Development Director

Why This Role

For almost 60 years, WLC has been on the front lines of civil rights litigation in the region, and today its $5 million philanthropic portfolio is the engine behind that work. This is a genuine opportunity for an entrepreneurial development leader to step into an organization at an inflection point: a dynamic and supportive Executive Director, a committed board of directors, a small but experienced development team eager for strong leadership, and an active investment already underway to modernize WLC's donor database and reporting infrastructure.

As the director, you'll be raising money for work that speaks for itself. WLC's legal team brings decades of precedent-setting litigation and deep relationships across the region's civil rights community, giving you a stellar, credible story to tell donors and a program team that is genuinely invested in partnering with development, sharing their expertise, their client stories, and their time with donors and funders. And you'll have an engaged board of directors with members who are ready to open doors within their networks.

WLC is looking for someone who can be both a builder and a strategist: someone who sees a gap in the system and closes it, sees a donor relationship and wants to deepen it, and sees a team and wants to grow it. Right now, the most urgent need is a leader who can put fundraising best practices and infrastructure in place and execute reliably, with strategy and growth building from that foundation.

About Us

The Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (WLC) works to create legal, economic, and social equity through litigation, client and public education, and public advocacy. While WLC fights discrimination against all people, it recognizes the central role that current and historic race discrimination plays in sustaining inequity, and the critical importance of identifying, exposing, combating, and dismantling the systems that sustain racial oppression. For almost 60 years, WLC has been on the cutting edge of civil rights advocacy in the region, bringing precedent-setting litigation to address discrimination in housing, employment, the criminal legal system, education, and public accommodations. Our in-house legal team and network of pro bono law firm partners bring deep expertise and a track record of impactful, precedent-setting work, giving the Development Director a genuinely compelling program story to bring to donors. We partner with individuals and communities facing discrimination and with the legal community to achieve justice.

About the Role

Reporting to the Executive Director, the Development Director is the lead strategist and project manager for growing WLC's philanthropic revenue. This person will lead, manage, and coordinate all fundraising efforts across individuals, law firms, corporations, foundations, and government contracts — identifying, cultivating, and soliciting major donors, executing signature fundraising events, and building the systems and team that let WLC fundraise at the scale its mission deserves. Above all, this role is the executor who puts core development infrastructure in place: visible deadlines, clean data, coordinated budgets, while building a strategy for future growth.

What You'll Do

Systems, Data & Development Operations

• Own data integrity in WLC's CRM (Raiser's Edge): ensure campaigns, funds, appeals, and gift records are structured and used the way the system is designed to work
• Partner with the COO and outside database consultants on the CRM clean-up already underway, and put guardrails in place — documentation, standard operating procedures, and training — so the data stays reliable going forward
• Build and maintain a shared development and grant calendar, visible to program, finance, and leadership
• Maintain a robust pipeline of local, regional, and national grant opportunities, with a calendar tracking every upcoming application and report
• Partner with the COO and program leadership to build grant budgets before proposals go out the door
• Build a regular progress-to-goal report and a probability-weighted pipeline dashboard — covering individual giving, board giving, and foundations — for the Executive Director, COO, and Board Finance Committee
• Provide accurate, timely revenue reports to the Board Finance and Executive Committees
• Establish and monitor annual and long-term revenue goals and projections

Le