Senior Manager, Direct Marketing - Stewardship and Engagement

Heart & Stroke

11d • Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Manager, Direct Marketing Stewardship and Engagement is responsible for designing and leading integrated donor stewardship and relationship cultivation strategies across key fundraising audiences, including annual donors, recurring donors, and lapsed donor segments. This role focuses on strengthening donor relationships over time, improving retention, reactivation, and donor value, and ensuring donors experience thoughtful, relevant, and timely engagement across channels and programs. Working closely with cross-functional partners, including the Intermediate Giving, Development and Constituent Experience teams, this role ensures stewardship, engagement strategies, and fundraising offers are aligned to support healthy donor continuity and informed transitions across programs. The Senior Manager leads a small team and plays a key role in shaping strategy, setting priorities, and translating insights into practical, executable programs that balance donor experience with business objectives.

Requirements

• University Degree in related area
• 7+ years of progressive fundraising or donor engagement experience, with demonstrated success designing and implementing donor journeys and stewardship programs that retain and grow donor value.
• Experience developing and testing fundraising offers to engage new audiences and increase donor value.
• Proven ability to use data and insight to inform strategy, decision-making, and performance improvement.
• Minimum 3 years of people management experience, including coaching and team development.
• Strong experience working cross-functionally and with external partners or agencies.
• Demonstrated budget and project management experience in a complex, matrixed environment.
• Strong understanding of donor motivations, behaviours, and relationship management.
• Big picture thinker with the ability to translate strategy into practical execution.
• Data-informed, outcome-oriented decision-maker comfortable operating in ambiguity and change.
• Strong collaborator with effective stakeholder management and interpersonal skills.
• Empathetic leader with a coaching mindset and high personal initiative.
• Excellent written, verbal, and editorial communication skills.
• Flexible, action-oriented, and able to operate with urgency to deliver results.

Responsibilities

• Lead donor stewardship and relationship strategies across annual, recurring, and lapsed segments.
• Design and execute donor journeys aligned to motivations, behaviours, and lifecycle stages, with a focus on retention, reactivation, and growing long-term value.
• Champion a donor-centric approach that aligns stewardship with broader fundraising priorities and supports progression across the donor lifecycle.
• Lead the fundraising offer strategy and end-to-end development across annual, recurring, and reactivation audiences, grounded in donor insight, stewardship principles, and defined success measures.
• Establish and lead a test-and-learn approach to offers, building organizational understanding of what resonates with different donor segments over time.
• Partner with integrated campaign, annual giving, and monthly giving leads to strengthen stewardship and donor experience components that support overall program success.
• Identify and address risks, gaps, and continuity issues across donor communications, ensuring stewardship reinforces integrated campaigns and protects retention and donor confidence.
• Partner with analytics to define and track success metrics for stewardship and relationship programs, using data and insight to inform strategy, segmentation, testing, and optimization.
• Translate insights into clear recommendations and actions, leading a test-and-learn approach that improves donor experience, engagement, and outcomes over time.
• Contribute to an integrated, enterprise-level view of the donor experience, helping reduce silos and improve alignment across programs and channels.
• Build strong lateral relationships and engage stakeholders early to foster shared understanding, alignment, and support for stewardship initiatives and fundraising priorities.
• Lead, develop, and support a high-performing team by setting clear expectations, providing ongoing coaching and feedback, fostering collaboration, and building skills and career growth aligned to business needs.
• Provide clear direction on priorities and outcomes, ensure effective resource deployment, and recruit and manage talent in line with Foundation policies to deliver against current and future goals.

Benefits

• Generous paid time-off package including vacation days, personal days, wellness days, and paid company-wide closure between December 25 and January 1.
• Competitive health, medical, dental and vision benefits
• Life insurance
• Disability benefits
• Employee assistance program (EAP)
• Defined contribution pension plan with employer matching
• Flexible hybrid working model
• Reimbursement for mobile phones and home office setup
• Opportunities for professional development

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior