Development Operations Manager

C-Span•Washington, DC

13d

About The Position

C-SPAN is building a comprehensive philanthropic program to expand and diversify support for its public-service mission. The Development Operations Manager will establish and manage the systems, processes, data, and administrative infrastructure needed to support this work. This is a hands-on role on an entrepreneurial team, with day-to-day ownership of C-SPAN's fundraising databases and workflows, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Donorbox. The role ensures that donor and prospect information is accurate, communications and follow-up are completed on time, grant deadlines are tracked, gifts are processed and acknowledged, and fundraising activity is documented. The successful candidate will create structure, manage detailed administrative work and larger projects, and identify practical operational improvements. While primarily responsible for development operations, the position also shares responsibility for building the program and supporting donor engagement.

Requirements

At least five years of experience in development operations, fundraising administration, database management, advancement services, or a related field.
Demonstrated experience managing a nonprofit CRM; direct Salesforce experience is strongly preferred.
Knowledge of gift processing, donor acknowledgment, pledges, restricted gifts, grants administration, and fundraising reporting.
Experience creating or improving workflows, documentation, and data standards.
Strong project-management skills and ability to manage multiple deadlines, details, and stakeholders.
Advanced proficiency with spreadsheets and experience producing actionable reports and dashboards.
Strong written communication and proofreading skills, with close attention to accuracy, tone, and detail.
Sound judgment when handling confidential donor, financial, and organizational information.
Ability to work independently, identify problems, recommend solutions, and follow projects through to completion.
Comfort working in a startup environment where priorities may evolve and team members share responsibilities.
Commitment to C-SPAN's mission, editorial independence, nonpartisanship, and role as a public-service institution.

Nice To Haves

Experience with online fundraising, email-marketing, or donor-engagement platforms such as HubSpot and Donorbox.
Experience helping build or significantly strengthen a fundraising operation.
Experience supporting a comprehensive, capital, anniversary, or major-gifts campaign.
Familiarity with prospect management and moves-management practices.
Experience supporting foundation, corporate, and individual donations and grant administration.
Knowledge of fundraising compliance, donor privacy, data governance, and charitable-giving practices.
Experience working with senior executives, boards, campaign volunteers, or major donors.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary administrator and internal expert for the Development team's use of Salesforce, HubSpot, Donorbox, and other fundraising platforms.
Establish standards for entering, maintaining, and using donor and prospect information; clean and strengthen existing records by resolving duplicates, standardizing fields, and addressing incomplete data.
Ensure gifts, communications, meetings, proposals, reports, commitments, and follow-up activities are accurately recorded in Salesforce.
Create and maintain procedures for prospect assignments, moves management, contact reports, opportunity tracking, and portfolio review.
Build dashboards, reports, and lists to monitor fundraising performance, prospect activity, campaign progress, and outstanding actions.
Manage data imports, exports, integrations, segmentation, and quality-control reviews across fundraising systems; work with internal teams and vendors to troubleshoot issues and improve integrations.
Maintain appropriate data security, donor confidentiality, record-retention, and user-access practices.
Manage execution and distribution of approved donor communications, including solicitations, acknowledgments, stewardship messages, campaign updates, event communications, and grant correspondence.
Coordinate email lists, mail merges, digital communications, and other distributions; monitor fundraising inboxes, donation platforms, and donor-response channels.
Ensure donor questions and requests are acknowledged promptly and routed appropriately; track responses and follow-up commitments.
Maintain templates and workflows for acknowledgments, tax receipts, pledge reminders, tribute notifications, recurring-gift communications, and routine correspondence.
Support personalized correspondence from senior leaders by preparing lists, background information, attachments, and distribution plans; track returned mail, deliverability, opt-outs, preferences, and address changes.
Oversee accurate and timely processing and recording of gifts, pledges, recurring contributions, grants, donor-advised fund distributions, stock gifts, matching gifts, tribute gifts, and other contributions.
Ensure timely donor acknowledgments and tax receipts in accordance with applicable requirements and C-SPAN policies; coordinate with Finance to reconcile fundraising and financial records and resolve discrepancies.
Track gift restrictions, pledge schedules, payment status, soft credits, campaign designations, and donor recognition preferences; maintain documentation for gift agreements, grants, pledges, and restrictions.
Support implementation of C-SPAN's gift-acceptance policy and flag gifts or donor circumstances requiring additional review; help establish written gift-processing, reconciliation, acknowledgment, documentation, and reporting procedures.
Create and maintain a centralized grants calendar covering proposal deadlines, award periods, reporting requirements, payment schedules, renewal dates, and internal responsibilities; provide advance deadline alerts.
Maintain organized grant records and coordinate collection of programmatic, financial, audience, and impact information for proposals and reports.
Track grant restrictions, deliverables, reporting commitments, and changes to funded projects; support institutional funders and reporting obligations with relevant C-SPAN colleagues.
Document institutional donor contacts, submissions, decisions, and follow-up in Salesforce; maintain a reusable library of organizational information, attachments, budgets, metrics, and proposal materials.
Support development and administration of a formal prospect-management system; prepare prospect lists, briefing materials, portfolio reports, meeting agendas, call sheets, and follow-up trackers.
Monitor open actions and remind staff and organizational leaders of donor meetings, calls, deadlines, and commitments; prepare action lists, record decisions, and track next steps for weekly fundraising meetings with the CEO and senior leaders.
Coordinate with executive and administrative staff to schedule donor meetings and identify events where senior leaders can engage donors or prospects.
Conduct initial donor and prospect research and coordinate more in-depth research; help identify opportunities to upgrade, reactivate, retain, and steward donors.
Ensure information from donor meetings, emails, calls, and events is captured in Salesforce and translated into clear next steps.
Work closely with the Chief Development Officer on department priorities and own projects from planning through completion.
Share responsibility for donor stewardship, research, event support, campaign execution, and other needs of a growing program.
Build working relationships across Finance, Legal, Editorial, Communications, Digital, Product, Technology, and executive leadership; help colleagues contribute information, record donor activity, and complete follow-up.
Protect C-SPAN's editorial independence, nonpartisanship, donor confidentiality, and public trust; perform other responsibilities consistent with the needs of a small and developing fundraising team.