Vice President, Development

JGO

1d•Remote

About The Position

Jewish Graduate Organization (JGO) is building the Jewish future by reaching young Jews at one of the most consequential stages of their lives: graduate school. Graduate students are becoming tomorrow’s doctors, lawyers, business leaders, academics, entrepreneurs, communal leaders, and philanthropists. Yet for many, graduate school is also the moment when they become disconnected from organized Jewish life. JGO exists to change that. We build Jewish community on graduate school campuses and create meaningful opportunities for graduate students to connect—to Judaism, to Israel, to one another, and to the broader Jewish community. Since 2011, JGO has grown into a national organization reaching thousands of graduate students across campuses throughout North America. And we are just getting started.

Requirements

Outstanding fundraiser
Entrepreneurial, ambitious, creative, deeply relational, and a little unconventional.
Comfortable building relationships, building teams, building ideas, and building an organization.
Proven fundraiser
Relationship builder.
A builder
Entrepreneurial and out of the box
Driven
A leader.
An excellent communicator
Deeply connected to JGO's mission.
Comfortable across the Jewish community.
Hungry to grow.

Nice To Haves

A track record of personally closing significant philanthropic gifts or comparable high-value relationships.
Experience managing, coaching, or leading other professionals.
Strong instincts around major gifts, donor strategy, and relationship management.
An existing network within Jewish philanthropy or the broader Jewish community is valuable, but not required.
Comfort interacting with major philanthropists, executives, rabbis, students, communal leaders, and entrepreneurs.
Excellent judgment, emotional intelligence, and follow-through.
Willingness to travel regularly for donor meetings, student experiences, and JGO events.
A sense of humor, curiosity, energy, and the ability to operate in a fast-moving organization.

Responsibilities

Personally cultivate, solicit, and steward a portfolio of major donors and prospects.
Build relationships capable of generating significant 5-, 6-, and 7-figure investments in JGO.
Develop new relationships with philanthropists, foundations, community leaders, executives, and connectors.
Spend significant time meeting with donors and prospects—not just managing fundraising from behind a desk.
Make direct asks and confidently close significant gifts.
Develop creative strategies for opening doors to people who don't yet know JGO.
Build relationships that grow over years, not just through individual transactions.
Carry a meaningful personal fundraising goal and be accountable for delivering significant revenue for the organization.
Manage, coach, and develop JGO's fundraising professionals.
Help each fundraiser build stronger portfolios, strategies, pipelines, and relationships.
Establish clear expectations and accountability around fundraising activity and results.
Lead regular portfolio and pipeline strategy conversations.
Identify opportunities across portfolios and connect the dots between donors, prospects, programs, regions, and relationships.
Create a development culture that is ambitious and accountable without becoming transactional.
Help recruit and build the development team JGO will need for its next stage of growth.
Help think strategically about where JGO is going and what it could become.
Identify opportunities, partnerships, people, and ideas that could accelerate JGO's growth.
Represent JGO with donors, foundations, Jewish communal leaders, partners, and other external stakeholders.
Build relationships that may begin as fundraising conversations but grow into partnerships, introductions, programs, or entirely new opportunities.
Bring ideas to the table—even the unconventional ones.
Challenge assumptions and help us think bigger.
Step into important organizational initiatives when leadership, creativity, or relationship-building is needed.
Become deeply immersed in JGO's programs, students, alumni, and impact.
Spend time with graduate students and understand their experiences firsthand.
Translate JGO's work into a compelling case for philanthropic investment.
Tell our story naturally and persuasively in donor meetings, communal settings, presentations, events, and one-on-one conversations.
Help leadership communicate JGO's vision in ways that inspire people to participate, invest, and open doors.
Strengthen JGO's major gifts strategy, donor pipeline, and moves-management process.
Ensure our development team uses our CRM consistently and strategically.
Establish clear fundraising goals, metrics, forecasts, and accountability.
Partner with the Director of Operations to build systems that allow the development operation to scale.
Identify what's working, what's not, and what we should be doing differently.