Senior Manager, Development

Website Vote Rev

Location. Remote; Vote Rev has offices in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, and additional hubs in Washington and the Bay Area. We encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want if you are local.

Compensation and benefits. $106,000 – $116,000 annually depending on experience, with generous medical, dental, vision, and retirement.

Role type. This is a full time, long-term role with no end date.

Target start date. Mid-July 2023

Application deadline. June 15, 2023

Vote Rev is looking for people who want to strengthen democracy and create an organization where everyone can thrive. There are no education requirements and we welcome anyone with relevant experience.

Due to the nature of our work, we are legally unable to hire individuals who are not US Citizens, current Legal Permanent Residents (you already have a Green Card), or DACA recipients.

About the opportunity
The Senior Manager, Development will have a key role in managing our top donor relationships. They will help strengthen our existing donor relationships and help us cultivate new ones, working in close collaboration with the Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director to ensure the creation and implementation of an ambitious fundraising plan centered on major gifts. They will also serve as project manager for the Development team, ensuring that we are following through on commitments, tracking progress, and meeting our goals, including by managing our team meeting agendas and taking minutes. They will have a hand in ensuring that the Development team is using (and improving) systems to set us up for success, including our relationship management system, compliance systems, and project management systems. Finally, they will work inter-departmentally across the organization to ensure we are making the best case for our impact.

Vote Rev is looking for people who want to strengthen democracy and create an organization where everyone can thrive. There are no education requirements and we welcome anyone with relevant experience. Whatever background you bring, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day!

 

Responsibilities
Over the next two years, your work will touch every stage of the fundraising process. Activities will include:

Heavily supporting the development of an annual $6m plan to cultivate and steward an individual major donor fundraising strategy

Providing guidance and support to the Deputy Executive Director and staff regarding fundraising goals and workstream needs

Developing and managing donor communications, including overseeing and creating collateral like PowerPoints, memos, and emails

Building and maintaining relationships with five-figure donors across the country and in Los Angeles, CA

Maintaining and improving fundraising systems to help ensure proper financial compliance and reporting

Managing execution of the fundraising plan by tracking goals and deadlines, ensuring the members of the Development team and other internal stakeholders are filling their roles, and keeping everything organized and on track

Problems your work might solve:

Funding multi-million dollar GOTV efforts

Expanding and diversifying our base of recurring major donors

Building on existing project management systems to ensure efficient capture of institutional knowledge

 

Who we’re looking for
This role is designed for an early-mid career fundraising professional (7-10 years of relevant work experience). Specifically, we’re looking for someone with strong individual major donor fundraising experience, including work with donor advisors, who can quickly plug into our fundraising workstreams. The Senior Manager will work directly with the Deputy Executive Director and Executive Director, and will have opportunities for growth within Vote Rev’s Development Department. If you’re eager to build on your existing skills as an individual gifts fundraiser, please apply even if you don’t meet every bullet point in the below sections.

A successful candidate will be:

A skilled and knowledgeable fundraiser

Expert in managing multiple team members’ work on fundraising proposals, materials, and solicitations

Adept at providing insight and guidance that informs fundraising strategy, and the strategy with particular donors

Skilled in donor research, strategic communications, and creating preparatory materials for high-stakes meetings

Capable of working cross-departmentally, and up and down the org chart, to vet and refine new strategies to get them into a fundable, implementable form

Knowledgeable about the progressive / electoral funding ecosystem including funders, major movement organizations, and key connectors

A collaborative and motivated team member

Eager to manage their own, and their team members’, development, including by contributing to a team environment that fosters the team’s ability to seek feedback

Skilled at scoping and managing multiple projects simultaneously for quality and timely delivery, and able to pivot quickly to meet the evolving needs of the Development department

Able to understand different team members’ working styles and leverage their strengths and skillsets

Partner-oriented

Skilled at relationship management, including strengthening tenuous relationships, managing partners’ expectations, and evangelizing

Skilled at communicating with all audiences, including facilitating meetings effectively to bring about desired results, and producing high quality written products with minimal revision

Also Willing to travel up to 8 times per year for donor convenings, meetings, and conferences

Excited about the opportunity to work with some of the movement’s most hands-on, supportive, and sophisticated donors

Key skills and experience:

7+ years of experience as a political or civic engagement fundraiser specializing in individual giving, including PAC and 527 fundraising

Demonstrated ability to manage donor relationships, including prospecting, cultivation, stewardship, and solicitation best practices

Experience producing donor collateral like funding memos and powerpoints

Demonstrated ability to manage funding proposal development and subsequent narrative and financial reporting for funders

Working knowledge of fundraising tools like ActBlue; common CRMs like NGP, Salesforce, or Copper; mass mailing tools like Mailchimp and Yet-Another-Mail-Merge; office tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

Helpful but not required:

Experience with C4 and fiscally-sponsored fundraising

Experience using Asana, or a similar tool, for project management

Working knowledge of evidence-based civic engagement tactics and associated terminology, including ‘net votes,’ ‘votes per thousand dollars,’ ‘randomized-controlled trial,’ and ‘percentage-point increase,’ among others

Knowledge of contemporary issues in the voter engagement space including (i) volunteer recruitment & retention, (ii) relational organizing, and (iii) voter registration

Experience with graphic design tools like InDesign, or at least skills in the aesthetic elements of Word and PowerPoint

Requirements for all Vote Rev team members
Commitment to our mission of designing and quickly mainstreaming field-tested voter engagement innovations to help Democrats win.

Commitment to understand and actively oppose racism and promote equity.

Commitment to working with and for teams of diverse individuals, and to reducing disparities in whose voice is heard in the electoral space.

Demonstrated awareness of one’s own cultural identity and ability to build relationships and collaborate across lines of difference.

Ability to thrive in a startup environment: you move quickly, think strategically, can handle uncertainty, are adaptable to changing circumstances, and are good at tactical execution.

 

Reasons to love this role
Opportunity to scale a startup: Vote Rev is building off a successful 2022 election cycle. There’s a lot of work to be done designing new voter engagement tactics and scaling Vote Rev tactics across the country. We hope you are excited about being scrappy, working across multiple departments, and learning as we grow!

Novel value proposition: You’ll be helping fundraise for a novel offering that is compelling to some of the progressive movement’s most committed and visionary funders. Our research and partnership teams work hand-in-hand, blending expertise in design and behavioral science with campaign and organizing know-how. We ensure that we’re learning from organizations working on the ground, and that we’re creating the innovations and answers they need for this moment.

Sustainable work culture: We offer generous PTO and we’re dedicated to making sure you can truly disconnect during your time off.

Compensation and benefits
Compensation: $106,000-$116,000 annually depending on experience.

Benefits: Choose from a variety of fully employer-subsidized vision, dental, and medical HMO or PPO plans. We also offer partially subsidized coverage for spouses and dependents. In addition, we offer generous paid family medical/parental leave.

Retirement: After three months of service, Vote Rev will automatically contribute 6% of your base salary to your retirement account every month, no employee contribution required.

Paid time off: Employees accrue 1.5 days of PTO each month. All federal holidays and December 24th to January 1st are company holidays.

Flexible schedule: Team members must be available 9am-2pm Pacific Time (12-5pm Eastern Time). Outside those times they’re usually able to work with their supervisors to set the hours that work  for them.

Flexible work location: We encourage hybrid home / office work (e.g., 2 days/week in the office). Most days coming to the office is optional but you can be there as frequently as you want.

Relocation allowance: We can provide a relocation allowance for those who need to relocate to LA.

 

Timeline
We aim to close this application by June 15th. Applications are reviewed as they come in, so you may be notified whether or not you are moving forward before the application closing date. The steps in the process are:

Resume and application questionnaire screen: This step is to establish the baseline for candidates we will advance through the process.

Case study: An at-home assignment that you are expected to take less than 2 hours to complete. This gives us a chance to see how you think and see an example work product.

Zoom interview(s): There will be one or two 30-minute conversations with a member of the Vote Rev team, and might include answering scenario-based questions.

Final interviews: Applicants will be called back for a set of final-round interviews with Hiring Manager Michael Cohn (Deputy Director of Research) and other members of the Vote Rev team. This will require up to three hours of time during business hours.

References: We will ask for three professional or personal references for our top one or two candidates to learn more about working with them.

Job offer: We provide our best and final offer in terms of compensation, which will be within the salary band shown in the job description. We base our offer on the number of years of relevant study and work experience and where that fits within our internal salary leveling system. We do not negotiate salary or other benefits due to research finding that introducing opportunities to negotiate results in pay disparities that are not correlated with competency.

We expect to make an offer no later than July 7th, with preference for a start date shortly after the offer is accepted.

Application instructions
Women, Black and Indigenous People of Color, People with Disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ people are strongly encouraged to apply. Applications will only be accepted electronically.

OPTIONAL: Please listen to this podcast to familiarize yourself with our work, and also visit www.voterev.org/media for more resources if you are interested.

Fill out the application form above.

You will be asked to provide information about yourself, a resume, and to answer some questions in lieu of a cover letter.

Do not submit a cover letter.

Due to the nature of our work, Vote Rev is only able to hire US Citizens, DACA recipients, and current Legal Permanent Residents (i.e. you currently have a Green Card). If you are in the process of getting a Green Card in the future, you are not currently eligible to work for Vote Rev. We are not able to sponsor work visas. By applying to this role, you are acknowledging that you are a U.S. Citizen, DACA recipient, or current Legal Permanent Resident.