Assistant Athletic Director, Annual Giving & Donor Experience

Assistant Athletic Director for Annual Giving & Donor Experience

The ASU Foundation (ASUF) fosters partnerships between ASU and like-minded individuals who believe in ASU’s mission and provide resources for ASU to manifest its charter into meaningful impact.  

The Assistant Athletic Director for Annual Giving & Donor Experience is a senior fundraising professional with strong experience and proven results in the management of sophisticated, large, and complex Intercollegiate Athletics annual giving programs.  The Director will be a digitally fluent, highly collaborative, and forward-thinking professional who oversees the philanthropic outreach to a large donor base of alumni, faculty, staff, students, and community members. Philanthropic Outreach includes philanthropic warming of prospects, acquisition of new donors, and retention, reactivation, and upgrades of current and past donors. 

The Director will lead and manage the conceptualization, development, implementation, and refinement of innovative fundraising communication strategies across multiple channels for the Sun Devil Club.  Along with the Sun Devil Club team and University enterprise collaborators, the Director will build a larger base of donors to grow short and long-term philanthropic support to the Sun Devil Club for the benefit of advancing Arizona State Athletics, Arizona State University and the tenants of the ASU Charter.  

This position is joining a dynamic team during a comprehensive university-wide campaign launch, where immediate financial support, growing the donor base, and major gift pipeline building will be a major priority.  As part of our fast-paced team, the Director contributes ideas and expertise across the fundraising spectrum to deepen the culture of philanthropy for ASU Athletics.  The Director will serve as an integral member of the Sun Devil Club team.

What you'll do:

• Manage a team of professional annual giving staff, donor relations staff and letterwinners staff that are responsible for the daily operation of the Sun Devil Club’s Annual Giving and Donor Relations program.

• Lead the Sun Devil Club Annual Giving renewal process through ASU Link.

• Conceptualize, create, and implement effective and integrated communications strategies across multiple channels to increase philanthropy, donor acquisition, retention, reactivation, and upgrades.  

• Develop a detailed and comprehensive Sun Devil Club Annual Giving calendar that is aligned with Donor Relations and Letterwinners events and communications.   

• Effectively leverage database segmentation and personalization to enhance direct-response campaigns.

• Provide oversight, strategic direction, and ideation for major Annual Giving initiatives such as Sun Devil Giving Day, Giving Tuesday, Back Your Devils Week, and other broad based philanthropic outreach campaigns.

• Establishes and nurtures effective, collegial working relationships with ASUF colleagues, Sun Devil Athletics colleagues, ASU Enterprise Partners collaborators, university partners, prospects, and donors.

• Manage external vendor partnerships to ensure relationship efficiency, increased results, and a positive return on investment. 

• With the Sun Devil Club Donor Relations and Letterwinners teams, partner to maintain, enhance, and expand programs to increase donor retention.

• Collaborate with the various units to ensure adherence to brand standards, deploy email campaigns, and collaborate on internally developed campaigns.

• Manage the creation, design and production of Sun Devil Club Annual Giving, Donor Relations and Letterwinners collateral.

• Direct the design, development and coordination of Sun Devil Club customer service initiatives.

• Manage the Sun Devil Club annual Thank-A-Thon in collaboration with Donor Relations.

• Ensure all Sun Devil Club benefits are fulfilled accordingly. 

• Work collaboratively with all Head Coaches to define sport specific Annual Giving fundraising priorities.

• Establish, manage, and report on fiscal year Annual Giving metrics and furnish timely leadership reports on progress toward assigned goals.

• Responsible for achieving broader Sun Devil Club Annual Giving goals and metrics.

• Proactively collaborates across the University enterprise to leverage the maximum philanthropic potential of each prospect and donor.

• Make recommendations on tools, training, and software to enhance the effectiveness of the Sun Devil Club Annual Giving, Donor Relations and Letterwinners programs. 

• Monitor work in progress, accountability and implement corrective action as required.

• Discover and deploy the latest tools, technology, and best practices in order enhance the overall program and increase donor participation. 

• Adhere to all NCAA, Big 12 rules and regulations, as well as the policies and procedures of Sun Devil Athletics, ASUF and ASU Enterprise Partners.

• Hires, supervises, mentors, and evaluates assigned staff.

• Other duties as assigned.

What you'll need:

• Broad knowledge of fund-raising principles and techniques, preferably in a complex Intercollegiate Athletics setting and proven success in building productive, long-term relationships with donors, prospects, external vendors, faculty, staff, non-profit boards, and volunteers.

• Strong, collegial interpersonal skills and excellent written and oral communication ability as reflected in face to face solicitations, written proposals, oral presentations, and strategic plans.

• Ability to set goals and priorities, take initiative, and demonstrate accountability while remaining nimble to match the Foundation’s strategic direction and evolving priorities, experience with budgeting and financial analysis.

• Team-oriented strategist able to effectively manage complex situations involving numerous and sometimes competing constituencies; comfortable working in a fast-paced, results oriented environment; demonstrated experience successfully managing staff and volunteers.

• Experience with Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Workday Finance, Workday HR, Affiniquest, Google Analytics, PowerBI, GiveCampus, Mogli, and ThankView (or similar tools). 

• Ability to maintain a high degree of confidentiality and responsibility regarding information related to Foundation and University business and prospect information.

• An advocate’s belief in the vision of ASU as the New American University and an ability to represent the institution well.

Relevant qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree

• Five (5) to seven (7) years of years of successful professional development and/or fundraising experience, preferably in Intercollegiate Athletics, with a strong background in Annual Giving and Donor Relations

• At least two (2) to three (3) years managing a team

• Or any equivalent combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge, skills and abilities have been achieved

• Documented success in personally implementing sophisticated, multi-year cultivation strategies that use a relationship-building and moves management approach leading to successful gift closure

• Demonstrated ability in securing major grants and gifts from individuals, corporations, foundations, and other private funding sources

Preferred education and experience:

• Advanced degree

• Five (5) to seven (7) years of years of successful professional development and/or fundraising experience in higher education or college athletics for applicable roles

• Experience working in Salesforce and Workday