Director of Individual Giving

Swarthmore College

Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

Swarthmore College provides learners of diverse backgrounds with a transformative liberal arts education grounded in rigorous intellectual inquiry and empowers all who share in our community to flourish and contribute to a better world.

Swarthmore College Mission Statement

THE SEARCH

Swarthmore College seeks an accomplished development professional to lead individual giving efforts and contribute to the college’s broader philanthropic efforts.  This position becomes available at a pivotal time in Swarthmore’s history, as it launches an ambitious $100M campaign to construct a new athletic center and seeks to implement Swarthmore Forward, a strategic plan that emphasizes holistic development of the student, integrating advising and academic excellence with opportunities for personal growth, recreation, civic engagement, and joy.  In addition to realizing the campaign goal, private philanthropic support will profoundly impact and enhance student education programs; teaching and research; and student life. 

The director of individual giving will be responsible for strategic oversight of the individual giving team with the goal of inspiring new levels of engagement, commitment, and philanthropic support from the Swarthmore community.  The director will provide leadership to the individual giving team, creating an environment of collaboration, accountability, motivation, professional growth, and productivity. In addition, the director also will manage a portfolio of prospects capable of making six- and seven-figure commitments from across the country.  

The ideal candidate will have a demonstrated ability to lead an individual giving team to higher performance levels through a combination of coaching, training, data analysis, and metrics.  The candidate must have a keen understanding for how all areas of institutional advancement—alumni relations, annual giving, donor relations, advancement services, and individual and planned giving—work together to ensure the meaningful engagement of prospects; promote the mission, goals, and aspirations of an institution of higher education; and optimize the lifelong giving of donors.  The candidate also must have broad knowledge of the field of philanthropy and experience leveraging institutional leadership and faculty in development activities.

Swarthmore College

HISTORY

Swarthmore College was founded in 1864 when the local branch of the Society of Friends sought to create an institute of higher learning for their children.  Co-ed from its inception, Swarthmore holds true to its Quaker roots and mission over 150 years later, with a campus community that thrives on open dialogue, shoulder-to-shoulder discovery, and face-to-face exploration.  While the College guides students to realize their full intellectual and personal potential, Swarthmore also emphasizes values such as social responsibility, community service, and ethical leadership.  This heritage-aware value system permeates campus culture and decision-making, demonstrated by its unique honor code that governs academic integrity and promotes trust within the community.

Swarthmore’s pastoral 425-acre campus, including the idyllic and renowned 350-acre Scott Arboretum, offers a beautiful home to its 1,730 undergraduate students.  The campus is often named one of the most beautiful in the country with its flowering trees and rolling hills, while being located just 11 miles from the historic city of Philadelphia.  The city is easily accessible via a 30-minute train ride from the station at the edge of campus.

Swarthmore students enjoy the broad offerings of more than 600 courses taught each year within 40 courses of study.  Unlike most other liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore also offers a well-regarded undergraduate engineering program.  As an exclusively undergraduate institution, the College’s 173 full-time tenure and tenure-track faculty can provide an excellent 8:1 student-to-faculty ratio, smaller class sizes, close faculty-student relationships, and many research opportunities, all of which foster a collaborative learning environment.

In addition, Swarthmore participates in the Tri-Co Consortium, which connects the College with nearby Bryn Mawr and Haverford College, allowing Swarthmore’s intellectually passionate students to expand their academic and social opportunities across three stellar institutions.

Building proudly on the Quaker legacy of shared responsibility, social justice and resource stewardship, Swarthmore is at the forefront of sustainability in higher education, with initiatives like the To Zero by Thirty-Five commitment to achieve carbon neutrality no later than 2035, the internal Carbon Charge that directs revenues from internal charges to energy-efficiency programs, the Zero Waste Plan, plus integrated sustainable infrastructure including a system of green roofs.    

LEADERSHIP

Valerie Smith, President

Valerie Smith, a distinguished scholar of African American literature, is the 15th president of Swarthmore College, where her priorities have included strengthening and expanding initiatives focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion; supporting curricular innovation; improving the campus’s facilities and infrastructure; ensuring the College fulfills its commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2035; and strengthening relationships between the College and the region.

Under President Smith’s leadership, Swarthmore recently concluded the largest comprehensive fundraising campaign in the College’s history, Changing Lives, Changing the World, which raised more than $440 million.  

Before joining Swarthmore, Dr. Smith was a professor of English and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature, founding director of the Center for African American Studies, and also served as dean of the college at Princeton University.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Bates College, she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Virginia.  She is the author of three books on African American literature and culture and the editor or co-editor of five others.

Sarah Pearson, Vice President for Advancement

As Vice President for Advancement, Sarah Pearson brings more than four decades of fundraising experience to Swarthmore, the vast majority of which comes from leadership positions at colleges and universities. Most recently, she served as vice president for college advancement at Bates College, her alma mater, where she spent more than a decade. At Bates, she led a team of 50 individuals and oversaw the successful completion of the largest fundraising campaign in Bates’ history, raising $346 million, surpassing the goal of $300 million.  Previously, Pearson served as the chief development officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a multidisciplinary community of researchers aimed at improving human health; as vice president for alumni relations and development at Northwestern University; and as associate vice president of development at The University of Chicago.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Bates, Pearson earned a Master of Fine Arts from Brandeis University.  She was a trustee for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and served as chair of CASE’s National Philanthropy Commission. 

Josie Burri, Associate Vice President, Capital Giving & Campaigns

Josie Burri is Associate Vice President, Capital Giving & Campaigns, at Swarthmore College where she oversees the team responsible for individual giving, as well as family philanthropy and international fundraising. She previously spent seven years as Director of Philanthropy at The Shipley School. Earlier in her career, Josie held senior fundraising positions at the University of the Arts and Opera Philadelphia as well as at a not-for-profit biomedical research organization, The Wistar Institute.

Burri graduated from Drexel University with a Master of Science degree in Arts Administration and earned a Bachelor of Music degree in Flute Performance, summa cum laude, from Temple University.  She is certified as a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® through The American College of Financial Services.

CAMPAIGN

Swarthmore recently concluded the largest comprehensive fundraising campaign in the College’s history. Changing Lives, Changing the World raised more than $440 million, including more than $110 million for financial aid. This unprecedented support for students will help the College continue to diversify its student body, including by supporting more low-income and first-generation students.  Swarthmore remains one of the few colleges in the country to practice need-blind admissions — admitting students regardless of their ability to pay tuition.

The campaign has also helped advance transformative facilities projects that provide new opportunities for collaboration and community building.  In 2020, the College opened Maxine Frank Singer Hall, the new home of Swarthmore’s biology, psychology, and engineering departments. The building features flexible classrooms, state-of-the-art laboratories, and numerous spaces for collaborative activity. A new dining hall and community commons provides an expanded and reimagined social and dining experience for the community.  Its innovative sustainable design will also facilitate the College’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.

DIRECTOR OF INDIVIDUAL GIVING

The director will conceive, organize, and implement a comprehensive, international effort to cultivate, solicit and steward outright, planned, and blended leadership gifts of $100,000 or more, including leadership-level annual gifts to current funds and life income and estate commitments, from alumni, parents, and friends.  In addition to working with an assigned group of leadership gift prospects (traveling as needed to meet with them), the director leads, manages, and mentors the Individual Giving staff of six giving officers, and actively supports the development work of Swarthmore’s senior staff and key volunteers.  The director of individual giving reports to and serves as a strategic partner to the associate vice president, capital giving and campaigns.  They also participate in leadership of the division of College Advancement as a member of the management team. 

Essential Responsibilities

Staff Management

• Actively recruit, mentor, and train staff and provide frequent opportunities for professional learning and growth; emphasize retention as a means of increasing the capacity and expertise of the entire team; and augment existing staff capabilities as appropriate to meet expanding organizational needs.
• Establish well-defined and measurable individual and team goals that emphasize the importance of prospect meetings and solicitations; regularly track and manage fundraising progress for each team member and manage performance through established metrics and expectations; ensure team members understand their work within the context of the school’s mission and strategic priorities; and perform annual performance assessments.
• Ensure a culture where effective teamwork, collaboration, and innovation are expected, recognized, and rewarded; lead by example with regard to professionalism, creativity, entrepreneurship, appropriate risk-taking and cross-organizational cooperation.
• Work with team to ensure that the engagement of academic partners in development activities is thoughtful and well planned; ensure academic partners are fully supported in shared development activities through robust prospect strategies, effective briefings, and timely and thoughtful communication of aims and objectives of prospect meetings and events in which they are engaged.

Strategic Planning & Program Management

• Formulate and execute short-term and long-range strategic plans that will broaden and deepen the prospect pool and overall outreach efforts; provide philanthropic support that is sustainable, impactful, and aligns with the mission of the school; and help Advancement division realize its ambitious fundraising and engagement goals.
• Oversee and support a data-driven approach that ensures staff members execute strategies that result in the meaningful engagement and successful solicitation of prospects.
• Work with the vice president for college advancement and the associate vice president in identifying and managing prospects who require the attention of the president staff, board managers and/or key volunteers; help in planning president’s development travel and ensure the timely and accurate production of appropriate briefing and support materials in collaboration with the Prospect Discovery & Development team.
• As a senior leader on the development team, contribute to discussions related to overall strategy for the program and efforts to maximize lifetime relationships and philanthropic support from alumni, parents, and friends.
• Coordinate activities of individual giving program with colleagues in annual giving and reunion planning; leverage the power of that collaborative approach to ensure alumni are meaningfully engaged in the life of the college.
• Ensure that the stewardship of Swarthmore donors makes supporting the College a personally fulfilling experience; conveys to donors that Swarthmore and its leaders care deeply about its supporters and appreciate what they have done for the College; and demonstrates the impact that contributions have on the College and its students, faculty and staff.

Fundraising Duties

• Lead by example by managing a portfolio of 50-75 major gift prospects through the donor engagement process of identification, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship; forge relationships with a diverse population; set example of success for frontline fundraising team.
• Travel with academic leaders and other key institutional representatives to engage leading prospects and donors; work proactively to bring prospects to campus for substantive visits and engagement opportunities with members of the Swarthmore community.
• Partner with colleagues in annual giving on tiered solicitations, including gift planning on complex and blended gift opportunities; provide advice to prospects on deferred giving vehicles as a means of making a contribution to the college.

QUALIFICATIONS & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s degree and a minimum of seven years of professional experience in university fundraising or related field, including at least three years of management and/or coaching and mentoring experience with a proven ability to motivate, engage, and work with staff, donors and volunteers.
• Knowledge of advanced fundraising principles as well as a broad familiarity with the objectives of capital, endowment, and annual current-use fundraising.
• Experience improving and increasing the effectiveness of an individual giving program by utilizing best practices in the field and introducing innovative approaches to increase philanthropic support and engage prospects and donors.
• The ability to analyze information and think strategically, critically, and creatively; the ability to transform new ideas into executable and enduring programs; the ability to solve problems and offer effective solutions to issues not just facing individual giving, but in areas across Swarthmore advancement.
• Personal success cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding individual donors at the six-figure level and higher; the ability to inspire high net worth individuals to philanthropic leadership.
• A track record of success formulating and executing short-term and long-range plans that result in the transformational impact on an advancement program and the institution it supports.
• Proven experience fostering a collaborative, positive, and goal-oriented environment that empowers staff through active communication and delegation and that builds confidence, promotes diversity, celebrates achievements, and encourages teamwork.
• A sharp eye for organizational efficiencies and the best use of resources; an ability to streamline work volume while managing multiple projects and changing priorities.
• Keen understanding of and ability to utilize data to examine a prospect pool, accurately predict fundraising capacity for an individual and donor base; set fundraising goals and priorities; and yield positive outcomes.
• Superlative interpersonal and written and oral communication skills with a demonstrated ability to work well with people at all levels of an organization, listen carefully and respond thoughtfully, and influence and persuade others.
• Ability to use a variety of computer applications, including demonstrated skills in the use of word processing and spreadsheets (e.g., Microsoft Word, Excel, Google Docs and Sheets), and fundraising databases and reporting software.
• Demonstrated ability to prioritize work, manage multiple tasks involving many stakeholders, and meet deadlines in a time-constrained environment.
• Ability to initiate and complete tasks with minimal supervision, exercising discretion and independent judgment.
• Valid driver’s license and ability to travel locally, regionally and nationally.

Preferred

• Advanced degree.
• Knowledge and experience with planned giving vehicles.
• Experience working in a college or university setting, especially in a comprehensive fundraising campaign environment.
• Understand how data is used to inform decision making.
• Proficiency with G-Suite (especially Google Docs and Sheets), PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat.

TO APPLY

Swarthmore College has retained John Solmonese, president of Solmonese Search Partners, to conduct the search.  All inquiries, nominations, and applications may be sent to him at:  jsolmonese@gmail.com. 

Swarthmore is an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.