Assistant Director - Advancement Operations

Strategic Vision & Department Leadership

• Works closely with Director to align strategy and priorities for Advancement initiatives. Oversees donor stewardship processes, including acknowledgment, recognition, and reporting. Supports development and execution of alumni engagement initiatives. Ensures consistent and meaningful donor experiences across all touchpoints.

• Oversees planning and execution of integrated campaigns. Ensures messaging is cohesive, timely, and aligned with institutional priorities. Maintains coordination authority for communications decisions to ensure clarity and alignment.

• Ensures effective use of CRM and other data technology (e.g., Raiser's Edge) for tracking, reporting, and segmentation. Oversees data integrity, reporting processes, and analytics. Supports data-informed decision-making across campaigns and engagement efforts.
  

Operational Leadership

• Directly supervises Advancement Operations team members. Establishes clear goals, priorities, and performance expectations. Provides coaching, feedback, and professional development support. Ensures accountability and consistency across functional areas.

• Carries out, explains, interprets and enforces policy. Conducts annual employee evaluations, and recommends pay increases, promotions and other personnel actions. Approves leave and authorizes overtime as appropriate. Participates in employee selection process. Administers disciplinary actions upon approval, and in collaboration with Human Resources.

• Serves as a central decision-maker for day-to-day operational questions. Prioritizes workstreams and allocates resources to meet goals. Acts as escalation point for cross-functional issues and competing priorities. Ensures timely execution and high-quality deliverables.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Leads day-to-day coordination of communications, stewardship, and data functions. Translates strategic priorities into actionable plans and timelines. Ensures alignment across campaigns, events, donor engagement, and data workflows. Identifies and resolves workflow gaps, redundancies, and inefficiencies

• Partners with Event Manager on integrated planning and follow-up. Collaborates with Marketing & Communications to incorporate strategic communications, branding, and content development, while maintaining clear internal decision-making authority. Builds relationships across departments to support coordinated advancement efforts.

Culture of Respect

• Fosters and maintains a safe environment of respect and inclusion for faculty, staff, students, and members of the community.