Associate Director, Constituent Philanthropy at Suffolk University in Boston, MA

Job description

Suffolk seeks to engage our many constituents to enrich their lifelong relationships with the university. Constituents, or affinity groups, may include individuals whose connection with Suffolk has been made particularly meaningful by a shared experience, club, team, major, program, family relationship or identity, or other cohort experience. Reporting to the Associate Vice President of Campaign Strategy and Corporate and Foundation Relations, and working in close collaboration with Alumni Relations, the Associate Director, Constituent Philanthropy will support efforts to ensure these key members of the Suffolk community are fully engaged with the University. The Associate Director will be responsible for providing key support to assist Advancement to a) establish structures for constituents/cohorts to support the University philanthropically, b) re-engage constituent groups who are no longer active with Suffolk and c) establish strong family connections with the University. Specifically, the Associate Director will Be responsible for all tasks related to identifying cohorts, including but not limited to collaborating with University partners to obtain lists of alumni and other constituents, supporting efforts to identify additional individuals whose contact information may be out of date, organizing the updating of information in Advancement’s Raiser’s Edge database, and requesting research to ascertain cohort fundraising capacity. Prepare communications to constituency groups, including writing and designing invitations, updates, stewardship, and other outreach to keep these individuals informed regarding cohort activities and initiatives. Develop registration tools with and without financial payment processes included. Set up meetings of cohort liaisons and committees, as needed. Ensure giving pages and GiveCampus components are executed in a timely fashion. Work with the Senior Director, Advancement Marketing and Communications, on the execution of select constituent/cohort communications materials, including website, print and social media. Establish a spreadsheet or similar tool to manage the multi-step engagement, solicitation, stewardship and continued solicitation steps associated with each group. Devise and maintain metrics to measure the impact of all cohort activities. Keep abreast of Parent & Family initiatives at other universities to ensure Suffolk is taking every opportunity to cultivate and solicit families. Partner effectively with Advancement colleagues and others across the University to meet or exceed the expectations of the cohort groups while prioritizing philanthropy. Perform other duties as assigned. The Associate Director will work alongside the Associate Vice President to foster a culture of belonging that embraces constituent groups. Many behind-the-scenes activities are required to effectively create and manage constituent groups. Once started, the constituencies should continue to be nurtured and managed on an ongoing basis to build new relationships and strengthen existing ones. The ideal Associate Director candidate will have strong organizational skills and will take the initiative to ask questions and make suggestions so that the expectations of many cohorts – some of which will belong to more than one constituency – will be achieved. The Suffolk Advancement team is on a hybrid schedule—with three days in the office and two remote—per a formal schedule to ensure an office presence at all times. Suffolk University is a residential institution of higher education with students, faculty and staff on campus most of the school year. An in-office schedule achieves numerous important Advancement goals, among them heightened collaboration and opportunities to meet with colleagues both within Advancement and across campus. While much can be achieved via email and Zoom, in-person meetings as well as planned and unplanned informal and formal discussions contribute toward stronger relationships and collab