As a UW employee, you have a unique opportunity to change lives on our campuses, in our state and around the world. UW employees offer their boundless energy, creative problem solving skills and dedication to build stronger minds and a healthier world. UW faculty and staff also enjoy outstanding benefits, professional growth opportunities and unique resources in an environment noted for diversity, intellectual excitement, artistic pursuits and natural beauty. All of which has allowed the UW to be nationally recognized as a “Great College to Work For” for five consecutive years. Annual Philanthropy, Advancement, has an outstanding opportunity for an outstanding opportunity for a Director for Annual Giving.

Position Purpose

Annual Philanthropy is seeking a Director for Annual Giving for the University of Washington. This position is responsible for leading the university’s annual giving fundraising efforts and seeks to promote a culture of philanthropy throughout the university community, including alumni, students, parents, faculty, staff and friends.

Reporting to the Senior Director for Annual Philanthropy, the Director for Annual Giving is responsible for leading annual giving efforts across direct mail, digital, and phonathon channels to reach annual giving goals on behalf of the entire university. This position provides direction in designing, implementing, and evaluating annual giving initiatives whose purpose is to build a long-term base of support for the University. This critical work includes multi-channel direct marketing activities to acquire, re-activate, retain, and upgrade annual donors with an emphasis on growing our base of support, boosting retention rates, and contributing to pipeline development.

The Director is responsible for analyzing results of data trends to drive strategic planning of annual giving fundraising efforts. This is a leadership role that will be active and collaborative across central and unit-based teams in University Advancement, deploying resources in smart, innovative ways that maximize results and grow University of Washington’s base of annual support.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Leadership and Team management

• Provide leadership and manage the Annual Philanthropy team.  Also, provide leadership to the Development Services Advancement team in collaboration with the Senior Director of Annual Philanthropy.
• Manage the day-to-day operations of the Annual Philanthropy.
• Create and manage the budget of the Annual Philanthropy team with discretionary authority
• Manage a team of professional annual giving specialists.
• Responsible for management, staff development and career enrichment for the Annual Philanthropy team.

Strategy Development

• Develops key strategies for varying annual donor segments to retain long-term donors and acquire new donors
• Develops and implements UW’s annual giving multi-channel integration plan with an emphasis on innovative approaches to leveraging our digital channels and deploys staff and operating budget resources to execute a best-in-class program and achieve fundraising goals.
• Partners with colleagues in University Marketing & Communications to direct a high volume of activities across direct marketing and digital channels efficiently and with measurable outcomes.

Program Development and Management

• Manage the University’s annual Husky Giving Day in close partnership with UMAC and other key partners.
• Manages a direct annual giving marketing budget to maximize efficiencies and ensure that projects are on-time and on-budget.
• Partners closely with Information Management colleagues to extract data; prepares, analyzes, and manipulates data for highly segmented annual giving campaign; maintains data integrity and identification of solicitable alumni counts; collaborates to develop annual giving statistics and reports.

Relationship Management

• Liaises closely with campus and unit colleagues to drive annual giving strategy, set goals, and determine messaging and fundraising strategies.
• Manage relationship with current phonathon management, providing strategy and ensuring key goals are being met with vendor.
• Collaborates closely with critical partners, including staff in Marketing Communications, Donor Relations, Alumni & Stakeholder Engagement and unit based fundraising teams to build buy-in and maximize annual giving outcomes for undergraduate and graduate alumni, parents, faculty & staff and friends of the university.
• Partners closely with colleagues in Annual Philanthropy’s Advancement Analytics team to develop innovative, data-driven approaches to segmentation, testing and use of description and predictive models to enhance direct marketing efforts across channels.
• Other duties as assigned

Key Competencies

Core

• Effective communications: Expresses oneself clearly and empathetically in interactions with others in all forms of communication, i.e., verbal and written, one-on-one and group, etc.
• Interpersonal Awareness: Builds and maintains positive relationships and actively contributes as a member of working teams to achieve results.
• Professional Credibility: Takes responsibility for meeting goals, objectives, obligations, and solving problems while representing the mission, vision and values of the organization.
• Critical Thinking: Obtains, analyzes and evaluates information effectively in the face of ambiguity.  Makes appropriate decisions based on relevant information and experience.
• Ethics and Trust: Models and upholds the values of candor, openness, inclusiveness and honesty despite internal and external pressures.  Acts consistently with Washington State ethical guidelines and organizational core values and beliefs.
• Valuing Diversity & Inclusiveness: Respects, values and contributes to the UW’s commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.

Functional Expertise

• Organizational Acumen: Able to size up a situation, balance reason and the interest of others, and act in a decisive, timely and appropriate manner that is congruent with the organization’s values, goals and mission to achieve success.
• Innovation Management: Able to anticipate market trends and be effective in facilitating and managing creative processes to achieve results in self and others.
• Planning & Implementing: Ability to develop strategies, measures for success and feasible timelines for successful project implementation and execution.
• Managing Conflict: Recognizes and addresses conflicts and disagreements in a safe and respectful environment, manages conflicts collaboratively, and builds consensus with the best interests.

Management

• People Builder: Committed to developing others to become leaders.
• Driving Results: Effectively communicates objectives and guides direct reports and team members to make decisions and achieve goals.
• Organizational Planning: Develops and manages comprehensive team goals and measures team progress while balancing short-term and long-term priorities that are consistent with the organization’s mission, priorities and goals.
• Managing Conflict: Recognizes and addresses conflicts and disagreements in a safe and respectful environment, manages conflicts collaboratively, and builds consensus with the best interests of the organization in mind.

Strategic

• Visioning: Anticipates emerging trends and issues and develops a clear sense of purpose and goals that focus and drive the creative energy of the organization in alignment with the organization’s mission, vision, and values.
• Organizational Acumen: Analyzes a situation, balances reason and the interest of others, and acts in a decisive, timely and appropriate manner that is congruent with the organization’s values, goals and mission to achieve success.
• Selflessness: Demonstrates ambition first and foremost for the organization and concern for its success rather than for one’s own personal gain.
• Professional Will/Fearlessness: Displays an inner intensity and dedication to making everything the best that it can be.  Shows resolve and determination to make the organization great.
• Focused on Organizational Sustainability: Communicates uncompromising desire to make the organization even more successful in the next generation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in related field and 6-7 years of experience in related field. Equivalent combination of comparable knowledge and skills may substitute for education and/or experience.
• Experience leading staff, teams or projects.
• Experience managing and developing staff and/or teams.
• The ideal candidate is a tested annual giving professional with experience managing complex annual giving campaigns to drive results and meet expectations of a large institution.
• Competent and proactive working in a data-rich environment where decisions are based on analysis, testing, and a commitment to iterative process improvement.
• Proven ability to simultaneously manage multiple large-scale projects, plan ahead, and unify efforts across multiple teams is desired.
• Have outstanding written and oral communication skills; attention to detail; demonstrate high initiative and flexibility, and ability to work with different types of people and functional areas.
• Experience interpreting data and communicating results is also desired. Candidates who are eager to play a leadership role in expanding UW donor base and building a best-in-class annual giving operation.
• Demonstrated strong computer skills, including proficiency with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for correspondence, special reports, spreadsheets, databases, forms, etc.

Desired Qualifications

• Knowledge of the integrated advancement model. Knowledge of alumni relations/development/advancement principles.
• Knowledge of UW Advancement policies and procedures, including use of the development database software ADVANCE.

Application Process:

The application process for UW positions may include completion of a variety of online assessments to obtain additional information that will be used in the evaluation process.  These assessments may include Workforce Authorization, Cover Letter and/or others.  Any assessments that you need to complete will appear on your screen as soon as you select “Apply to this position”. Once you begin an assessment, it must be completed at that time; if you do not complete the assessment you will be prompted to do so the next time you access your “My Jobs” page. If you select to take it later, it will appear on your “My Jobs” page to take when you are ready.

Please note that your application will not be reviewed, and you will not be considered for this position until all required assessments have been completed