Director, Corporate & Foundation Engagement

Position:  Director, Corporate & Foundation Engagement

Reports To:   Senior Director, Institutional Partnerships  

Location:  Remote US 

Position Type:  Full Time 

ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE

For more than 43 million people, blindness is a daily reality; another 295 million suffer from moderate to severe vision impairment. 90% of these people live in low- and middle-income countries where access to eye care is limited and the challenges for those who can’t see are severe. But there is hope: 80% of this burden is treatable or preventable. For example, 17 million blind people could be cured with a 10-minute cataract surgery. Millions more suffer from corneal blindness, which is often preventable or treatable. At Cure Blindness Project, we believe avoidable blindness can – and must – be overcome. For more than 30 years, we have worked alongside a capable network of collaborators to help people around the world retain and regain their sight by developing high-quality, cost-effective eye care systems in underserved areas of the world. With the help of partners in more than 30 countries, Cure Blindness Project has provided more than 2 million sight-restoring surgeries and screened more than 20 million people to provide care and basic treatments. We’ve trained more than 25,200 eye health professionals and have established 6 eye hospitals. There is more work left to do, but we can overcome the mountain of global blindness together.

Cure Blindness Project is expanding its team to meet new challenges, scale its work, and broaden its reach. We are seeking individuals who are passionate about changing lives and want to be a part of a team that works together to reach new heights. We want leaders who can aim high, make things happen, and are invested in building a positive team dynamic to bring the work to life.

VISION: A world where no one is needlessly blind.

MISSION: We enable countries to cure avoidable blindness by developing high quality, cost-effective eye care in underserved areas of the world.

SCOPE OF WORK:

The Director, Corporate & Foundation Engagement is a hybrid fundraiser and relationship manager responsible for growing Cure Blindness Project's institutional revenue base and deepening engagement across our corporate and foundation portfolio. This role sits at the intersection of external relationship-building and internal pipeline management. The Director must be equally capable of developing strategy and executing against it and should be comfortable operating independently with funders.

The Director leads the organization's corporate engagement strategy end-to-end, from prospecting and cultivation through stewardship and renewal, and owns a defined portfolio of select foundation relationships. Across the full institutional partnerships portfolio, the Director works on prospect research and proposal development, executing against strategy in partnership with the Senior Director, Institutional Partnerships.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS:

Corporate Partnership Stewardship and Cultivation

• Serve as primary relationship lead for the full corporate portfolio, with accountability for revenue outcomes and partner satisfaction
• Identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward corporate partners, advancing relationships from initial engagement through multi-year commitment and renewal
• Execute and continuously refine strategy for corporate account management, including pursuit of new opportunities, cultivation of existing relationships, and driving engagement to achieve revenue goals
• Manage Gifts in Kind relationships in coordination with internal program and procurement teams
• Monitor corporate revenue progress against goals, flag potential shortfalls, and support course corrections as needed
• Communicate regularly with program teams to align partnership activity with programmatic priorities
• Develop partner-facing stewardship communications and collaborate with the communications team on assets for partners.
• Design creative, tailored partnership activations that meet corporate partner goals while staying within what Cure Blindness Project can realistically and equitably deliver

Prospect Research and Proposal Development

• Lead proposal development for corporate funders and contribute as a core writer on complex foundation proposals, bringing strategic framing and compelling narrative to the work
• Lead prospect research across the full institutional portfolio in alignment with strategy set by the Senior Director, integrating findings into the partnership pipeline, and bringing forward recommendations on corporate prospects and select foundation opportunities

Foundation Support

• Own cultivation and stewardship for a defined portfolio of select foundation partners as capacity allows
• Support the Senior Director on major, complex foundation relationships, contributing to donor briefings, engagement materials, and meeting preparation
• Serve as a key internal connector, bridging fundraising execution and relationship strategy across the institutional portfolio

QUALIFICATIONS :

• Must have at least 10 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, institutional partnerships, or business development
• Ability to both develop and execute a strategy for prospecting, engaging, and deepening partnerships, demonstrating equal strength in big-picture thinking and operational follow-through
• Comfort working across foundation and corporate giving contexts
• Demonstrated experience developing and managing a portfolio of partnerships with corporations and foundations with accountability for revenue outcomes
• Demonstrated verbal and written communication skills, including proposal development, large and small group presentations, and group facilitation
• Organized, detail-oriented, and capable of tracking multiple projects, relationships, opportunities and stewardship touchpoints simultaneously
• Highly collaborative, proactive, and comfortable working with senior leadership and cross-functional colleagues
• Results-oriented, closer, strategic thinker, highly responsive, proactive, timely, accurate and thorough in follow through  
• Demonstrated experience building, leading, and developing a high-performing team, setting clear expectations, fostering accountability, and supporting ongoing growth and development
• Ability to travel domestically and internationally up to 20% of the time

Additional qualifications include:  

• Flexibility to adjust and contribute to continually evolving work situations and changing priorities. 
• Excellent computer skills and technical aptitude, proficient with MS Office, Asana (and other cloud-based software), and CRMs
• Committed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion 
• Familiarity with global health/development context is a plus

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Physical requirements: 

• Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer. 
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at a time. 

Cure Blindness Project encourages applications from people of all races, religions, national origins, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, gender expressions, and ages, as well as veterans and individuals with disabilities. 

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