SENIOR DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT, FOUNDATIONS At CARE

CARE is an international NGO with local staff and community partners in more than 90 countries. We create local solutions to poverty and inequality and we seek dignity for everyone every day and during times of crisis. These solutions have a broad range, from clean water to access to education; from microfinance to ensuring that everyone has nutritious food; from agriculture and climate change to disaster response. CARE puts women and girls at the center of everything we do because they have proven to be the best hope for creating lasting change in the world. Our staff live where they work, which makes us effective at understanding the challenges they face. We’ve been doing this for over 70 years, since World War II. It started with the world’s first CARE Package® of food for the post-war hungry in Europe. Our work today is as important as ever, we believe that poverty and inequality are historic injustices that we can end within a generation, for good. If you share our core beliefs: poverty is an injustice; poverty is solvable; and together, we have the power to end it, join us, and fight with CARE.

Professional Foundations provide CARE with significant revenue that fuel some of our most innovative programs. From smaller foundations that often provide catalytic funding for many of our most cutting-edge programs to large foundations like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that share CARE’s aspiration to leverage learning to achieve results at scale, foundation partnerships and the resources they generate are integral to CARE’s goal of multiplying impact.

As one of eight relationship managers on the Foundation Partnerships team, the Senior Director of Development (SD) in CARE’s Washington, D.C. or Atlanta office will cultivate and manage a diverse portfolio of professional foundation donors and other institutional funders. As a senior member of the team, the Senior Director position requires a person experienced in leading fundraising efforts with private and institutional donors, stewarding key donor relationships and identifying and cultivating new opportunities. The SD should have excellent verbal and written communication skills, as well as a proactive and strategic approach to fundraising. This position requires substantial contact and strong collaboration with CARE teams around the world and the ability to navigate complex internal processes and procedures that ensure effective compliance with financial management principles.

Managing a foundations and institutional portfolio requires the ability to gain an in-depth knowledge of CARE’s programming, approaches and learning methodologies, as well as a savvy and strategic external approach to generate and foster new opportunities for CARE. This position also requires the political acumen to navigate CARE and influence the decisions of program or technical colleagues, country offices and other units.

Responsibilities:

• Donor Cultivation and Identification
  • Working closely with the AVP and Executive Director of Foundation Partnerships, and in coordination with the other foundation-focused team members, colleagues from technical units and country offices, the SD will build a portfolio of strategic donors for CARE, with emphasis on climate change and food security/agriculture opportunities.
  • The SD will engage with senior foundation staff as well as program officers, leveraging relationships and insights for strategic opportunities in alignment with CARE’s organizational priorities and assigned sectors and/or prospects.
• Concept and Proposal Development
  • The SD manages the concept or proposal development process for assigned foundations, institutional funders and new prospects resulting from outreach. The SD and works in close coordination with program, advocacy and country office colleagues to generate compelling propositions that achieve CARE’s vision of multiplying impact through effective learning.
• Donor Stewardship
  • With a proven track record of successful foundation fundraising, the SD will oversee stewardship and ongoing cultivation of assigned donors that are strategic to CARE. The SD serves as the primary relationship manager, serving as point of contact for foundation staff and facilitating strategic external communications.
• Internal Partnerships
  • In support of and in coordination with team leadership, the SD will build and maintain strong internal partnerships across CARE, specifically with program teams relevant to their portfolio of prospects and donors. Through regular review of cultivation plans and active engagement in program team meetings, the SD will consistently support and collaborate with teams and their leadership, as well as synthesizing and compiling materials and summaries of CARE’s work as needed.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Public Relations, International Development or a related field.
• Masters degree or above or equivalent combination of education and work experience.
• At least eight years of progressive experience in any combination of fundraising, program implementation or management, resource mobilization or field work, with a preference for professional foundation or institutional fundraising experience.
• Expertise in climate change, food security, and gender and women’s empowerment programming as a cross-cutting issue.
• Extensive and holistic proposal development experience, including source or identifying opportunities with private and institutional donors and managing complex proposal development processes that led to funding.
• Excellent writing, editing, presentation and organization skills.
• Ability to meet deadlines, manage multiple responsibilities and priorities and achieve impact and results under pressure.
• Capacity to facilitate internal decisions across multiple stakeholders as required to produce content for proposals.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills.
• Experience working as part of a remote team.
• Ability to represent CARE with external audiences and develop strategic opportunities for the organization and its leadership.
• Evidence of strong analytic skills and strategy development.
• Computer literacy, including facility with Word, Excel, and other Microsoft Office applications.
• Experience working with budgets.
• Willingness to travel 10%.