Senior Vice President, Transformational Giving

OVERVIEW

For almost 50 years, Covenant House has served and advocated for youth and young families experiencing homelessness, human trafficking, and exploitation. Our overarching goal is to end homelessness among youth and young families by helping them achieve housing stability, heal from trauma, tap into their innate resilience, and hone their interests and skills to forge new pathways to independence. This work is carried out across Covenant House sites in 31 cities in the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. 

PURPOSE OF POSITION

Reporting to the Chief Development Officer, the Senior Vice President of Transformational Giving leads an ambitious effort to dramatically grow and sustain Covenant House International’s major, transformational and planned giving program. This management role will drive the development, execution and evaluation of all initiatives to grow the number of five-, six-, seven- and eight-figure supporters and in-will commitments. The SVP will help engage and retain donors, with a commitment to cross-channel collaboration at all times.

OUR IDEAL CANDIDATE

Our ideal candidate has significant background in successfully cultivating long-term relationships and soliciting transformational gifts. They have successfully led a team of frontline fundraisers to grow in their own moves management abilities. Our SVP is as skilled in and focused on the ‘science’ of transformational giving - data, analysis and learning - as they are on the ‘art’ - relationships and high-touch, personal connection. They have experience and focus on both cultivating the relationships that grow from a direct response pipeline and prospecting new major giving donors.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Duties and responsibilities include but are not limited to:

• Lead and Manage. Build, manage and nurture a team of the smartest, most creative, innovative, devoted, supportive and collaborative members we can find to identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit and steward our most valuable individual supporters. 
• Achieve Goals. Provide industry-leading innovation and implementation to radically transform Covenant House’s major and planned giving programs.
• Cultivate and Steward. Consistently deliver an innovative, creative, and exceptional donor experience, both individually and as a team leader.
• Acquire New Donors. Adopt industry best practices and create innovative new strategies to bring prospective donors with transformational-giving potential to our mission.
• Raise Money!! Manage a diverse portfolio of donors who grow their giving as a direct result of your creativity and drive. Ask, ask and ask for five-, six-, seven- and eight-figure investments in our mission.
• Integrate. Partner across revenue areas to grow a seamless donor experience, working to up- and downgrade donors systematically through our high-, medium- and low-touch programs.
• Measure and Evaluate. Regularly measure and report on the impact of campaigns and opportunities for improvement. Evaluate and extrapolate insights from the performance of the team.   
• Collaborate...A Lot. Partner directly with development leadership and their teams in Site Development, Analysis and Learning, Direct Response, Peer-to-Peer, Individual Giving, Operations and Corporate Engagement to advance shared strategies, increase value exchange between channels/teams and increase net revenue across the development portfolio. 
• Strategize. Participate in a collaborative and robust strategic planning process alongside organizational leaders to set, align and create strategies that lead to the achievement of transformational objectives and goals.
• Carry Culture. Participate on the Development Leads team to drive our departmental culture, innovate new ways of bringing resources to Covenant House and offer support and community to the other heroes responsible for raising $70 million/year (and growing!) for the young people in our care.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS & ABILITIES

• You have a minimum 10-15 years of demonstrated experience cultivating and soliciting major donors to give transformational gifts and have led and managed a team to do the same.
• You’re a change maker. Your commitment to human service and social change is profound and demonstrated.
• You're comfortable asking for money and are not afraid to hear “no.” You possess a keen ability to sell ideas and close deals. You operate with poise, dignity, and reliability in both your personal and professional worlds.
• You have launched, managed and are familiar with the KPI benchmarks for a major giving program and comfortable managing a team to those outcomes.
• You’re familiar with the tried-and-true ways of fundraising but stay on top of the new trends and are open to new ways of doing things. You have a deep understanding of and interest in major giving strategies.
• You are intensely driven and excited by the opportunity to help shape the future of our fundraising department and the organization as a whole.
• You have a team-orientation and strong work ethic, essential for this demanding environment that continually strives for excellence.
• You have a highly-refined emotional intelligence and the ability to connect and communicate with a wide-range of people.
• You are personable, creative, focused and flexible. You make everyone feel special. You’re able to get anyone excited about what we do and make their experience with us unique. You’re inviting, discerning, and thoughtful.
• Your verbal and written communication skills are excellent.
• You bring a demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects with a strong attention to detail.
• You have an intensely collaborative spirit, and your colleagues enjoy working with you.
• Your projects and time management are highly organized.
• When needed for emergency fundraising needs, critical meetings or special events, you have the availability to work a flexible schedule including weekends, evenings, and night hours and don’t hesitate to say yes.
• You have the ability to work in a best-in-class CRM as well as MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint, the Google Office Suite and project management applications.

OUR COMMUNITY

Our critical mission demands that we have all voices at the table. A team of diverse people, perspectives, and experiences is smarter, stronger, and more effective for our young people. At Covenant House, every team member is valued, respected, heard, and supported, and we welcome honest and courageous self-reflection on any aspects of our work that are based on biased or outdated viewpoints. We deliberately create opportunities for our staff to grow and thrive. If you are fun, dynamic and hardworking come join our awesome international team in an organization with a heart! Our offices are located in Manhattan; however, this position will be remote for the foreseeable future.

To apply for a position, candidates should complete an online application here.

Covenant House is an Equal Opportunity Employer.