Director of Corporate & Foundation Giving, Location Flexible

American Ancestors, a national center for family history,
heritage, and culture, seeks an entrepreneurial, culturally fluent,
and poised Director of Corporate & Foundation Giving (Director)
to join its advancement team. The Director will serve as a primary
connector between American Ancestors and corporate and foundation
communities, actively seeking and crafting partnerships that deepen
existing and forge new relationships to advance the organization’s
mission and initiatives, including for its high profile 10 Million Names project, which
proposes to recover the names of the ten million people enslaved in
America and restore those names to their families and to
history.

Reporting to the Vice President for Advancement, the Director of
Corporate & Foundation Giving will partner closely with the
Vice President to conceive the strategy for and develop a portfolio
of institutional funders to support the important work of American
Ancestors, the oldest and largest genealogical society in the
country.

The Director will assume some existing relationships, mainly
reflective of foundation donors and prospects and some corporate
and government – while conducting their own exploration of new
funding opportunities and engagements – and will have direct
involvement in the identification, cultivation, and solicitation of
major and principal gifts.

They will research, identify, pursue, develop, and respond to
emerging funding opportunities; partner with leadership,
advancement, and program colleagues to develop and submit proposals
for funding; and fully steward grants – inclusive of timely
administration, budgeting, and reporting – while providing the
programmatic team with funder-related guidance as needed.

The Director must be inspired at the chance to develop a new
corporate and foundation revenue stream that will support
initiatives across the organization. A capital campaign is
currently underway to restore and modernize the American Ancestors
building; a new Discovery Center is slated to open; and a range of
opportunities exist to support art, architecture, collections, and
digitization efforts; and to establish endowments for long-term
programs.

The recent launch of the high-profile, collaborative 10 Million
Names project – dedicated to recovering the names of the estimated
ten million men, women, and children of African descent who
were enslaved in pre- and post-colonial America between the 1500s
and 1865 – has attracted national media attention and generated
inquiries from institutional funders. American Ancestors also
maintains key centers and initiatives including The Wyner Family
Jewish Heritage Center, The Brue Family Learning Center, as well as
a range of educational programming including Youth Education.

Since the Director will serve as the primary point of contact
for strategic relationship planning and coordination for
corporations and foundations, they must embody collaboration and be
the consummate team player. Institutional funding opportunities may
result from relationships under cultivation elsewhere in the
organization, so transparent/timely communication, information
sharing, and a synchronized strategy will be needed to create the
vital rising tide.

SELECT RESPONSIBILITIES
• Advance the organization’s agenda by gaining foundation,
corporate, and government support for strategic initiatives, either
through direct funding, gifts-in-kind, or other agreements.
• Manage and grow a portfolio of 120+ active and discovery
prospects and execute cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship
strategies for each.
• Develop strategies to engage key foundation and corporate
partners and encourage greater involvement with the organization;
build trusted relationships with program officers and corporate
executives.
• Design and implement tailored site visits (in-person and virtual)
and other cultivation activities.
• Participate in outreach and stewardship activities for donors
including quarterly dinners and American Ancestors programs.
• Work with the overall Advancement team to coordinate activities,
develop best practices, streamline processes, and improve overall
fund-raising capacity.
• Build trusted relationships and regularly meet with colleagues
and other stakeholders to learn, brainstorm, and gather information
that informs the creation of detailed and strategic proposals.

The position description may be viewed in its
entirety at pearlstreetcollective.com/positions/aa-dcfg

LOCATION

American Ancestors is open to the Director working remotely with
a preference for being based on the East Coast with easy access to
an airport.

APPLICATION

To apply, please submit your confidential materials including
resume, cover letter, and writing sample to
[email protected]. Pearl Street Collective, the
search firm with purpose, has been exclusively retained for this
engagement. Adele Mezher, Maeve Clifford, Esmina Perdiew, and
Dianne Moody are leading the search. Pearl Street is a national,
women-owned executive search firm that believes that when you care
enough to connect people with their purpose, organizations will
thrive. As partners and allies, we lead each search process with
the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. For two
consecutive years, Women of Color in Fundraising & Philanthropy
(WOC) has named Pearl Street one of the Top Search Firms for Women
of Color.