Deputy Director of Institutional Giving

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) seeks a highly-collaborative and mission-driven development professional to support our mission to build a good jobs economy—a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. The Deputy Director of Institutional Giving will be energized to play a key role in resourcing NELP’s programs, which focus on advancing transformative solutions that reflect the needs of all workers—including historically marginalized groups such as women, Black, immigrant, and low-wage workers, and workers with records. Join us!

About National Employment Law Project

Founded in 1969, the nonprofit National Employment Law Project (NELP) is a leading advocacy organization with the mission to build a just and inclusive economy where all workers have expansive rights and thrive in good jobs. Together with local, state, and national partners, NELP advances its mission through transformative legal and policy solutions, research, capacity building, and communications. Our victories over the last decade have impacted the lives of an estimated 100 million workers and their families. We lead and collaborate in fights for higher pay and just benefits, secure and safe jobs, and support at each stage in a worker’s life. For more information, read our annual reports and explore our website: www.nelp.org

NELP has a team of 55 staff people based across offices in New York City, Washington D.C., and Berkeley, CA, with a 9-person Board of Directors, an annual budget of $14M, and hundreds of partners in the field with whom we work to further our mission.

Organizational Position Overview

The Deputy Director of Institutional Giving will report to the Director of Development and be an integral member of our development team, which also includes a Development Associate. They will hold responsibility for our institutional funding portfolio, which is primarily private foundation funding and includes grants for general operating support as well as program-specific funding.

This is an ideal opportunity for a development leader who is looking to work with a values-aligned organization with a strong foundation. NELP is led by a President & CEO who is an enthusiastic and skilled fundraiser, has a highly capable development team and an expert program staff known for the quality and impact of their work, and is a financially sound organization.

NELP has long-term, positive relationships with funders. We receive support from foundation partners, individual donors, and other institutional partners. In addition to seeking direct funding for our own programs, NELP has a commitment to strengthening the movement’s collective impact, including supporting grassroots organizations with resources and making connections with funders.

Over the next year, we will continue to grow our fundraising infrastructure. This position will help advance our organizational strategy for resource generation, work in close collaboration with NELP leadership, program, strategy, and finance teams, and contribute to our values-aligned culture of fundraising.

What You Will Do

The Deputy Director of Institutional Giving will see fundraising as a vital contribution to the movement for workers' rights. They will develop fundraising strategies to maintain and grow our institutional giving portfolio; drive a deeply engaged and highly relational, personalized approach to funder cultivation; and manage information and relationships, including those with executive leadership. The Deputy Director of Institutional Giving will:

• Develop and lead multi-year fundraising strategies that build relationships with current and new philanthropic funders. Partner with the Director of Development and members of the executive leadership to identify new foundation prospects, manage and cultivate relationships with key institutional funders, prepare for funder meetings, and solicit and steward grants.
• Write grant proposals, grant reports, and external-facing content for funder audiences. Contribute to strategy for donor communications, events, and briefings.
• Represent NELP in meetings with foundation staff and other external audiences.
• Manage productive relationships with NELP's program, strategy, and finance teams, working collaboratively across the organization to develop funding strategies and pipelines and manage funder deliverables.
• Collaborate with development colleagues on a growing individual giving program to bridge systems, processes, and approaches between individual and institutional giving.
• Remain up-to-date on trends in philanthropy, especially on those impacting the economic justice, racial justice, and workers' rights movements.

Who You Are

• You have 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience with institutional fundraising, including foundation relationship management and grant writing. You have a track record of securing and managing six- to seven-figure, multi-year grants.
• You have knowledge of and dexterity within the national economic justice and/or workers’ rights landscape and its funding environment, including the major funders, national movement organizations, and community-based partner groups.
• You center relationship-based fundraising practices and genuinely enjoy cultivating and fostering philanthropic partnerships and internal relationships with colleagues.
• You are comfortable owning the full grant cycle for funders in your portfolio, while also bringing your creativity to expand and improve what's possible for our team.
• You have a justice-oriented understanding of how race and power impact relationships, organizational culture, and partnerships, and are committed to a personal and professional practice around deepening this understanding, continuously learning, reflecting, and growing.
• You are an effective, persuasive communicator with strong presentation, speaking, written, and nonverbal skills, who conveys information clearly and concisely, internally and externally, with high emotional intelligence and professional judgment.
• You are a self-aware leader who cultivates empathy through open and honest dialogue, builds relationships that foster trust and transparency across lines of difference, and offers direct, honest feedback with compassion and clarity of purpose.
• You are flexible and agile, responsive to feedback, open to changing direction, and focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
• You care about the big picture and are adept at managing a multitude of details. You have created systems and leveraged tools for managing deliverables, milestones and deadlines. You are a problem-solver with strong organizational skills.
• You operate with a commitment to excellence, integrity, diplomacy, humility, and camaraderie.
• You have experience in a social justice nonprofit, preferably focused on labor law and policy, labor unions, or workers’ rights.
• Candidates must be eligible and authorized to work in the United States.