Senior Foundations Officer

Action Against Hunger is recruiting a Senior Foundations Officer to lead the prospecting, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of a portfolio of complex private foundations and partners. You’ll contribute to ending world hunger by liaising with internal and external stakeholders to build a robust pipeline of donors who can support our global mission, innovative programing, and emergency response.

The ideal candidate is an organized self-starter capable of working independently with a strong track record of progressive experience in grant writing, fundraising strategy development, and advanced account stewardship. The Senior Officer should be able to proactively brainstorm ideas about how to grow the existing portfolio in order to drive foundation-based revenue. They will present the organization to funders capable of making multi-year, multi-million-dollar commitments. The ideal candidate has established themselves as a successful fundraiser and is interested in building Action Against Hunger – USA’s private foundation strategy. They have strong writing, project management, and people skills.

Purpose: The Senior Foundations Officer will manage and grow a portfolio of prospective and existing foundation partners and create a long-term strategy to engage and cultivate large institutional partners capable of making multi-year, multi-million-dollar commitments.

Engagement: The Senior Foundations Officer will engage with external stakeholders, primarily foundation representatives and leadership. In addition, extensive internal communications are required with External Relations colleagues, field staff (based in East Africa and Haiti) and our global network (based in Europe and India). Some engagement is also required with various consultants/contractors. The Senior Foundations Officer works within the Strategic Partnerships team, a unit of the External Relations Department, under the supervision of the Associate Director of Strategic Partnerships. The Strategic Partnerships Team is a 4-person (and growing) team, focused on cultivating funding and resources in support of Action Against Hunger’s mission from private institutional partners (foundations and corporations).

Delivery: The Senior Foundations Officer will be responsible for meeting annual revenue goals, by writing and managing a portfolio of 20-30 grants, stewarding relationships with foundation partners, prospecting for new business, and driving the proposal development process.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Relationship Building

• Manage and cultivate relationships with program officers or other funding decision makers within foundations and other complex giving vehicles.
• Develop and execute solicitation strategies with new or existing private institutional partners.
• Research funding trends and priorities of large private institutional funders capable of offering multi-million-dollar, multi-year funding commitments.
• Draft and submit proposals, reports, and concept notes.
• Participate in industry groups and coalitions to remain abreast of current funding trends and opportunities.
• Collaborate with ACF network counterparts, country program leaders, and the Action Against Hunger CEO in support of fundraising moves management.
• Collaborate with External Relations Team and relevant consultants.

Global Network and Regional Office Engagement

• Maintain strong relations with the Regional Action Against Hunger Program Office in Nairobi, Kenya as well as program country offices in Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zambia.
• Build knowledge of Action Against Hunger programs as well as current funding needs.
• Work with Regional Office to determine alignment of funding opportunities and identify which Action Against Hunger programs/countries are best suited to each opportunity.
• Coordinate with country offices to organize fundraising calls and collect programmatic information tailored to the interests of private funders.
• Maintain strong relations with global network counterparts in France, Spain, Canada, UK, Germany, India, and Italy.
• Coordinate with global network counterparts on network-wide funding opportunities and/or determining account management leads for unassigned funding opportunities.
• Draft and review subaward agreements for network sharing funding opportunities.
• Represent the US office in related internal and external meetings and events.

Portfolio Analysis and Database Management

• Maintain accurate and up-to-date account management records in Raisers Edge database.
• Working with the Fundraising Systems Team, build informative reports on private institutional fundraising efforts, progress-to-date, and pipeline development.
• Support annual planning and budget forecasting.

Required Qualifications

• Undergraduate degree required; Master’s degree preferred.

Required Skills & Experience

• Successful fundraising track-record of winning $1M+ grants from large private institutional foundations.
• 5-7 years of working experience, including at least 5 years of grant writing experience preferred.
• 1+ years of fundraising experience for an international organization.
• Strong experience working with private foundations in the United States.
• Familiarity with international development issues (e.g. malnutrition, water access, sustainable livelihoods, etc.).
• Familiarity with multilateral and USG funding system a plus.
• Familiarity with Raisers Edge and/or Salesforce database system a plus.
• Spanish and/or French speaker a plus.
• Some domestic and international travel will be required.