Director of Development Strategy & Operations

New Energy Nexus•Oakland, CA

3d•Remote

About The Position

New Energy Nexus (NEX) is an international NGO focused on supporting climate solutions and building a more equitable clean energy economy by empowering clean energy entrepreneurs through funding, accelerators, and networks. The Director of Development Strategy & Operations will lead the internal operations for NEX's global fundraising and business development. This role is central to the development team, responsible for translating on-the-ground intelligence from staff and country teams into a cohesive fundraising strategy. The Director will ensure the team is coordinated, resourced, and focused on high-value opportunities. This is a strategy, team leadership, and fundraising operations role, not primarily a donor-facing relationship management position. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical and systems thinking skills, combined with fluency in philanthropic and development finance fundraising, to effectively lead and partner with a globally distributed team. The role involves leading and developing the global platform-level development team, ensuring effective deployment of skills against organizational priorities, and integrating knowledge from country leaders, chapter teams, and program leads.

Requirements

8+ years of experience across nonprofit fundraising/development, development strategy and/or development operations, including at least 5 years working directly within nonprofit or philanthropic fundraising.
Deep practical understanding of the fundraising cycle, funder decision-making, proposal development and stewardship.
Strong track record leading the development of complex philanthropic/grant proposals, ideally involving multiple programmes, geographies or internal stakeholders.
Demonstrated experience turning frontline or field-level input into strategy and prioritization.
Demonstrated people-management experience, including coaching, performance management, setting priorities and allocating team capacity.
Experience leading a distributed team is strongly preferred.
Experience operating in a global or matrix organisation, with demonstrated ability to influence and coordinate country leaders, programme teams and other stakeholders who do not report directly to them.
Comfortable using CRM and pipeline data to support fundraising decisions, forecasting and team management.
Structured, analytical thinker who is comfortable synthesizing messy, qualitative field input into clear recommendations.
High level of adaptability in an environment with evolving team structures and workflows, with a genuine comfort operating in ambiguity - this means being a self-starter and embodying a growth mindset.
High emotional intelligence — able to lead and support a development team well, build trust with country leads across diverse cultural contexts, and approach unfamiliar markets and norms with genuine curiosity and cultural sensitivity.
Exceptional written communication skills — able to distill complex, multi-market fundraising intelligence into concise strategy and proposals.
Strong project management skills; able to run a coordination function across concurrent proposals, deadlines, and stakeholders.
Comfortable being an internal partner and "connective tissue" role rather than the primary external face of fundraising.
Ability to work with a global team across time zones, with periodic travel for internal team meetings and relevant conferences/convenings.
Proficiency in database/CRM management, Google Workspace, and Slack.

Nice To Haves

Familiarity with the climate, clean energy, or entrepreneurship support landscape is a strong plus.
Experience conducting dedicated funder-market or landscape research is advantageous.
Foundational knowledge of global clean energy and climate change solutions and ecosystems and willingness to engage in in-depth self-learning on any gaps.
Experience building or adding structure to a development operations function from an earlier, more informal stage.

Responsibilities

Help develop a living, prioritized development strategy based on proposal outcomes, funder conversations, and market signals gleaned from team conversations and learnings from fundraisers, country directors, and program leads.
Synthesize funder conversations, proposal outcomes, market signals and intelligence generated across the organization into clear fundraising priorities.
Identify where NEX should be focusing time and effort across programs and geographies, based on funder appetite, pipeline strength, and organizational priorities.
Maintain a clear view of the funding pipeline across the network — by funder, program, chapter, and stage — and flag risks, gaps, or unrestricted-vs-restricted balance issues early.
Translate strategy into concrete guidance: which opportunities to prioritize, which proposals need repositioning, where the team is over- or under-invested.
Serve as a thought partner to the CEO and program leads on funding strategy, drawing on patterns across markets rather than any single relationship.
Lead and develop the global platform-level development team including recruiting, hiring, onboarding, coaching, and managing performance, and ensure team members' skills are effectively leveraged against NEX's development priorities.
Translate the development strategy into a clear rolling work plan for the team, aligning ownership, resources, and timelines.
Build strong collaboration across the global development function, bringing together the expertise and fundraising capabilities of platform-level staff, country leaders, fundraisers, and program leads to maximize collective impact.
Run the operating rhythm of the fundraising team: pipeline reviews, proposal coordination across programs/chapters/finance/communications, and prioritization check-ins.
Coordinate multi-country and multi-program proposals, including combining country and program inputs into a cohesive narrative and budget that aligns with broader NEX operational and growth priorities.
Build and own a central library of fundraising collateral - pitch decks, one-pagers, case studies, program summaries, impact data - so materials for funder meetings and conference talks can be assembled quickly rather than built from scratch each time.
Draft and maintain core funder and conference decks, adapting a standard set of modular slides/content to each audience so our fundraisers can focus their time on external relationship-building and speaking rather than deck production.
Partner with the Chief Communications Officer to keep collateral aligned with current messaging, program updates, and brand standards.
Provide country leads and fundraisers with the tools, templates, frameworks, and support to raise funds effectively and report consistently.
Build feedback loops so that what is learned through funder and country-level engagement consistently makes its way back into strategy, priorities, and team planning.
Accountable for the fundraising CRM and pipeline-tracking systems, ensuring data quality, consistent use across chapters, and useful reporting.
Produce regular and ad hoc reporting and dashboards for NEX leadership on pipeline health, funder trends, and progress against platform fundraising goals.
Standardize proposal, reporting, and stewardship templates and processes across the global platform-level team.
Track outcomes against the fundraising strategy and refine it as new data comes in.
Ensure fundraising protocols and internal as well as external reporting are completed on time and to consistent quality standards.