By exercising a passion for connecting and building networks between donors, alumni, students, and the University, the Assistant Vice President for Alumni & Donor Engagement will set a strategic direction for the Office of Alumni and Donor Engagement by establishing goals and metrics, evaluating advancement programs and practices, and leading, coaching, mentoring, and developing a team of staff in alumni engagement, donor relations, advancement research and annual giving. The AVP will also serve as the executive director of the WSU Alumni Association.
Minimum Qualifications
A bachelor’s degree and five years of experience in alumni relations or university fundraising at a similar institution.
- Success in cultivating and closing major gifts.
- Experience in developing diverse and impactful volunteer boards.
- Success in working with multi-disciplinary teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- A master’s degree.
- Experience with working in a complex, dynamic environment connecting the philanthropic interests and needs of students, faculty, staff, and alumni with donors.
- Proven ability to manage in challenging times, with multiple and diverse interests of many groups, and willingness to connect to the community.
- Ability to serve as the bridge between the University and alumni/donors while advancing and protecting the interests of both.
- Experience with being accountable to multiple constituents such as alumni, donors, volunteers, senior university leadership, and academic colleagues.
- Superb communications skills with the ability to speak passionately about the university, our students, vision, and future.
Essential Functions and percent of time:
Essential function: Alumni Engagement 50%
- The Assistant Vice President serves as a member of the university advancement leadership team, participating in planning processes, developing divisional goals, budgeting, and improving efficiency. Will plan, organize, and implement, in consultation with the Vice President for University Advancement, the expansion of a comprehensive and unified program of alumni engagement.
- Through interaction in private and public settings, develops and nurtures relationships with key influencers in the WSU family including the president of the university, members of boards, alumni leaders, faculty, parents, students, and friends.
- Leads metrics-driven strategies to continuously increase engagement of alumni and friends in alumni networks, chapters, events, volunteer roles, and fundraising.
- Provides strategic direction for the Alumni Engagement team and the Alumni Association Board of Directors.
- Ensures each programmatic area of their portfolio has clearly outlined goals, operating plans, and measures of success that are tracked in a way that shows growth and depth of engagement.
- Ensures that volunteers and their respective leadership structures, are representative of the breath of the alumni population, have strong succession planning, and are aligned with the strategic direction of the WSU Alumni Association.
- Demonstrates mature judgement, impeccable integrity and excellent skills to establish an environment of confidentiality and will handle sensitive matters in a discreet manner.
- Represents the university and the alumni association professionally both internally and externally.
Essential Functions and percent of time (cont'd):
Essential function: Leadership & Program Management 25%
- Builds a cohesive team of professionals who are inspired to collaborate in new and innovative ways to support and ensure the success of WSU’s engagement and campaign efforts.
- Creates protocol and procedures that ensure the continuity of service delivery to our alumni and donors across our team.
- Establishes policies, standard operating procedures, goals, metrics and other key performance indicators to measure the ongoing effectiveness of the programs under their leadership.
- Creates and leads an innovative outreach effort that accelerates growth in alumni and donor volunteerism and engagement within their scope of responsibility.
- Collaborates across all areas of the Advancement team to provide leadership and opportunities for shared growth in programs and engagement.
- Develops and maintains relationships with key volunteer leadership across the university.
- Leads, mentors, and inspires new and existing staff members through a combination of transparency, effective communication, and modeling of collaborative behavior.
- Manages the budgets for each area of responsibility.
Manages the daily work of the alumni engagement, donor relations, advancement research, and annual giving teams. This includes deploying staff and budgeted financial resources to achieve specified goals and objectives.
Essential function: Philanthropy 25%
- Participates as part of WSU’s leadership team for the next campaign, which will focus on scholarships and student success.
- Maintains a portfolio of alumni major gift prospects.
- Partners with the AVP for Corporate Relations to identify opportunities for corporate and affinity partnerships.
- Partners with major gifts team to ensure a healthy pipeline of engaged donors.
- Provides strong leadership and support to the Annual Giving team to ensure resources are in place for continued growth.
- Shares the WSU story with a variety of constituencies while being a presence at university events.
Provides strong leadership for staff in planning effective alumni and campaign events.
