Strategy Jobs in St. Louis, MO

Reports To: Chief Executive Officer

Classification: Full Time, Exempt

Department: Development / Executive

Supervises: Grants Manager; Part Time Development Assistant; Seasonal Event Manager

Position Purpose

The Director of Development & Strategic Partnerships exists to build the relationships, resources, visibility, and philanthropic investment necessary to sustain and advance the future of The Core Collective.

The purpose of this position is not simply to raise money. It is to strengthen The Core Collective's long term financial sustainability by expanding and diversifying its base of support, cultivating significant relationships, increasing organizational visibility, and translating the mission, impact, and future direction of The Core Collective into compelling opportunities for investment and partnership.

The Director is responsible for ensuring that The Core Collective develops a broad and growing network of individuals, foundations, corporations, institutions, and community partners who understand the work, believe in the vision, and are invested in its success.

Working in close partnership with the CEO and Board of Directors, the Director will build a development operation that is relationship driven, strategic, measurable, diversified, and sustainable.

The End We Are Building Toward

The ultimate measure of this position is not the number of events held, proposals submitted, meetings attended, or donor communications sent.

Success is a financially stronger and more visible Core Collective with growing, diversified, and sustainable revenue and a community of investors and partners committed to advancing its mission.

Position Summary

The Director of Development & Strategic Partnerships serves as The Core Collective's senior fundraising and external relationship leader and leads the organization's development function and team. The Director is accountable for developing and executing a comprehensive strategy for philanthropic revenue growth, diversification, donor and institutional relationships, strategic partnerships, and development infrastructure.

This position requires more than a skilled development administrator. The Core Collective is seeking a strategist, relationship builder, and closer who can identify opportunities, cultivate significant relationships, make compelling cases for investment, and move prospective supporters toward meaningful commitments.

The Director will lead revenue development across major gifts, individual giving, foundations, corporations, sponsorships, strategic partnerships, campaigns, and other philanthropic opportunities. The Director will also build the systems, pipelines, institutional knowledge, and development practices necessary to ensure fundraising success belongs to The Core Collective rather than being dependent upon the relationships or knowledge of any one individual.

What This Position Owns

Revenue Growth and Diversification: Build and execute a comprehensive strategy to increase philanthropic revenue while reducing dependence on any single donor, funder, event, or revenue source.

Major Investment: Build and manage a pipeline of prospects capable of making significant investments in The Core Collective.

Strategic Relationships: Develop meaningful relationships with individuals, foundations, corporations, financial institutions, philanthropic leaders, and other partners capable of advancing the mission.

Organizational Visibility and Positioning: Help ensure The Core Collective is visible and well positioned among donors, philanthropic institutions, corporate leaders, and other strategic audiences.

Development Infrastructure: Build the systems, CRM practices, prospect management processes, reporting, stewardship practices, and institutional knowledge necessary for a high performing development operation.

CEO and Board Fundraising Partnership: Create the strategy and preparation that enables the CEO and Board to be effective ambassadors, relationship builders, and fundraisers.

Development Team Leadership: Lead, develop, coordinate, and hold accountable a development team capable of executing the organization's fundraising and relationship strategy.

Authority and Decision Making

The Director is expected to lead the development function with significant professional judgment and accountability. Within approved organizational strategy and budget, the Director has authority to:

· Develop and recommend annual and multi year fundraising strategies.

· Establish prospect cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship strategies.

· Assign and coordinate donor relationship activity among development staff and organizational leadership.

· Set priorities, work plans, deadlines, and performance expectations for the development team.

· Determine appropriate cultivation, stewardship, and donor engagement approaches.

· Recommend fundraising investments, campaigns, events, sponsorship structures, and development tools.

· Establish development processes, CRM standards, pipeline management practices, and performance dashboards.

· Represent The Core Collective in appropriate philanthropic, corporate, and community settings.

· Engage prospective donors and partners on behalf of the organization.

The CEO retains final authority for organizational strategy, major institutional commitments, significant partnership agreements, public positions, and other matters requiring executive approval.

Primary Areas of Accountability

Revenue Growth and Diversification

· Develop and execute annual and multi year fundraising plans tied to organizational priorities and financial goals.

· Establish clear revenue targets, strategies, timelines, and performance measures.

· Build a balanced philanthropic portfolio across individuals, foundations, corporations, institutional partners, sponsorships, campaigns, and other appropriate sources.

· Identify new sources of investment and develop strategies for converting prospects into supporters.

· Maintain reliable revenue projections and regularly assess fundraising performance against goals.

Major Gifts and Significant Investment

· Personally manage a portfolio of high potential prospects and donors.

· Identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, close, and steward significant philanthropic investments.

· Create individualized relationship strategies for priority prospects.

· Build a disciplined moves management process that consistently advances relationships.

· Develop compelling opportunities for donors to invest in the current work and future direction of The Core Collective.

Strategic Partnerships

· Build relationships that produce both financial and strategic value for the organization.

· Develop partnerships with corporations, foundations, employers, educational institutions, financial institutions, philanthropic organizations, and other community stakeholders.

· Identify opportunities for financial investment, employment pathways, expertise, sponsorship, in kind support, volunteer engagement, and other strategic resources.

· Ensure partnerships are connected to actual organizational priorities rather than created simply for visibility.

CEO Partnership

· Serve as the CEO's primary strategic partner for fundraising and philanthropic relationship development.

· Identify the relationships where CEO engagement will have the greatest impact.

· Prepare the CEO for significant meetings with prospect research, relationship history, strategy, talking points, investment opportunities, and clearly defined objectives.

· Participate in cultivation and solicitation meetings when appropriate.

· Ensure timely and strategic follow through after CEO donor and partner engagements.

· Own the strategy that moves priority relationships toward meaningful engagement and investment rather than simply placing meetings on the CEO's calendar.

Board Engagement

· Partner with the CEO to strengthen the Board's role in philanthropy.

· Help Board members identify relationships and networks that may advance the organization.

· Equip Board members to make introductions, cultivate relationships, thank donors, advocate for the organization, participate in solicitations when appropriate, and contribute personally.

· Provide clear development information so the Board understands progress, opportunities, risks, and priorities.

Foundation and Institutional Investment

· Build and maintain relationships with foundation and institutional funders.

· Maintain a strong pipeline of renewal and new funding opportunities.

· Provide strategic direction to the Grants Manager and ensure grant seeking is integrated into the overall development strategy.

· Work collaboratively with the Grants Manager, Finance, and program leadership to ensure proposals are strategically aligned, financially sound, and connected to measurable organizational outcomes.

· Ensure institutional fundraising includes funder cultivation, proposal development, reporting, renewal strategy, and stewardship.

Development Team Leadership

· Lead the day to day development function and establish a culture of accountability, urgency, collaboration, and measurable results.

· Translate the annual development strategy into clear priorities, assignments, deadlines, and revenue goals for the development team.

· Supervise, coach, and evaluate the Grants Manager, Part Time Development Assistant, and Seasonal Event Manager.

· Coordinate workloads so grants, donor development, events, sponsorships, stewardship, prospect management, and administrative support function as one comprehensive development strategy rather than separate activities.

· Direct the work of the Development Assistant to strengthen donor records, CRM accuracy, acknowledgments, prospect research, meeting preparation, stewardship, and other development operations.

· Provide strategic direction to the Seasonal Event Manager so fundraising events support donor cultivation, sponsorship development, stewardship, and revenue goals.

· Conduct regular development pipeline and revenue meetings focused on what is moving, what is stalled, what is due, what is at risk, and what action is needed next.

Development Infrastructure and Institutional Knowledge

· Establish disciplined CRM and donor management practices.

· Ensure prospect information, relationship history, meeting notes, giving history, proposals, commitments, cultivation strategies, stewardship activity, and next steps are documented.

· Maintain accurate and actionable prospect pipelines.

· Establish development dashboards and performance indicators.

· Create processes that allow leadership to understand what is in the fundraising pipeline, where relationships stand, what revenue is reasonably projected, and where intervention is needed.

· Ensure relationships may be personal, but the information, history, strategy, and institutional knowledge belong to The Core Collective.

Donor Stewardship and Communications

· Develop a comprehensive stewardship strategy that strengthens relationships beyond the gift.

· Ensure donors understand the impact of their investment.

· Create meaningful opportunities for donors to remain connected to the organization and its young people without compromising youth privacy or dignity.

· Partner with communications staff to develop compelling donor communications, impact stories, cases for support, annual reports, campaigns, and fundraising materials.

Fundraising Events

· Provide strategic leadership for signature fundraising events and donor engagement opportunities.

· Ensure events are connected to larger cultivation, stewardship, sponsorship, and revenue strategies.

· Evaluate events based on revenue, cost, donor acquisition, relationship development, sponsorship growth, and long term value.

· Supervise the Seasonal Event Manager and ensure event execution supports the broader development strategy.

Measures of Success

Performance will be measured primarily by results and organizational capacity, not activity alone.

· Growth in contributed and philanthropic revenue.

· Greater diversification of revenue sources.

· Growth in major gift and significant investment pipelines.

· New and renewed foundation and corporate investments.

· Number and quality of qualified prospects moving through the development pipeline.

· Donor retention and increased giving.

· Development of new strategic relationships.

· Accuracy of fundraising projections.

· Strength and utilization of CRM and moves management systems.

· Board engagement in philanthropy.

· Quality of donor stewardship.

· Development of institutional fundraising knowledge that remains with the organization.

· Effective leadership, coordination, and performance of the development team.

· Progress toward annual and multi year development goals.

First Year Priorities

· Assess the current development operation, revenue portfolio, donor base, fundraising systems, staffing, and opportunities.

· Develop a comprehensive development and revenue diversification strategy.

· Establish clear roles, priorities, and accountability across the development team.

· Build and actively manage a qualified major donor and institutional prospect pipeline.

· Meet personally with existing significant donors and priority prospective supporters.

· Strengthen donor retention and stewardship.

· Identify opportunities to reduce revenue concentration.

· Establish clear CRM and moves management expectations.

· Develop reliable fundraising dashboards and revenue projections.

· Create a CEO engagement strategy for priority relationships.

· Develop a Board engagement strategy.

· Identify significant new individual, foundation, corporate, and institutional opportunities.

· Demonstrate measurable progress toward increased philanthropic investment.

Qualifications

· Seven to ten or more years of progressively responsible fundraising, advancement, development, or related leadership experience.

· Demonstrated success personally cultivating, soliciting, and closing significant philanthropic gifts or investments.

· Demonstrated experience growing contributed revenue and managing ambitious fundraising goals.

· Experience developing and managing major donor and institutional pipelines.

· Experience building or significantly strengthening a development operation is strongly preferred.

· Demonstrated success working with individual donors, foundations, corporations, and institutional funders.

· Demonstrated experience supervising, coaching, and developing staff.

· Strong understanding of moves management, donor stewardship, prospect development, CRM systems, and fundraising strategy.

· Experience developing multi year fundraising plans and measurable revenue goals.

· Strong executive presence and ability to represent an organization credibly with sophisticated donors, philanthropic leaders, corporate executives, Board members, and community leaders.

· Exceptional relationship building, written communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills.

· Ability to translate complex organizational work into compelling investment opportunities.

· Demonstrated ability to work effectively with a CEO and Board of Directors.

· Bachelor's degree required. Advanced education and relevant professional credentials are valued but are not substitutes for demonstrated fundraising results.

Leadership Profile

The successful candidate will be a person who can see opportunity and act on it. They are strategic without becoming removed from the work. They are relational without being transactional. They are confident enough to make significant asks and disciplined enough to follow through.

They understand that development requires patience, persistence, judgment, and trust. They are comfortable being held accountable for revenue. They understand numbers and can speak credibly about organizational impact. They build systems instead of keeping important information in their heads.

They are willing to open doors and equally willing to walk through doors opened by others. They know when the CEO should be in the room and when they should carry the relationship themselves. They know how to lead a team while remaining personally accountable for significant fundraising results.

Most importantly, they understand that their job is not simply to do development activities. Their job is to build investment in the future of The Core Collective.

Pay: $90,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year

Benefits:

• 403(b)
• Dental insurance
• Employee assistance program
• Flexible spending account
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Professional development assistance
• Vision insurance

Work Location: In person