Director, Marketing & Development

Director of Marketing & Development

The Director of Marketing & Development positively impacts children by fueling the Highlights Foundation's mission to support those who inspire kids through story. All duties are in service of building a thriving community who shares that vision, including children's authors and illustrators and individuals and entities with a passion for literary arts and its impact on youth.

The position reports to the Executive Director and maintains close collaboration with marketing personnel and other departments, ensuring that the external marketing and fundraising functions of the organization achieve revenue targets and are focused on community growth aligned with our values.

STRATEGIC RESPONSIBLITIES

The Highlights Foundation is a highly collaborative organization with both a rich history and ongoing, progressive evolution. As such, marketing and development are critical components of the organization's success, and the Director of Marketing & Development will serve as the primary strategic executor of the organization's growth plans.

They will supervise personnel responsible for daily execution of the marketing and development functions, taking accountability for their performance, coaching, and development and collaborating with outside subject matter experts for projects when needed.

They will also maintain a strong presence on campus to keep a pulse on the market and capture and translate the organization's essence.

More specifically, they will:

Revenue Growth and Sustainability

• Work with the ED and Director of Programming to ensure that offerings are viable and well-positioned in the market from concept to execution.
• Set the organization's demand generation marketing strategies (email marketing, content marketing, and advertising) to build awareness of offerings, attract participants, and meet revenue expectations.
• Support the ED to explore and facilitate collaborations, partnerships, and grant-seeking initiatives to sustainably build profitable growth and open new markets.

Fundraising and Development

• Set donor relations strategies and programs to build and expand a network of donors, facilitating ongoing community engagement and long-term support.
• Maintain organizational donor focus, actively listening to needs, interests, and passions that connect with community work across giving levels. They will also actively connect to and build relationships with donors and constituents across the organization.
• Support ED in the stewardship of major and corporate gifts, ensuring that measurable and/or anecdotal results are tracked so donors understand their impact and get more involved.

Brand Vision

• Distill complex and varied information into simple, clear, story-based messages that resonate across the community's ecosystem. Ensure that the mission is universally understood as the foundational drive of the organization.
• Adapt messaging to different constituencies (storytellers, faculty, donors, partners, etc.) to strengthen their overall sense of belonging in the community.
• Help the organization use communication to smooth and promote adherence to operational processes and new initiatives.

Future Vision/Growth Opportunities

• Support the ED to better optimize and monetize offerings (i.e. new offerings, packaging of existing offerings).
• Support the ED to explore the expansion of our definition of storytellers from what it traditionally has been (authors and illustrators) to what it could be in today's world (creators and experience makers).
• Implement public relations strategy to increase the broader profile of the Highlights Foundation organization among both industry and non-industry constituents.

FUNCTIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Functionally, strategic goals are executed via the following responsibilities. The Director of Marketing and Development will prioritize and project manage them, aligning staff and resources for ongoing and reliable accomplishment of day-to-day required tasks.

• Analytics and prioritization focus. Maintain an execution style grounded in reason and actionable data, with an improvement-based mindset. Tie all marketing and development activity back to organizational impact goals.
• Audience management. Ensure that the marketing and fundraising databases are reflective of Highlights Foundation constituencies and primed for effective communication and automation where possible.
• Asset management. Ensure process and execution of gathering quotes/snippets, testimonials, stories, photographs, graphics, soundbites, videos, etc. for use in telling the story of the Foundation's impact.
• Website management. Take ownership of the Foundation's website (and the softwares that interface with it) as the vehicle where communication happens and business gets done. Also includes paid and organic search marketing efforts.
• Content marketing management. Take ownership of the Foundation's public facing content with the understanding that it will be leveraged across multiple constituencies.
• Email marketing management. Understand that the email channel is the primary driver of revenue for the Foundation, and prioritize it accordingly.
• Social media marketing management. This includes both paid social media advertising and community engagement efforts.
• Fundraising campaign management. With the organization's broader goals in mind, create and executive high-impact campaigns to accomplish specific purposes and execute the annual appeal.
• Grant-seeking support. Collaborate with ED, programming, and operations to facilitate grant writing and management.
• Partner marketing support. Work with programming and partners to fulfill obligations and support collaborative marketing initiatives.
• Event management and marketing. This includes both internal events (on campus and online) and industry-related events. Consider and evaluate their potential effectiveness, and execute collaboratively as needed.
• Internal communications management. Understand how marketing interplays with operational initiatives, and support departments in creating a seamless customer experience.
• Budget setting and adherence. In collaboration with the ED, establish an ambitious but realistic overall budget, with marketing and development support (including technology/talent) that ensures that the appropriate systems, staffing, and procedures to reasonably support the organization's efforts.
• Additional duties or tasks as assigned to support the mission.

SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

First and foremost, the Marketing and Communications Director for the Highlights Foundation must support our mission (described above) and demonstrate our core values: excellence, creativity, commitment to diversity, and integrity.

Other experiences and skills that are helpful include:

• Rich marketing and communications experience, with a track record of measurable success in driving revenue.
• Strong strategic and interpersonal skills, with a keen ability to spot ideas with promise and build plans to execute them.
• Able to shift gears and comfortably handle risk, recover from setbacks and overcome obstacles.
• A progressive thinker who understands philanthropic trends and best practices in donor centered fundraising.
• A knack for writing and speaking.
• Curiosity and a penchant for both people/humanities and technology.
• A true team spirit and collaborative attitude.
• Intrinsic motivation and ability to get things done without specific direction.
• Ability to handle full time hours, with some flexibility to attend events on nights or occasional weekends.