Senior Vice President of Development

ABOUT BREAKTHROUGH COLLABORATIVE

Breakthrough Collaborative offers traditionally underserved middle and high school students rigorous academic programming, personalized mentorship, and college-readiness support. There are currently over 10,000 students participating in 25 Breakthrough affiliates, and we are proud of what our students are accomplishing.

Central to our success is our “near-peer” model, which centers strong relationships between students and Teaching Fellows - college students participate as Teaching Fellows and build fun, connected experiences for our students while focusing on academic skills. Our Teaching Fellowship is one of the largest and most impactful early teacher pathway programs in the country.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Breakthrough Collaborative operates with a federated model–each program affiliate is organized independently from the National Office and from one another. Breakthrough’s national organization is entering the fourth year of a five-year strategic plan that has focused on clarifying the role of our national organization, strengthening the vision for the support the National Office offers affiliates, and growing the program to more students (new affiliates, growth of existing affiliates, depth of programming offered).

We are seeking a Senior Vice President of Development (SVPD) to assume strategic and operational leadership of our fundraising efforts, ensuring we have the resources necessary to deliver on our ambitious goals. Reporting to the CEO and assuming leadership of a three-person development team, the SVPD will be responsible for setting the strategic and operational direction of our fundraising and lead individual giving and supporting our Board of Trustees in their fundraising efforts. The SVPD will manage development officers responsible for institutional (foundation and government) and corporate giving. The SVPD will be responsible for affiliate-facing supports -- identifying opportunities for multi-site funding, supporting affiliate staff, and creating/managing a community of practice for staff across the network. Our current National Office annual budget is $6.2mm, which includes a substantial AmeriCorps grant benefiting several of our affiliates. Our annual revenue target, excluding AmeriCorps grants, is $4.6mm. We anticipate this budget growing in future years to drive both growth (both growth of existing sites and the seeding of new sites) and breadth of supports national offers to affiliates to drive programmatic success.

In this moment, when uncertainty is the new normal, we are confident in our program and in the opportunity to raise funds for our growth. We are eager to hire a seasoned SVPD with a deep belief in the potential of students and substantial experience fundraising for organizations similar to ours to lend their talents to our mission.

WHO YOU ARE

Requirements for the role:

• 10+ years of demonstrated success working in fundraising, including experience building and leading fundraising teams in an entrepreneurial, high-performing, nonprofit organization
• Experience personally identifying, cultivating, soliciting, securing, and stewarding $500K+ gifts from corporations, foundations, individual donors, and/or public sources
• Experience working with national funders
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills with a proven ability to write effectively and speak persuasively; strong ability to tell a compelling story
• Experience leveraging Salesforce (or similar system) to plan and track fundraising pipeline and donor-facing moves with the development team and organizational leadership working uniformly in the system

Other criteria that candidates will need to meet or learn quickly in the role:

• Ability to lead in a remote/geographically dispersed environment
• Ability to personally identify, cultivate, solicit, secure, and steward seven-figure gifts from corporations, foundations, individual donors, and/or public sources
• Ability to organize complex gift proposals characteristic of multiple funders and multiple awardees
• Depth of knowledge of educational and opportunity access necessary to have nuanced internal and external conversations about Breakthrough’s work

RESPONSIBILITIES

Create a 3+ year team-wide fundraising strategy to fuel organizational growth that includes:

• Maximizes existing success with foundation partners
• Expands our individual giving
• Establishes new corporate partnerships
• Identifies and pursues government funding opportunities as they become available

Team management:

• Assume leadership of three person fundraising team (Senior National Director of Institutional Partnerships, National Director of Philanthropy, and Senior Manager of Development Operations)
• Establish strong routines for planning and managing work in a virtual, geographically dispersed work environment
• Provide differentiated management and professional development of the team through meaningful, timely, and helpful training and feedback

Manage the full spectrum of fundraising:

• Organize network activation and solicitation from the Board of Trustees
• Manage the Individual Giving stream:
  • Serve as primary relationship holder and solicitor for the highest potential donors
  • Organize the fundraising activities of others (CEO, senior leaders, development staff) to supplement capacity
• Manage development staff to outcomes in Foundation, Corporate, and Government streams

Build strong data, reporting, and systems routines:

• Refine the vision for Salesforce usage that ensures data accuracy, establishes a useful weighted pipeline, and manages/tracks donor-facing strategy and activities
• Participate in the Salesforce redesign project in August and September of 2026
• Build internal meeting cadence and routines to ensure alignment across the quarter, month, and week to ensure accurate reporting and timely analysis

Cross-organizational collaboration:

• Partner with the Marketing and Communications and Program teams to:
  • Ensure alignment between fundraising messaging and broader organizational messaging
  • Ensure fundraising activities and strategies are aligned with the programmatic goals of the organization to ensure full resourcing of the organization's mission
  • Drive visibility of the organization through development activities in support of broader brand elevation
  • Align donor-facing proposals and agreements with the Program team's goals; negotiate gaps with the Chief Program Officer and her team
• Partner with the Controller and the Senior Manager of Development Operations to ensure strong financial forecasting and revenue planning to support long-term sustainability
• Serve on the Senior Leadership Group (a cross-organizational body of functional leaders responsible for strategy and decision-making alignment across the organization)

Affiliate-facing supports:

• Lead team to identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward multi-funder and/or multi-recipient funding opportunities
• Lead team to offer bespoke thought partnership to affiliate staff around funder-facing strategies
• Organize and facilitate a community of practice for affiliate leaders and fundraising staff across the network with the goal of enhancing coordination in order to advance our collective efforts

COMPENSATION & BENEFITS

This is a full-time, exempt role that can be based anywhere in the United States. We are proud of the total rewards package we offer to our employees in line with our guiding principles of centering transparency and equity, rewarding expertise and performance, and championing professional wellness. The Senior Vice President of Development is a full-time, exempt role, and will be eligible to receive:

• A competitive base salary range of $150,000 - $170,000 based on requisite work experience and performance during the interview process
• 40+ total days off per fiscal year:
  • 20 PTO days per/year (increases with tenure)
  • Organization-wide closure at winter break
  • 13 holidays + 2 personal holidays
• Sabbatical leave after 5 years of full-time employment (4 weeks paid)
• Access competitive medical, vision, dental, life, and disability insurance
• 401k plan: 5% employer contribution after 1 year of employment, 50% vesting after year 2 and 100% vested after year 3
• A work-life and flexibility-minded virtual environment:
  • Flex Fridays in the summer months (every other Friday meeting free)
  • Quiet Friday policy - employees can create substantial standing workblocks that are meeting-free
  • Office and tech expense stipend
  • Professional development budget

TO APPLY

Please follow this link to submit your application and direct all questions to Matt Reamy (mreamy@breakthroughcollaborative.org).

RELEVANT POLICIES AT BREAKTHROUGH COLLABORATIVE

Breakthrough Collaborative strives to build a staff that reflects the cultural diversity of the communities that we partner with. Breakthrough provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws. We encourage BIPOC identifying individuals to apply.

• 40+ total days off per fiscal year:
  • 20 PTO days per/year (increases with tenure)
  • Organization-wide closure at winter break
  • 13 holidays + 2 personal holidays
• Sabbatical leave after 5 years of full-time employment (4 weeks paid)
• Access competitive medical, vision, dental, life, and disability insurance
• 401k plan: 5% employer contribution after 1 year of employment, 50% vesting after year 2 and 100% vested after year 3
• A work-life and flexibility-minded virtual environment:
  • Flex Fridays in the summer months (every other Friday meeting free)
  • Quiet Friday policy - employees can create substantial standing workblocks that are meeting-free
  • Office and tech expense stipend
  • Professional development budget