Senior Director, Advancement

About Tides

Tides is a nonprofit and philanthropic organization committed to advancing social justice. We work across the social sector to shift power to communities of color and other groups historically denied power.

Centering equity and justice in everything we do, we collaborate in deep partnership with movement leaders, nonprofits, donors, foundations, and corporations to amplify the impact of their work by providing services like fiscal sponsorship, donor advised funds, grant making, and a variety of innovative solutions. Learn more at tides.org.

About the Role 

Tides seeks an entrepreneurial fundraising professional to serve as its inaugural Senior Director of Advancement to launch the first ever Advancement office to support Tides new vision and mission. To complement the work of the philanthropic advisory team, the Senior Director will develop and implement fundraising strategies; cultivate relationships with philanthropists, and philanthropic entities, formulate cultivation and solicitation procedures and strategies and lead all fundraising activities on behalf of Tides. They will leverage senior staff, board members, and supporters to develop and execute a robust plan that will meet organizational fundraising priorities. 

Reporting to Tides Foundation’s Executive Director, the Senior Director will focus on three main priorities:   

• Raise philanthropic capital for Tides-Led Initiatives (TLIs). Tides launched a set of ambitious grantmaking pooled funds in democracy, climate justice, immigration, gender equity and reproductive health. Early fundraising results have been impressive, and it will be the Senior Director’s responsibility to build off that success to maintain and grow support for our TLIs. This will be their primary responsibility. (70%-time allocation)
• Build Broadly Restricted Support for Tides. Tides serve a valuable intermediary role in the social justice sector. While we mainly rely on administrative fees from our partners to fund our organizational capacity and innovation needs, the Senior Director will play an important role in raising funds for Tides own organizational capacity development in partnership with Tides senior leaders. (15%-time allocation)
• Resource Development Coaching. Many of our social change leader/movement partners have relatively little experience with fundraising, especially with major donors, foundations and corporations. The Senior Director will serve as fundraising coach periodically to our social change leader partners, including fiscally sponsored projects at Tides Center and social change leader funds held at Tides Foundation. (15%-time allocation) 

The Senior Director will play an essential role in designing and articulating a compelling case for funders to support Tides’ strategic priorities. Success will be determined by the Senior Director’s ability to expand the donor pipeline by identifying, cultivating, soliciting, and procuring major and transformational gifts from individual and institutional supporters; and by achieving annual fundraising goals as set up the Executive Director.  

The successful candidate will be an accomplished strategist and practitioner with experience in both fundraising strategy and marketing and exhibit exceptional relationship management and business development skills. They will be a leader who inspires the entire organization to advance and support development efforts. The ideal candidate is a strategic leader with a passion for building and supporting teams while advancing toward ambitious targets; and will be intimately familiar with the unique behaviors of donors of color and the opportunities to engage those donors.  The Senior Director must be collaborative, supportive, and transparent when building relationships with key internal and external partners. 

What you will Do

• Develop, execute, and evaluate a fundraising strategy for Tides-Led Initiatives. Work in close partnership with the Tides Foundation Executive Director and other senior leadership to develop creative, data informed strategies to drive major and principal gifts revenue for Tides-Led Initiatives and for Tides own capacity building, innovation, and transformation initiatives. 
• Create ambitious and tangible fundraising targets and establish a data-informed approach to developing significant donors.  
• Build, manage and steward a pipeline of major and principal gift donors, with a particular emphasis on donors of color. Formaliz