How You’ll Contribute

The Advancement team identifies, cultivates, solicits, and stewards individuals, as well as foundation, government and corporate partners who invest in the Society to drive impact through science, technology, education, exploration, and storytelling. The team collaborates across the Society – and often works closely with NGP/Disney – to build transformative and impact-driven strategic partnerships. The team also produces global events that deepen connections and leverage the Society’s power to convene, and directs robust annual, major and planned giving programs empowering the Society with a broad base of public support.

Reporting to the Senior Director, Advancement Operations and working with a dynamic, inter-dependent, and collaborative team, the Director, Advancement Data & Systems is responsible for leading management and optimization of all Advancement systems for the department and managing key operations functions for the Advancement department handling all donor, partner and prospect data, data integration, and associated processes and documentation.

Advancement uses a robust ecosystem of technical solutions to house, process, and analyze constituent data, communicate with prospects, donors, and partners, track activity, and comply with legal standards around data processing and constituent consent. The Director, Advancement Data & Systems is responsible for donor database management, data strategy and architecture, and gift and data processing. This role is a key partner for the Technology team and solutions vendors to ensure that systems are scoped, configured, managed, and monitored to fully support the needs of the department and the organization. This position will also be responsible for understanding system roadmaps, integrations, and releases and optimizing their use, as well as managing issue resolution and feature requests identified by National Geographic Society.

Your Impact

Responsibilities Include

Advancement Data (50%)

• Manage a team to support the department in donor data management, gift processing, tracking, and all associated processes. Oversee data hygiene, required data processes as part of enterprise data integration and nonprofit mail permit compliance, and best practices of the institution’s donor database of record Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge eCRM Engaging Networks, and other targeted solutions.
• Work closely as a member of the Advancement team to craft vision and oversee execution of data strategy and support for all fundraising and donor programs including annual giving, planned giving, leadership giving, foundations and corporate partnerships, and a planned comprehensive campaign.
• Ensure best practices in data integrity and usability of data for frontline professionals so that philanthropic opportunities at all levels are maximized.
• Oversee all ongoing data syncing between key Advancement systems, including Raiser’s Edge and Engaging Networks and other targeted data systems. Ensure data syncs are scoped and implemented to effectively meet fundraising program needs, maintain data integrity and hygiene, and comply with data privacy, protection, and consent requirements.
• Partner with the Advancement Insights team to help inform and streamline reports, analyses, modeling, and benchmarking. Assess the relationships between output requirements and data elements and recommend best practices to map data accordingly to facilitate effective and efficient reporting.
• Ensure compliance with all data-related NGS Data Privacy and Consent Compliance policies. Facilitate communications and training to support fundraising across Advancement and internal National Geographic Society staff teams. Ensure that data and gift protocols, procedures and policies are up to date and meet industry best practices.

Advancement Systems (35%)

• Evaluate capabilities against Advancement needs regularly to ensure systems are effectively configured to support current and future needs and industry best practices
• Work with NGS Technology team to manage system and support vendors, including contracts, scoping, costs, and resourcing structure as well as serving as the primary contact with vendor technical support teams to submit, support, triage, track, and resolve systems issues and requests.
• Work closely with solutions vendors to understand and influence product roadmaps, releases, and integrations. Use this knowledge, together with an understanding of fundraising and donor experience, department and staff goals, and in collaboration with department colleagues, to optimize systems for within the Advancement and Society ecosystem. In collaboration with NGS Technology, identify and manage feature requests and capability development with systems vendors, manage system change or upgrade rollout and training with staff. Regularly seek user feedback to ensure proper system use and utilization.
• Working closely with the Insights team within Advancement, as well as Finance and other key Society stakeholders, set up and configure targeted solutions, such as merchant processing, digital wallets, caging and cashiering, business intelligence solutions, and third party donor acquisition and engagement platforms, to ensure the integrity of solution services and consistency and accuracy of solution integrations across Advancement.
• Work with NGS Technology as needed to recommend changes to systems and/or configuration, manage needs assessments, RFP, migration, and installation of new systems.
• Oversee role-based access and staff training on all Advancement systems, ensuring that access roles and training correlate appropriately to staff roles, business needs, and security guidelines.
• Ensure systems support and comply with all data privacy and constituent consent requirements

Advancement Representation and Enterprise Integration (15%)

• Lead department donor data and systems expertise and liaise between multiple departments to integrate fundraising data and systems into the broader organizational enterprise. Serve on appropriate committees to achieve this goal and advocate for Advancement and its data needs.
• Lead data integration with National Geographic Partners, working with the data processing team to oversee monthly data feeds and other data projects. Identify appropriate staff and other key stakeholders for projects and processes to ensure effective and accurate data delivery and integration.
• Ensure and oversee the maintenance of full and proper documentation of all Advancement data systems and processes.
• Integrate Advancement systems, support, and related processes within the broader Society context by partnering with NGS Technology in their management of:
  • Overseeing appropriate staff system access and performing regular audits of role-based access
  • Developing and maintaining data integration and data interoperability solutions
  • system security testing, monitoring, and reporting
  • alignment with all Society policies and guidelines governing systems

What You’ll Bring

Educational Background

Bachelor’s degree preferred; advanced degree or professional certifications a plus.

Minimum Years and Type of Experience

10+ years as a data & systems professional, including 3+ years of people management experience.

Experience with progressively responsible donor data systems and fundraising, with a focus on data, systems, and data processing aspects. Experience managing development operations or database administration preferably at a major national or international organization.

Necessary Knowledge and Skills

• Must demonstrate strong understanding of and competence with donor data systems, data strategy, and processes, and be driven by a sense of urgency towards supporting all fundraising teams toward meeting or exceeding their goals.
• Ability to translate precise technical issues into simple, actionable process with non-technical colleagues, and vice-versa.
• Collaborative approach and sound judgement in working with teams across the Society to collectively manage Advancement solutions within the broader context of enterprise technology.
• Effective approach to partnering with solutions vendors to understand, develop, and resolve issues with and between systems.
• Strong personal and professional integrity.
• Must possess a high level of initiative, with a creative, flexible, and solutions-oriented approach within a complex, fast-paced, and high-performing team.
• Exceptional organizational, planning, prioritization, collaboration, communication, and interpersonal skills.
• Supervisory experience and talent for mentoring and empowering staff towards excellence.

Desired Qualifications

• Understanding of fundraising, prospecting, and stewardship and constituent UX in order to partner with Advancement colleagues to optimize system capabilities

• Experience with any of the following systems: Blackbaud Raiser's Edge, Salesforce SalesCloud, Engaging Networks, Upland Mobile Commons, or similar systems. Experience with digital merchant services such as Vantiv, digital wallets such as Paypal, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and targeted solution integrations such as Double the Donation and Okta a plus.
• Ability to advise and follow a budget and supervise vendors.

Supervision

3 Direct Reports

Salary Information

As a leading nonprofit organization, National Geographic Society offers competitive salary and total rewards to attract, develop, and retain an innovative and dynamic workforce.

The salary range for this position starts at $120,000

Job Designation

Remote - Our Remote designation continues to require that staff work in another location in the U.S. or abroad, such as our regional leads for our Education and International teams or regional fundraisers in Advancement. Staff may also be designated as Remote by their supervisors (with approval by the Senior Team lead) because of their duties or personal circumstances, and are afforded this status when it is beneficial to NGS, their respective team, and the employee.

W e encourage you to apply even if your experience is not a 100% match with the position. We are looking for someone with relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the job description. We want to help you grow and in return, you help us grow into a stronger, more inclusive organization.