The Director of Annual Giving and Digital Marketing leads fundraising marketing operations at the University of Colorado System Office to inspire donors to give to and engage with CU. 

The primary duties for this role include managing two complementary teams: Annual Giving and Digital Marketing; helping secure new, recurring, and upgraded gifts under $25,000 through campus partnerships; leading operations that engage CU’s constituents through email, web, and other strategies; and using data and technology to enhance CU’s engagement with Annual Giving-level donors across all of CU’s four campuses.

This role and its teams champion data-driven decision-making to provide colleagues on CU’s campuses, the CU System, and the CU Foundation with the means to understand and address unique fundraising marketing priorities. 

The System Annual Giving team comprises four employees who partner with CU’s Colorado Springs and Denver campuses to secure gifts under $25,000 and build pipelines to maintain relationships with those donors. The team develops and completes an annual calendar of appeals directed at those campuses’ donors, among other activities. It also collaborates with Annual Giving teams on all four of CU’s campuses to address shared topics. 

The System Digital Marketing team comprises three employees who use email and website marketing channels to support donor outreach across CU’s four campuses, the CU System, and CU Foundation. The team uses Salesforce, Marketing Cloud, Cvent, and Drupal platforms to help colleagues engage constituents.

This position reports to the Assistant Vice President of Central Advancement and is exempt from the State of Colorado Classified Staff system.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Management

• Supervise the strategic direction, collaboration, and alignment that’s shared between the Annual Giving and Digital Marketing teams to ensure their work is complementary and supports fundraising and engagement goals.
• Be responsible for the hiring, training, and performance of the Annual Giving and Digital Marketing teams.
• Directly supervise up to four employees.
• Champion and contribute to a positive workplace culture that prioritizes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging — one in which all employees are valued for their contributions.
• Encourage opportunities for employees’ career development, provide guidance, and listen to feedback.
• Ensure team members contribute work that aligns with System Advancement’s vision, mission, values, and guiding principles.
• Support team members by evaluating their work for effectiveness, accuracy, and customer satisfaction.
• Triage the Annual Giving and Digital Marketing teams’ priorities to ensure they’re focused in the right direction.
• Stay updated on fundraising and marketing trends and technology, and encourage team members to pursue, discuss, and recommend innovative approaches and processes specific to Annual Giving and Digital Marketing.
• Share responsibility for a project’s execution with relevant colleagues.
• Lead the teams’ collaboration with Advancement areas such as donor and alumni engagement, stewardship, creative, compliance, gifts, data, analytics, technology, and more.
• Collaborate with the position’s assistant vice president to prepare and deploy an annual budget.
• Steer an agile management system that guides daily tasks and long-term projects.

Annual Giving

• Supervise a centralized Annual Giving program that directly supports fundraising and engagement goals at CU Colorado Springs and CU Denver in partnership with those campuses.
• Supervise the use of multiple channels, including email, website, direct mail, phone, texting, digital advertising, and others to secure gifts and build positive donor experiences.
• Support the Annual Giving team in guiding daily and longer-term priorities.
• Collaborate with CU Colorado Springs and CU Denver partners to create annual key performance indicators unique to each campus, supervise progress toward goals, and provide strategic recommendations.
• Oversee System Annual Giving’s collaboration with CU Colorado Springs and CU Denver partners to plan, implement, and evaluate those campuses’ annual giving days.
• Convene a community of practice of Annual Giving professionals across the CU system to explore shared strategies, opportunities, challenges, policies, and processes that impact Annual Giving at CU.
• Guide the creation of an annual operating plan, which is an agreed-upon baseline of Annual Giving activities, roles, and responsibilities that are shared among campus partners.
• Collaborate with the position’s assistant vice president to manage large-scale vendor relationships that provide technology and programs used by Annual Giving.

Digital Marketing

• Supervise a centralized Digital Marketing program that supports fundraising for Annual Giving-level gifts and various other donor-engagement strategies and projects.
• Supervise the use of email and web marketing channels and affiliated technology to improve donors’ engagement with CU.
• Create innovative approaches to supervise and improve engagement with constituents through Digital Marketing tools and platforms.
• Develop innovative approaches to capturing and analyzing donor data as it relates to Annual Giving fundraising and mass engagement among donor constituents.
• Support the Digital Marketing team in guiding daily and longer-term workflows.
• Help author and guide the development of Digital Marketing product roadmaps.
• Develop methods for the tracking the success of Digital Marketing initiatives.
• Collaborate with the position’s assistant vice president to manage relationships with external vendors and internal partners like University Information Services to develop improvements to Digital Marketing platforms.

Data & Technology

• Collaborate with System and campus teams to use data and technology to improve donor fundraising and engagement outcomes.
• Help develop long-term fundraising and engagement strategies that are predicated on a data-driven and constituent-centric philosophy.
• Lead both teams’ efforts to use data and technology services that support shared priorities among all four CU campuses; this includes using Marketing Cloud, GiveCampus, Drupal, Salesforce and Cognos reporting platforms, Google Analytics, custom reports, and other platforms.
• Lead both teams’ efforts to research, assess, and implement emerging data and technology platforms and strategies that satisfy outcomes related to Annual Giving and Digital Marketing activities.
• Provide data segmentation, analysis, and reports that support campus and customer outcomes.

Salary: The anticipated hiring range has been established at $115,000-$130,000.