Senior Development Associate

The National Homelessness Law Center (Law Center) seeks a strategic, collaborative, mission-driven thought partner to serve as our Senior Development Associate. The Law Center serves a legal arm of the national movement to end homelessness and is looking for a passionate development professional compelled by the national housing crisis, energized by our vision of housing as a human right and dismantling structural racism as we seek to end homelessness.

ABOUT THE LAW CENTER

Founded in 1989, the Law Center fearlessly advances federal, state, and local policies to prevent and end homelessness, while fiercely defending the rights of all unhoused persons. Our work has put unhoused children back in school, won new resources for affordable housing, prevented homelessness for renters, overturned laws that criminalize homelessness, and built support for the human right to housing, now a major component of federal domestic policy. We play a critical role in protecting, defending, and promoting the rights of unhoused persons to ensure they can lead national, state, and local efforts to end homelessness.

Our core conviction is that no one should have to go without safe, affordable housing, especially in a country as wealthy as ours. The Law Center’s work, in partnership with national, state, and local partners, is critical now more than ever as the eviction and affordable housing crises, exacerbated by the pandemic, push record numbers of people and families into homelessness. People of color, people living with disabilities, women, children, the elderly, victims of interpersonal violence, and members of the LGBTQ+ community are disproportionately and uniquely affected by homelessness, and our work consciously and affirmatively seeks to address these interrelated inequities. In April 2021, the Law Center welcomed its second Executive Director, Antonia Fasanelli, a national leader recognized for her expertise in housing and homelessness law and policy. The Law Center elevates the power and voices of persons with lived expertise in working toward systems change.

We are proud of our high-quality and committed team of 14+ staff persons and our large corps of volunteer attorneys. The Law Center’s budget for 2025 is $2.3 million. The Law Center is financially sound and maintains a reserve. For more information on our work, explore our website at www.homelesslaw.org .

BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW OF POSITION

The Senior Development Associate will serve as a key second member of the Law Center’s Development team and plays a critical role in fundraising for our work to end homelessness. The Development Team has been sustainably increasing our budget and capacity over the past three years, helping the organization scale up our work and more fully meet the need to address the increasingly hostile criminalization of homelessness. In addition to helping to manage all aspects of the Development Team’s operations, this role will have a particular emphasis on our Major Donor Outreach, with opportunities to grow this aspect of our work as your own portfolio and help shape it for years to come.

This is a full-time, exempt role operating out of our DC headquarters 2-3 days a week. This position is part of the Law Center’s Bargaining unit, reports to the Development Director, works closely with the Executive Director, and collaborates with external partners & all internal teams.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Development Operations: Manage all aspects of Day-to-Day Development needs and operations. Processes, records, and acknowledges all gifts, sponsorships, pledges and pledge payments. Ensures timely entry of all gifts into fundraising database (eTapestry) and accurate delivery of acknowledgment letters and tax receipts to donors. Generates, schedules, and mails pledge reminders to donors. Creates donor list queries adding new donors and prospective donors and assists with important tasks such as the preparation of weekly gift and donor reports.
• Individual Donor Strategy: Coordinate and manage our Donor Stewardship operations, including research, stewardship, meetings, and acknowledgements. Conducts prospect research with a particular focus on building out our Individual Donor Strategy (both Grassroots and Major Donors). Creates social media, email and direct mail campaigns. Sets up and attends in-person and zoom meetings.
• Event Planning: Assists Development Director (DD) with major development functions such as event planning, including compiling mailing lists, managing invitation and fundraising lists, coordinating logistics, and acting as an organization ambassador at fundraising events, donor cultivation events, and partner convenings.
• Grant Management: Helps DD with the organization of grant management and the preparation of grant proposals and reports; tracks correspondence with foundations about programmatic updates; and executes final submission of grant proposals and reports.
• Development Communications: Corresponds with donors and funders as needed, including through mailings, phone calls and meetings with our HALT (Homelessness Action Legal Team)
• Law Firm & Corporate Fundraising: Assist DD and Pro Bono Coordinator with our HALT program, and work to grow our membership base. Coordinates, participates in, and summarizes meetings with prospective and current law firm and corporate donors and funders.
• Finance Team Collaboration: Partners closely with Operations Team to ensure ongoing fundraising data integrity.
• Communications Team Collaboration: Works in coordination with development and communications staff to prepare and maintain website and fundraising materials.
• Additional duties as needed: Supports the Development Director and Executive Director with other organization wide and development related activities as needed.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree preferred but not required.
• 3-6 years of experience in development, administrative and/or operations preferred.
• Experience with CRM systems is required, and with E-Tapestry (Blackbaud) preferred.
• Experience with Major Donor Strategies is preferred.
• Experience with basic graphic design is preferred.
• Meticulous attention to detail.
• Demonstrated organizational and time-management skills, including ability to manage multiple, competing priorities and projects.
• Able to work independently and as part of a team and can take ownership of tasks and follow through until completion.
• Able and willing to do occasional evening or weekend work.
• Strong relationship-based competencies (verbal and written communication, empathy, conflict resolution, collaboration, trust building);
• Excellent judgment and decision-making abilities.
• Able to handle sensitive matters with confidentiality;
• Technical skills: Office 365, Sharepoint, Zoom and other remote work technologies.

WHO YOU ARE:

• You have a clear passion for how we can reach our Development goals through strategic use of social media—in particular LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• You thrive in a values-aligned, fast-paced, team-centric environment and are a self-starter
• You have a positive, problem-solving attitude.
• You give and receive constructive feedback, are willing to learn, and ask for help when needed.
• You support unions/unionized workplaces.
• You have a justice-oriented understanding of how race and power impact relationships, organizational culture and partnerships.
• You are committed to personal and professional practice around deepening this understanding, through continuous learning, reflection, and growth.
• You have a strong commitment to the values and mission of the Law Center, viewing homelessness through a structural and anti-racist lens; the Law Center also encourages those with lived expertise of homelessness or housing instability to apply.

SALARY AND LOCATION

Salary: To ensure equitable compensation the Law Center uses labor market benchmarking as the basis for establishing the salaries of employees across all roles at the organization. Aligned with this practice and in support of upholding internal equity, we do not negotiate salaries above the range for this position. The salary range for this position is $66,000 to $72,000 per year.

Location: The Law Center’s headquarters is in Washington, DC. For this position, we will require the Senior Development Associate to work out of the DC office 2-3 days per week and residence within 1 hour of commuting distance of our D.C. office is required.