Director of Development & Events
Summary
The Director of Development & Events provides strategic leadership, design, and execution for the Foundation’s philanthropic revenue streams, donor engagement strategy, and community-facing events. This role is responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive annual fundraising plan, cultivating major donors and corporate sponsors, and overseeing a robust event calendar that advances the Foundation’s mission, brand presence, and community health impact.
The ideal candidate combines traditional nonprofit fundraising expertise with modern corporate social responsibility, event marketing, and stakeholder engagement strategies. This role requires a strong ability to build relationships, activate donor networks, lead high-impact campaigns, and represent the Foundation with professionalism across corporate, nonprofit, community, and international settings.
Key Responsibilities
1. Strategic Fundraising & Campaign Leadership
- Design, execute, and evaluate an annual multi-million-dollar fundraising plan that includes major gifts, monthly recurring giving, one-time donations, corporate sponsorships, and event-based revenue.
- Develop and oversee targeted fundraising campaigns aligned with the annual development plan, including tailored initiatives for monthly recurring donors and key donor segments.
- Maximize revenue opportunities by leveraging corporate relationships, vendor networks, executive connections, and brand partner engagement.
- Collaborate with internal team members to establish fundraising clubs, donor affinity networks, and recurring donor communication streams.
- Monitor fundraising performance, campaign effectiveness, donor trends, and revenue progress against annual goals.
2. Major Gifts & Donor Relations
- Directly manage a personal portfolio of high-net-worth individual donors, corporate partners, institutional funders, and other high-potential supporters.
- Design and implement a formal donor relations plan focused on retention, increased giving, donor upgrades, and consistent, authentic outreach.
- Implement structured moves management processes within the Foundation’s CRM to convert event attendees, one-time donors, and lower-tier contributors into long-term, high-impact supporters.
- Lead key donor stewardship initiatives, including the Foundation’s signature donor appreciation assets and annual recognition efforts.
- Oversee the annual Top Donor Oil stewardship process, including customized label coordination, distribution list management, donor preference verification, fulfillment, and mailing.
- Coordinate the distribution of the Foundation’s official Annual Report to qualified donors and key stakeholders.
3. Event Strategy, Execution & Global Advocacy
- Conceive, plan, and execute a robust event calendar, including major Young Living events, conventions, retreats, fundraisers, and donor engagement experiences.
- Provide strategic oversight to the operations team on event contracts, venue sourcing, vendor selection, layout planning, budgeting, and execution timelines.
- Partner with marketing and communications teams to drive attendance, media coverage, digital ticket sales, and public engagement.
- Build and document repeatable turnkey processes for the Foundation’s official presence, booth execution, volunteer coordination, and branding footprint at external and corporate events.
- Travel domestically and internationally, as needed, to manage live event execution, coordinate volunteers, support donor engagement, and represent the Foundation to the public.
- Represent the Foundation’s global initiatives by articulating the mission, operational model, and localized success stories to diverse audiences.
- Use Young Living event opportunities to engage, inspire, and mobilize brand partners, customers, donors, and community stakeholders.
4. Cross-Functional Leadership & Board Engagement
- Regularly report on fundraising performance, campaign initiatives, event plans, donor engagement, and key development metrics to Foundation leadership.
- Prepare development and event data, dashboards, and visualizations for quarterly board meetings.
- Work closely with board members and executive stakeholders to activate networks, identify donor prospects, support sponsorship outreach, and advance fundraising priorities.
- Lead cross-functional collaboration with operations, marketing, communications, finance, legal, and corporate stakeholders to ensure successful campaign and event execution.
- Provide leadership, direction, and accountability for development and event-related initiatives, including direct or matrixed team leadership as applicable.
Qualifications & Skills
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Nonprofit Management, Marketing, Communications, or a related field required; master’s degree or CFRE designation strongly preferred.
- 5–8+ years of progressive fundraising, donor relations, sponsorship, campaign leadership, and event management experience, preferably within a mid-sized nonprofit, corporate foundation, or social impact organization.
- Proven success cultivating and closing major gifts, securing corporate sponsorships, and executing large-scale events that generate meaningful revenue and stakeholder engagement.
- Strong understanding of nonprofit fundraising best practices, donor stewardship, moves management, campaign planning, and donor retention strategies.
- Experience managing CRM databases, donor records, campaign reporting, and modern event ticketing systems.
- Familiarity with health, wellness, nutrition, preventative health, or community well-being sectors preferred.
- Experience in the nonprofit, foundation, philanthropy, or social impact sector preferred.
- Exceptional executive-level communication skills, including the ability to present effectively to C-suite executives, board members, legal teams, donors, community partners, and grassroots audiences.
- Demonstrated public speaking capability, including experience presenting to large audiences and representing an organization at domestic or international events preferred.
- Strong project management, budgeting, vendor management, and cross-functional leadership skills.
- Flexibility and willingness to travel domestically and internationally to support conferences, donor events, corporate events, and global program representation.
