Director of Communications & Individual Giving

Director of Communications and Individual Giving
● 100% time – 40 hours per week
● This position is eligible for benefits.
● The position is exempt and ineligible for overtime pay.
● The director reports to the CEO.
● AnnieCannons is located in Oakland, California, USA. Once public health circumstances allow, AnnieCannons prefers that the director work on-site in Oakland, but is open to considering remote working arrangements for U.S.-based candidates only.
● The annual, starting salary is approximately $72,500.

AnnieCannons (AC) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to training survivors of human trafficking and gender-based violence to be programmers, giving them the economic and technological capacity to support themselves and their families, and to break free from abuse and exploitation forever. AC offers a software development boot camp for trainees and then provides them software development work as paid contractors.

AnnieCannons’ employees are its greatest asset. They tackle one of the world’s most vexing challenges – preventing human trafficking and empowering its survivors – with passion, grit and tremendous empathy. AnnieCannons seeks and retains people who are not only devoted to this hard and important work, but who thrive on swiftly developing and embracing cutting-edge, proven methods to assist survivors. In that way, we combine the nimbleness and pace of a start-up with the mission and values of a non-profit. The work is demanding, the staff are capable, and the rewards are profound. AnnieCannons created this new position to lead a crucial and promising area for growth. AnnieCannons has a basic communications and individual giving framework in place and a group of generous donors. The new director will build on this foundation to design a full-fledged, unified communications and individual giving strategy and will implement that strategy. They will work closely with the CEO, the heads of institutional partnerships, finance, other staff colleagues, and the board of directors.

Responsibilities include:

● The director will conduct an audit of current individual giving and communications activities and assets, as a basis for designing a unified strategy.
● In consultation with key constituencies both inside and outside of AnnieCannons, the director will develop key goals and metrics for communications and individual giving.
● The director will design a multi-year, multi-faceted strategy and an operational plan to achieve the articulated goals in communications and individual giving.

Individual Giving (65%)

● Keeping communications activities in alignment with individual giving activities, the director will develop annual individual giving goals, in collaboration with colleagues.
● The director will maintain and steward AC’s portfolio of existing individual donors and research, identify and recruit new donors, developing and implementing strategies for growth.
● This includes expanding monthly giving, mid-level donations (below $5000 annually) and major gifts (greater than $5000 annually) by deploying tailored plans for individual donors and for groups of donors.
● Plans may include, for example, special events, fundraising campaigns, educational briefings, written communications, etc.
● The director will develop, cultivate, steward, and sustain relationships with individual donors and prospective donors through personal visits and/or other forms of direct personal contact, and determine when the CEO, the board chair,
or others should be engaged in those relationships.
● They will work closely with and engage AC board members and other allies in strategic fundraising efforts.
● The director will oversee or manage all individual giving support mechanisms, such as tracking incoming gifts, providing follow-up communications, and sending gift acknowledgements, etc.
● In tandem with team members, the director will develop strategies to effectively use and maintain our CRM, Salesforce, to manage individual donor records.
● The director may propose to adopt a different fundraising CRM platform.

Communications (30%):

● The director will select the means to elevate AnnieCannons’ external profile in keeping with the overall strategic goals, and will be responsible for identifying audiences we wish to reach, the messages we will communicate to each
audience, and the vehicles we will use to interact with the audiences.
● They will build cohesive, comprehensive and representative external messaging guidelines and craft the actual messages, with input from relevant team members.
● The director will select which existing communication vehicles should be amended or eliminated and which need to be added.
● They will have overall responsibility for the content and look and feel of all external-facing communications vehicles. (These may include, for example, a website, blog, newsletter, annual report, board reports, and a suite of social
media platforms.)
● The director will develop relationships with journalists, social media influencers and others in order to meet communications objectives, and serve as a key AC representative with external stakeholders.

Other duties as assigned (5%)

● AnnieCannons is a growing, young organization and we rely on our teammates to cover for one another and occasionally take on tasks outside of their normal job responsibilities according to the needs of the organization.

Qualifications:

● Experience with marginalized populations is mandatory (e.g. working on gender-based violence [GBV], violence against women [VAW], domestic violence [DV], anti-trafficking, gender equity, women’s economic empowerment, etc.). This experience can be gained through professional or volunteer work, and/or through lived experience.
● Highly strategic, able to develop an integrated, long-term strategy that will fundamentally shape the future of AnnieCannons.
● Superb writer and editor, able to express nuanced and complex ideas in a manner appealing to a wide variety of audiences, and able to write in a manner that inspires readers to take action.

● Seasoned NGO development professional with a proven track record of managing and growing mid-level and major donors, and the ability to improve and expand existing development processes with best practices.

● Highly experienced with many communications vehicles and able to deploy them in service of a larger strategy.
● Ability to forge and sustain relationships with multiple external constituencies, including media leaders, donors, and the board of directors.
● Ability to manage many complex, multi-step processes with ease.
● The natural inclination to be good humored and open minded in a fast-moving, busy workplace.
● High level of proficiency in Salesforce or other industry-standard donor management software, preferred.