Sr. Associate Director, Art Museum Development

Reporting to the Museum Director, the Senior Associate Director for Museum Development is an inspired and inspiring leader; an innovative development professional; a fearless frontline fundraiser; a strategic, creative, and collaborative colleague; and a key member of the Museum's senior management team, contributing broadly and strategically to all aspects of the Museum's mission, who ensures that the donated resources essential to the Museum’s operational success are secured. With a new building anticipated to open in 2025, we require a Senior Associate Director for Museum Development who thrives in a fast-paced environment committed to excellence and is equal to the opportunity to develop and implement ambitious capital, endowing, and annual giving fundraising plans.

In partnership with the Director, the Sr. AD-MD sets priorities and devises integrated and coordinated strategies for meeting and sustaining the Museum's growing programmatic needs from donated revenue, both term and endowment, providing leadership, strategic direction, management, and coordination for individual major gift fundraising as well as shaping a strategy that further engages diverse audiences, from alumni, parents, and friends to the wider public. They lead a growing team of five in the Museum’s Development office, shaping well diversified, detailed, and actionable work plans, including developing, implementing, and achieving a major multi-year fundraising effort that builds on the success of the building campaign and is aimed at securing an additional $36.5 million in new endowments and operational support by June 2025, of which nearly $19 million has already been committed. In addition, the Sr. AD-MD will lead efforts to double annual donated revenues by 2026.

With the Director, the Sr. AD-MD develops short-, mid-, and long-term fundraising strategies to ensure a balance between major gift fundraising and annual support needs, including shaping ladders of support. A strategist and team leader with a history of success in securing leadership gifts, they oversee the cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of the Museum’s prospects and benefactors from major gifts to modest annual commitments, partnering with the Director, three in-house gift officers, events and support staff, and the University’s Office of Advancement. The Sr. AD-MD is a member of the Museum’s six-person Management Team and leads a major department, supervising a major gifts officer, an individual giving officer, senior managers for foundation and government relations and for event and donor engagement, a data support specialist, and other administrative staff and volunteers who support membership, events, and special projects as required. The Sr. AD-MD also collaborates seamlessly with the University’s Office of Advancement. They manage a personal portfolio of approximately 30 major gift prospects ranging from $250,000 to more than $1 million.

Lindauer, an executive search firm with expertise in nonprofit leadership has been exclusively retained for this engagement. To express interest in this role please submit your materials HERE.  All inquiries and discussions will be considered strictly confidential. 

Job Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategy

• Takes the lead in developing, managing, and overseeing creative, proactive, and effective strategies for broadening and increasing annual and multi-year donated revenue for the fundraising that will support both construction-related special projects and the increased expenses associated with operating a dramatically larger new Museum facility.
• Shapes donor pyramids and multi-step strategies for moving from cultivation to solicitation to gift.
• Develops vision, strategy, themes, and messaging for donor engagement and cultivation events that promote the growth of a robust donor base, including for the Museum’s annual fundraising gala.
• Envisions and guides the deployment of new strategies and branding for membership acquisition and retention, including individuals, families, and corporations.
• Creates, analyzes, and interprets data reports to inform and shape sound and effective fundraising strategies.
• In partnership with the Director, designs, develops, and oversees a broad-based fundraising strategy to meet and sustain the Museum's programmatic needs and priority initiatives and to shape a well-diversified plan that balances major gifts with planned giving and annual support to ensure the Museum's near- and long-term fiscal health.
• Works with other senior Museum leaders to determine the magnitude of project funding needs, establish fundraising targets, and identify potential donors and sponsors.
• Creates, oversees, and directs a strategy that aligns the needs of the institution and the philanthropic interests of individual and institutional funders.
• The Sr. AD-MD balances risk with informed judgment in projecting revenues on which the Museum’s planning will, in part, be based.

Cultivation, Solicitation, and Relationship Management

• In partnership with the Director, develops and coordinates complex strategies for the identification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship of the Museum's highest-level prospects and donors; develops sophisticated opportunities for donor engagement with the Museum and its mission, leveraging the Director, curators, themself, and others in order to align donor interests meaningfully with the Museum's greatest funding needs.
• Develops strong relationships with, and strategizes the development of others’ relationships with, a range of donors, philanthropic advisors, family foundation staff, and other individuals associated with giving to Princeton.
• Personally responsible for a minimum of 30 face-to-face visits and eight to 12 proposals annually for gifts in the $250,000– $1 million range.
• The Sr. AD-MD staffs the Director in making key solicitations and planning national and international donor visits, as well as the work of the University President and other leadership as requested.
• Interacts meaningfully with members of the Museum’s dynamic Advisory Council, representing Princeton effectively and with sophistication and communicating its mission, both verbally and in writing, to a variety of constituencies, including transformational donors.
• Educates potential donors about philanthropy and the case for supporting the Museum.
• Prepares proposals, briefings, and reports.
• Assures that the Museum’s donor relationships are superb, and partners with or coordinates the
• work of many to steward giving successfully.

Collaboration and Coordination

• Assures that the Museum’s future needs are understood by the Office of Advancement (OOA) and receive necessary University approvals.
• Works closely with the OOA and Office of Corporate Engagement and Foundation Relations to ensure that the Museum's funding needs are understood and remain a University priority.
• Coordinates and integrates the Museum's fundraising needs and strategies with those of the University as a whole, and assures a healthy and essential flow of information, supporting all
• involved to modify strategies as necessary.
• Advocates for the Museum’s needs and its present and future vitality to an array of University partners. Participates in regular OOA leadership and capital gifts meetings and maintains open, ongoing dialogue with frontline fundraising staff.
• Plays an active role in the life of the Museum and University, including through project teams, task forces, committees, and committee service.
• Builds and maintains strong relationships with Museum curators, educators, communicators, and others to surface opportunities that could be supported through philanthropy.
• Networks nationally with other museum development leaders, develops and maintains a vital presence in the Princeton community, and is seen as a leader in both the local and national philanthropic community.

Supervision and Leadership

• The Sr. AD-MD develops, leads, and mentors a high-quality development staff that meets the challenges of broadening, diversifying, and increasing the Museum’s philanthropic revenue streams, creating benchmarks, shaping clear expectations and goals, and regularly reviewing progress and prospect contacts.
• The Sr. AD-MD employs an open and fluid leadership style and empowers staff through active communication and clear delegation.
• The Sr. AD-MD meets individually and with their team as a whole to establish priorities and ensure a coordinated and holistic fundraising effort, including establishing specific fundraising metrics annually for each development professional on their team.
• The Sr. AD-MD oversees Museum donor and gift recordkeeping, ensuring that the department complies with all University and Advancement policies and procedures.

Writing and Other Responsibilities

• The Sr. AD-MD shapes and prepares written content for fundraising and outreach materials, including proposals, case statements, and reports including for the public-facing Annual Report and the annual report to the Advisory Council.
• Oversees preparation of correspondence, website and magazine stories, and a range of ephemera, including brochures, press releases, invitations, and event-related materials.
• Working with communications staff and the Office of the Director, they create and hone timely, strategic messages.
• Ensures a balanced annual calendar of outreach to donors and prospects, including a mix of mass appeals, personalized proposals/asks, and general non-ask stewardship communications.
• Ensures and coordinates donor engagement efforts and regular touch points on the part of staff across the Museum, shaping a Museum-wide climate of philanthropy

• Bachelor’s degree in art history, another humanities discipline, arts administration, or a related field.
• At least 5-8 years of increasingly responsible development experience, preferably in a leadership museum or cultural nonprofit, preferably in higher education with demonstrated long-held interest in the arts/art and the transforming role of museums.
• A demonstrated long-held interest in art and/or the humanities and in the transformative role of museums, including the ability to make the case for giving to the arts, humanities, and higher education.
• Superb demonstrated strategic and leadership capacities, including the ability to be productively audacious when appropriate, balanced with tactical implementation; the ability to make decisive decisions and also to know when others need to be involved.
• The ability to provide vision and shape innovation and entrepreneurial approaches, to empower staff through active communication and delegation, assure accountability, build confidence, promote diversity of thought, and celebrate achievements.
• A demonstrated accessible and collegial leadership style, with a proven ability to recruit, mentor, motivate, and lead a strong, cohesive, goal-oriented, and high-performing team.
• The creativity and energy to convince and persuade varying constituencies of new ideas and directions in an environment committed to excellence.
• The demonstrated ability to understand and shape institutional funding priorities with proven success in aligning those needs with the philanthropic interests of funding prospects. Ability to articulate the Museum’s mission, excellence, priorities, and goals with energy, enthusiasm sophistication, and creativity.
• Ability to navigate complex institutions and competing priorities to make the best match for donor interests.
• Superb written and verbal communication skills; exceptional and poised interpersonal and relationship-building skills with donors, volunteers, administrators, and professional colleagues.
• Exceptional personal initiative and sound judgment; intellectual depth, maturity, and confidence.
• Excellent organizational, analytical, and project management skills, including the ability to multitask in a fast-moving environment.
• Ability to travel occasionally (approximately 5%–10% of the time) throughout the United States and internationally.
• A strong work ethic.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Proficiency with Altru and Advance fundraising tools.
• Master’s degree in an appropriate discipline.

Princeton University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS