreciate edits, and your top priority is putting out the most engaging, effective content you can.

What You Will Do

The anticipated start date for this position is March 2026. You will report to IJ’s Director of Development. Your core responsibilities will be:

Donor Communication

• Drafting quality funder/donor cultivation and follow up emails for IJ’s leadership staff.
• Drafting and managing a periodic donor e-newsletter and digital fundraising campaigns.
• Managing and improving donor thank you processes.
• Maintaining a growing and changing library of external resources for individual and institutional supporters. Editing external one-pagers, concept notes, and decks.

Donor Engagement and Stewardship

• Leading the implementation of new event efforts, including better donor engagement at existing programmatic events and testing donor-specific event formats like salons and prison visits.
• Supporting a calendar of thoughtful donor engagement and communication opportunities.
• Conducting prospect research for our existing individual donor base and new donor prospects.
• Building cultivation and stewardship plans for individuals and mid-level/major donor tiers.

Systems and Infrastructure

• Oversees and improves key systems, like Bloomerang, our Mailchimp-Bloomerang integration, and QGiv online giving pages.
• Improves IJ’s digital journey for donors.

Experience Level

Successful candidates typically have 6+ years of professional experience and 5+ years of experience in nonprofit fundraising. Experience in related backgrounds—marketing and digital communications, campaign fundraising, event planning—is interesting and relevant to us. Your previous experience managing the types of tasks and projects that drive fundraising success and are relevant to this role are more important to us than years of experience alone.

That said, we know there are great candidates who may not think they fit into what we’ve described above or who have important skills we haven’t thought of. If that is you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself!

Required Qualifications

• A strong background in fundraising, preferably for small to large nonprofit organizations.
• An understanding of the donor lifecycle and a proven track record of effective engagement with donors and institutional supporters. We’ll want specific examples of your past success/the roles you’ve played + tasks you’ve managed independently in successful development teams.
• Experience writing for a donor audience and comfort drafting and editing quality email copy and written donor materials.
• Experience directly managing donor and funder relationships and connecting with donors IRL at events and meetings.
• Familiarity with development CRMs.
• Funder and donor prospect research experience.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Positive, solutions-oriented approach to problem-solving.
• Effective project and people management skills—ability to work independently and across multiple programmatic/functional teams.
• Demonstrated time management skills, including the ability to work on multiple projects and prioritize deadlines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Event planning experience.
• Experience with wealth screening/individual donor prospect research tools.
• Experience using Bloomerang as a CRM tool.
• Experience using Mailchimp as an email service provider.
• Forward-thinking approach to new technology adoption, including but not limited to AI, new software solutions, emerging platforms, etc.