Job openings/Head of Major Gifts (Major Gifts Officer)
From the Wikimedia Foundation
- Title
Head of Major Gifts, Wikimedia Foundation
(Also advertised as: Major Gifts Officer)
- Purpose
As head of major gifts development, your job is to execute the Wikimedia Foundation's major gifts strategy in the context of its overall mission, vision, values and goals. This position reports to the Chief Financial and Operating Officer.
- Summary
This position will execute the major gifts strategy for the Wikimedia Foundation in the context of its overall mission, vision, values and goals. This is a critical role: 96% of the Foundation’s revenue is derived from individual donations, and a large proportion of that is derived from major gifts.
- Responsibilities
- Identify and develop major gift prospects; own and maintain the major gift prospect pipeline
- Personally develop some relationships, and be responsible for overseeing the development of others
- Personally ask for donations, and act as a coach and supporter for others in the organization doing the same
- Develop and execute cultivation strategies and tactics
- Create and maintain an array of support materials
- Achieve annual financial targets, as established during the financial planning process
- Required Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent required; advanced degree preferred
- 7+ years of major gifts experience, preferably in a well-known organization that is active internationally;
- Excellent interpersonal communication skills including the ability to persuade, inspire and negotiate with a diverse array of people, primarily verbally
- Confident, flexible and outgoing personal style
- Experience creating and delivering presentations
- Good knowledge of donor pools, trends in giving, prospect research, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship;
- Experience with venture philanthropy and/or philanthropy in the technology, education and media sectors, and/or in the Bay Area is helpful;
- Comfortable and proficient using a variety of communications and networking tools (e.g., mailing lists, IM, IRC, wikis, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.);
- The ability to speak multiple languages is a major plus;
- Experience living or working outside the United States is a major plus.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a US-registered 501(c)(3) tax-deductible non-profit charity dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most visited websites, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews and the Wikimedia Commons media repository. The organization has received numerous honors for its work, among them the Webby Award, the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica, the Japan Advertisers Association's Web Creation Award and the World Technology Award in Communications Technology.
The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of Wikipedia and its sister projects and is based in San Francisco, California. It currently employs 33 staff members. Wikimedia is supported by local chapter organizations in 27 countries or regions.
Apply
Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs
wikimedia.org before May 15, 2008. Please put the position title (Major Gifts) in your subject line.
Applications that do not include a cover letter will not be considered. In your cover letter, please lay out some opening thoughts about how, in your view, the Foundation might best implement a major gifts strategy.
Please copy and paste the text of your CV into the e-mail, in addition to attaching the file.
Due to the volume of applications we receive, we regret that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
