Founded in 1936, the National Wildlife Federation has grown into America's largest and most trusted grassroots conservation organization with 52 state/territorial affiliates and more than six million members and supporters, including hunters, anglers, gardeners, birders, hikers, campers, paddlers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages and stripes. The mission of the National Wildlife Federation is to unite all Americans to ensure wildlife thrive in our rapidly changing world. We advance this mission through programming focused on conserving wildlife, restoring habitats and waterways, expanding outdoor opportunities, connecting children with nature, advancing environmental justice, and addressing the causes and consequences of climate change.
The National Wildlife Federation believes that in order to save wildlife and ourselves, we need to ensure that everyone living in America has access to clean air and water, safe communities, easy and equitable access to nature, and protection from the ravages of climate change. These basic needs, equally necessary and urgent for all people, are foundational to bringing the conservation movement and ethos into the 21st century.
To advance our mission, we are seeking a Donor Relations Officer to join the Federation’s Development team. The Donor Relations Officer plays a crucial role in the Mid-Level Program’s success, working collaboratively to harmonize supporter engagement and create meaningful donor experiences across our Membership, Mid-Level, Major Gifts, Gift Planning, and Social Innovation programs. The position reports to the Senior Director of Donor Relations & Special Giving.
Primary responsibilities for this role include personally engaging with mid-level and prospective mid-level donors to qualify, cultivate, and steward. Tasks include, but are not limited to, corresponding directly with mid-level donors; fostering engaging experiences both virtually and in-person; identifying, building and ensuring healthy donor mobility across programs; generating stewardship content; ensuring equity and justice practices are infused throughout our engagement efforts; collaborating across teams to build synergy; building processes for pipeline management as well as retention; and developing and maintaining standardized reports and analysis.
PRINCIPLE DUTIES
The Donor Relations Officer’s role is comprised of these major areas of responsibility and focus:
Donor Relationship Management & Stewardship
- Manage a portfolio of mid-level donors by engaging and recognizing their contributions through handwritten correspondences, phone calls, and emails while managing the qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of donors in a concentrated effort to deepen their engagement with the Federation and grow their philanthropic investments.
- Develop and manage an engagement calendar focused on creating meaningful experiences aimed at strengthening relationships and fostering deeper involvement through virtual engagement and face-to-face experiences, separate from standard stewardship activities.
- Craft communications such as thank-you letters, newsletters, and personalized updates that reflects impact of donor’s gift.
- Help implement an enhanced donor experience for new mid-level donors that offers engaging events, forums for conversation, and thoughtful donor stewardship plans.
- Collaborate with the Major Gifts and Gift Planning teams to develop consistent messaging to influence and serve as a framework for stewardship practices.
- Collaborate with key staff to ensure equity and justice practices, values, and approaches are integrated into our narratives and represented as a piece of all that we do.
- Develop and maintain standardized reports and key performance indicators on activities, prospective pipelines, and progress to inform leadership’s efforts to monitor and evaluate portfolio management, retention, strategy implementation, revenue generation, engagement targets, and resource deployment.
- Collaborate with various business units, program leads, and agency partners regularly, helping to ensure our teams are communicating and collaborating effectively.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Pipeline Management
- Ensure healthy donor mobility across our teams and lines of business, including but not limited to creating and generating segmentations within mid-level, enhancing moves management, finding opportunities for stewardship engagement, utilizing prospective dashboards, and more.
- Collaborate to develop a system for identifying prospective mid-level donors for Major Gifts and Gift Planning, utilizing research, personal interactions, and engagement insights to qualify donors for enhanced stewardship and cultivation opportunities.
- Manage a coordinated donor visit system which maximizes officer outreach with Mid-Level, Major, and Gift Planning supporters.
- Work with the Senior Director of Donor Relations to create and execute donor engagement strategies that increase retention, upgrade giving levels, and identify new prospects for growth.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Donor Engagement
- In coordination with team leads, plan and execute a series of educational webcasts and interactive round table discussions centered around donor interest overseeing logistics, production, and content development.
- Collaborate with the Senior Coordinator to draft correspondence to promote upcoming webcasts, utilizing email campaigns to maximize donor participation.
- Work in coordination with team leads to develop strategies that tailor webcasts to targeted donor segments, ensuring relevant and impactful messaging for various levels of giving.
- Provide oversight and direction to the Senior Coordinator as it relates to logistics for virtual events, including scheduling, sending invitations, coordinating speakers, and conducting technical rehearsals, as well as scripting for webcast presenters.
- Execute and coordinate with front-facing staff to conduct follow-up that offers insights and feedback, fostering the development of future events and deepening connectivity with the Federation.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
Operational Support
- Maintain constituent profiles and accurately enter demographic information and contact reports relating to donor qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship, performing these and other CRM-related functions with regularity and consistency.
- In coordination with the Senior Director of Donor Relations & Special Giving, develop key performance metrics to create a shared report that is regularly executed and reviewed.
- Assist senior staff and/or volunteer leadership in the development and implementation of strategies to cultivate, engage, solicit, and steward prospective funders and existing donors.
- Consult with and assist individual giving units as needed on ad hoc tasks like scheduling and preparing presentation materials for meetings, donor mailings, and reviewing donor and corporate solicitations, acknowledgment letters, and reports.
- Perform other duties as assigned.
