Assistant Director - Advancement Operations
About The Position
The Assistant Director, Advancement Operations serves as a key leadership role within the Foundation, responsible for overseeing the integration and execution of core functions including communications, stewardship and alumni engagement, and data operations. Reporting to the Director, this position translates strategic priorities into coordinated, high-quality execution across multiple workstreams, ensuring consistency, alignment, and effectiveness in advancing fundraising and engagement goals. The Assistant Director supervises a team of functional specialists and acts as a central point of coordination to ensure that campaigns, events, and donor engagement efforts are aligned, efficient, and data-informed. This role works in close collaboration with internal and cross-functional partners, including Marketing, to elevate messaging quality and institutional impact.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in a related field.
- An appropriate combination of education and directly related experience may be considered.
- Four (4) years of progressively responsible experience in a related field.
Responsibilities
- Works closely with Director to align strategy and priorities for Advancement initiatives.
- Oversees donor stewardship processes, including acknowledgment, recognition, and reporting.
- Supports development and execution of alumni engagement initiatives.
- Ensures consistent and meaningful donor experiences across all touchpoints.
- Oversees planning and execution of integrated campaigns.
- Ensures messaging is cohesive, timely, and aligned with institutional priorities.
- Maintains coordination authority for communications decisions to ensure clarity and alignment.
- Ensures effective use of CRM and other data technology (e.g., Raiser's Edge) for tracking, reporting, and segmentation.
- Oversees data integrity, reporting processes, and analytics.
- Supports data-informed decision-making across campaigns and engagement efforts.
- Directly supervises Advancement Operations team members.
- Establishes clear goals, priorities, and performance expectations.
- Provides coaching, feedback, and professional development support.
- Ensures accountability and consistency across functional areas.
- Carries out, explains, interprets and enforces policy.
- Conducts annual employee evaluations, and recommends pay increases, promotions and other personnel actions.
- Approves leave and authorizes overtime as appropriate.
- Participates in employee selection process.
- Administers disciplinary actions upon approval, and in collaboration with Human Resources.
- Serves as a central decision-maker for day-to-day operational questions.
- Prioritizes workstreams and allocates resources to meet goals.
- Acts as escalation point for cross-functional issues and competing priorities.
- Ensures timely execution and high-quality deliverables.
- Leads day-to-day coordination of communications, stewardship, and data functions.
- Translates strategic priorities into actionable plans and timelines.
- Ensures alignment across campaigns, events, donor engagement, and data workflows.
- Identifies and resolves workflow gaps, redundancies, and inefficiencies
- Partners with Event Manager on integrated planning and follow-up.
- Collaborates with Marketing & Communications to incorporate strategic communications, branding, and content development, while maintaining clear internal decision-making authority.
- Builds relationships across departments to support coordinated advancement efforts.
- Fosters and maintains a safe environment of respect and inclusion for faculty, staff, students, and members of the community.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
