Assistant Director of Development - OVCA

University of Illinois Chicago•Chicago, IL

25d

About The Position

The Assistant Director of Development builds a scalable and sustainable major gift pipeline across Advancement. Working at the intersection of prospect research and frontline fundraising, this position turns wealth- and engagement-scored data into fully vetted, high-affinity major gift prospects. The role focuses on early-stage discovery and direct outreach to determine donor affinity, philanthropic intent, and readiness for major-gift engagement, helping populate major-gift portfolios with high-yield opportunities. The position is with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Advancement at the University of Illinois Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. The budgeted salary range is $60,000–$68,000. The role is intended to be eligible for benefits, including health, dental, vision, and life insurance; a retirement plan; paid time off; and tuition waivers for employees and dependents.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or foreign equivalent.
Two years of experience in higher education advancement, nonprofit fundraising, sales development, or high-volume relationship management; four years of experience is preferred.
Proven ability to make cold or warm calls, ask open-ended strategic questions, and rapidly build rapport with alumni, parents, and friends.
Experience with advancement CRMs such as Salesforce or Blackbaud and contact-logging workflows.
Exceptional written, verbal, and active-listening skills.

Responsibilities

Conduct proactive strategic outreach to major gift-rated prospects by phone, email, video, and targeted in-person visits to evaluate philanthropic intent, affinity, and capacity.
Assess donor alignment with University strategic priorities and readiness, systematically qualifying or disqualifying 150–200 or more prospects annually and advancing viable candidates with potential gifts of $50,000 or more into active major gift portfolios.
Partner with annual giving, alumni engagement, and unit-based teams to use events, programming, signature initiatives, and giving days as strategic opportunities to engage, warm, and qualify prospects.
Facilitate contextual handoffs of newly qualified prospects to frontline fundraisers while supporting relationship continuity and fundraiser capacity.
Partner with Prospect Research and Portfolio Management to review and refine scoring methodologies, and provide qualitative feedback from discovery calls to improve prospect segmentation.
Meet regularly with frontline gift officers to receive feedback on the process and the quality of qualified prospects, and use it to improve the major gift pipeline.
Maintain timely, high-quality CRM documentation of qualification outcomes to support institutional pipeline forecasting.
Perform other related duties and participate in special projects as assigned.