Senior Director of Individual and Digital Giving

Who we are

The News Literacy Project, founded in 2008, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization building a national movement to ensure that all students are skilled in news literacy before high school graduation, giving them the knowledge and ability to participate in civic society as well-informed, critical thinkers. NLP is the country’s leading provider of news literacy education and works with educators in all 50 states.

NLP provides news literacy education to students primarily through our signature e-learning platform, Checkology®, and to the public through our debunking website, RumorGuard®.

Where you fit in

The News Literacy Project empowers educators to teach middle and high school students how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. Our signature product is the Checkology virtual classroom, a digital learning platform. Since its launch in 2016, almost 50,000 teachers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories have registered to use it.

We are seeking a Senior Director of Individual and Digital Giving who can manage the conceptualization, development, implementation, and refinement of innovative fundraising communication strategies across multiple channels. This is a great opportunity for you to join a growing development team and be instrumental in setting the strategy for increasing gifts from donors with a giving potential of $1-$10,000, using multiple channels of engagement.

This position reports to the Senior Vice President for Development and will manage the Senior Manager of Development.

About the position

The Senior Director of Individual and Digital Giving requires someone who can have an immediate and meaningful impact. Candidates will be senior fundraising professionals with strong experience and proven results in the management of sophisticated, large, and complex mass gift solicitation programs. To be successful in this role, you will be a digitally fluent, highly collaborative, and forward-thinking professional who enjoys building a portfolio of donors while deepening connections with existing donors.

Specifically, in this job, you will:

• Collaborate with the SVP of Development, development team and other NLP departments to play a key role in helping us reach or surpass our annual fundraising objectives.
• Oversee, mentor, and evaluate the Senior Manager of Development, and together collaborate on the digital fundraising and stewardship approach to increase annual giving contributions from donors giving between $1-10,000 annually.
• Manage a portfolio of Visionary Circle donors contributing $1,000 - $10,000 annually, including overseeing moves management, relationship-building efforts, and personalized communication across email, phone, web, and in-person channels.
• Build our portfolio by identifying and segmenting new potential donors to develop personalized multi-channel communications.
• Provide oversight and strategic direction for annual giving initiatives and other broad based philanthropic outreach to increase philanthropy, donor acquisition, retention, and reactivation. To do this, you will adhere to NLP’s brand guidelines and work in close partnership with the Senior Manager of Development and NLP’s creative, media and marketing team (CMM) to:

– Ensure the detailed and comprehensive annual giving and stewardship calendar is aligned with other NLP communications.

– Conceptualize, create, and implement effective and integrated communications strategies across multiple channels, including electronic media for social media channels.

• Advance donors with a giving potential of more than $10,000 to Major Gift Officers on the East and West coasts for further relationship building and engagement.
• Support SVP of Development and Senior Manager of Development Projects in designing engaging donor events, such as semi-annual donor briefings, topic-specific webinars, and more.
• Collaborate with the Senior Managers of Development and Development Operations to:

– Provide dashboards, reporting, and analytics ensuring we can critically analyze the effectiveness of specific campaigns and overall annual giving to make continuous improvements and track progress toward specific goals.

– With the Senior Managers of Development and Development Operations, ensure timely documentation and recording of all annual gifts in accordance with Federal, State, and IRS guidelines and NLP’s policies and procedures.

• Stay up to date on digital fundraising by monitoring emerging market trends, researching best practices, and deploying the latest tools and technology to enhance donor acquisition, retention strategies, and overall program participation.
• Supervise, mentor, and evaluate assigned staff.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

About you

This position will directly impact hundreds of thousands of students in schools across the country and it plays a pivotal role in shaping and achieving our organizational strategy. As the Senior Director of Individual and Digital Giving, you will partner with the Senior Vice President of Development to increase gifts from donors with a giving potential of $1-$10,000. In addition to the qualifications noted above, the successful candidate will have all or most of the following:

• Bachelor's degree or higher in a related field.
• 5-10 years of professional experience in digital fundraising and individual giving. You must have experience in both areas. We will still consider you a solid candidate if you have at least three years of digital fundraising experience and five or more years in individual fundraising. If you only have individual giving experience, you will not be a fit for this role. The priority will be candidates with digital fundraising experience.
• Enjoyment working within a highly collaborative team.
• Flexible attitude and able to adapt easily, given that the organization and the development team are in a high period of growth.
• Proven track record of reaching or exceeding team fundraising goals of $6M+ annually, and individually raising $250K+ through individual and digital giving.
• Proven project management expertise to manage large multi-channel digital fundraising campaigns and projects in coordination with many stakeholders. Experience using project management tools like Notion a plus.
• Ability to balance competing priorities.
• Digital copy writing skills to draft punchy, motivating copy with clear cases for giving and calls-to-action is a plus. This is optional because this person will work with others on the development and CMM teams who can produce copy for outreach.
• Strong oral communication skills with a demonstrated ability to talk to different internal and external stakeholders.
• Familiarity with analyzing and using data from comprehensive campaign reports to make continual data-driven improvements.
• Working knowledge of CRMs and their technical capabilities as they relate to digital strategy and campaign planning. Experience working with EveryAction a plus.

This full-time position is virtual. Highly qualified candidates who live anywhere in the U.S. are encouraged to apply.

The News Literacy Project welcomes applicants from diverse backgrounds. We offer equal opportunity in employment for all qualified persons and prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to job requirements, genetic information, military service or other protected status.

We deeply value diversity in the workplace and strongly believe that a diverse team enriches our organization and strengthens our ability to realize our mission (read/print NLP’s Organizational Values [PDF] and Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [PDF]).