Development Director

Our Organization

Strong Families cultivates people power by deeply caring for our communities, growing our collective leadership, and centering the lived experiences of people most impacted to shape meaningful change. We lead organizing, movement building, narrative, leadership development, and civic engagement strategies so that people can thrive. Founded as a state-wide program of a national organization in 2012, we are now an organization of our own with a fiscal sponsor, Tides Center. All Strong Families staff are employees of Tides Center. Strong Families is a fully-remote organization and is growing our team from five to seven people in 2026. Alongside community members and strong organizational partners, we have built and expanded rural organizing, year-round civic engagement, and statewide healthcare access and affordability policy wins. Our healthcare work includes programming focused on healthcare access for all community members and comprehensive reproductive healthcare, including abortion care.  

The Position

Supervised by the Executive Director, the Development Director leads the fundraising  strategies engaging foundations, individual donor supporters, and other resource mobilizers. This position creates strategies and uses research, data, and systems to meet fundraising goals. The development work is carried out in close collaboration with the Executive Director and Director of Strategic Partnerships. 

The Development Director will focus on these essential duties and responsibilities with opportunities to grow your skills over time: 

1. Resource Mobilization Strategy and Implementation: About 75%

• Leads the planning, implementation, and evaluation of engaging foundations, individual donor supporters, and other resource mobilizers
• Conducts foundation and donor prospecting research and outreach activities.
• Maintains and builds strong working relationships with foundation staff, donors, and organizational partners with the vision of building long-term collaborations between the organization and others.
• Writes and submits grant proposals and grant reports including narratives, budgets, finance reports, attachments, and other supplementary materials as needed. 
• Schedules and prepares for meetings with potential and current funders and donors. 
• Leads, sets goals, and project manages fundraising events. 
• Leads, sets goals, and project manages individual giving campaigns. 
• Leads staff and volunteer training and provides team support for individual giving campaigns. 
• Writes fundraising content for emails, letters, social media posts, and other communication as needed. 
• Shares fundraising campaign and resource development learnings with the Strong Families team for ongoing strategy development and diversification of resources. 

• May supervise volunteers and interns as assigned.
• If residing in New Mexico: Travels for community or funder events and meetings within New Mexico as needed, up to 12 times per year.
• If residing outside of New Mexico: Travels out of state, up to 5 times a year, to support the organization’s resource mobilization. 

2. Fundraising Systems Infrastructure: About 15%

• Ensures fundraising platforms and tools used meet our development needs and goals. 
• Creates and maintains systems for monitoring grant proposal deadlines and grant report deadlines. 
• Conducts financial monitoring of grant spending alongside the Executive Director. 
• Creates finance budgets and reports for grants. 
• Creates and maintains data systems on foundations and current funding. 
• Keeps timely updates of grant records in the Tides Center portal. 
• Creates and analyzes donor reports. 
• Oversees, maintains, and updates the main organizational database/CRM for the individuals, organizations, and work related to fundraising. 
• Engages community leaders in fundraising strategies to capture the work of the organization’s campaigns and programs, and to strengthen our resource mobilization efforts. 
• Accurately tracks and reports lobbying activities. Effectively utilizes all financial, 501c3, and related systems by following financial systems protocols and filing documents in a timely and accurate manner, including payment requests, revenue reports, monthly credit card reports, and time/lobbying tracking forms. 

3. Organizational Leadership Support: About 10%

• Plays a key role in communicating the vision, values and impact of Strong Families’ work to community members, organizational partners, and current and prospective funders and donors as needed. 
• Demonstrates leadership in annual strategic planning, work plan development and evaluation, performance measurement, and board development as needed.
• Contributes to the overall strategic direction of the organization, acts as a role model and coach to help build a healthy organizational culture.
• Participate in inclusive wellness and grounding practices such as breathing, stretching, and low-impact physical movement or other accessible forms of movement as part of our team building and organizational culture.

The Ideal Candidate for this Position

• Strategic Thinking and Fundraising Implementation: The Development Director has a minimum of 5 years experience in a range of fundraising strategies and is a generalist. This person will like doing a range of activities and holding work from start to finish. This position plans fundraising strategies, implements the plans, and evaluates them, bringing team members in to support when it comes to events and communications. This person is also a generalist when it comes to types of fundraising from large donor and grassroots donor work to institutional grants work. This person has a willingness to learn through trial and error and likes the process of fundraising experimentation. The Development Director has the ability to control and handle confidential and time-sensitive information, possess good judgment, and has an awareness of other people’s needs. The person in this position has the ability to prioritize tasks, manage time, and work well with others, while exercising respect for all the communities we work with.
• Strong Communicator: The person in this position has strong verbal and written communication skills and has the ability to effectively communicate with people at all levels and from various backgrounds. This person can envision and express clearly our organizational theories, models, values, and how these connect to our goals and activities. This position isn’t afraid to ask for feedback and challenge others on the team to think creatively, tell compelling stories, and make a strong case for our organizational work.  This person uses direct communication, gives ongoing, respectful feedback, and engages in proactive problem solving to address internal organizational challenges and disagreements and to support those around them. This position has careful attention to detail, including wording used in communications and an understanding of clear visual presentation of information such as the skills to put together one-pagers or decks about our organizational work for the purposes of fundraising. The Development Director must be able to speak, read, write, and understand the primary language(s) used in the workplace. Being bilingual in English and other languages is a plus. 
• Data and Systems Skills: The Development Director has a strong ability to use online systems, manage databases, and organize data for internal record keeping and external reporting. This position has a proficiency with Microsoft Office or Google Suite (word processing, spreadsheets, email, calendaring, and cloud storage applications), web browsers, and the basics of database and conferencing software.
• Team Member and Problem Solver: The work requires a high-performing problem-solver, who is detail-oriented yet has an eye on the whole vision for our collective work. This person will need to work well both independently and as a team member. The Development Director must be reliable and accountable regarding their work and actions. This person has a helpful attitude and is willing to take on small or large tasks within their scope of responsibility to move toward our collective goals. 

More about Strong Families and this Role

Work Schedule and Location
Strong Families is a Monday-Thursday, 32-hour/week organization. Some organizational needs require work on occasional Fridays, other weekend days, and evenings. We are a fully-remote organization. The Development Director can work from anywhere within the United States.
Ability to travel is required for this position. This position might involve travel out of state 1-5 times per year for conferences, trainings, meetings, or staff planning. Occasional local transportation for business purposes is required. If driving, you must have a valid state driver’s license and proof of insurance coverage meeting Strong Families’ organizational insurance levels.

Compensation and Benefits
The salary range for this role is $85,000-$95,000. Exact salary is dependent on the individual’s skills, experience, qualifications, and our practice of maintaining salary equity. Our offer process does not include negotiation on salaries and benefits which can create inequities in pay across the organization. 

Strong Families offers excellent benefits including but not limited to: 

• 100% employer-paid health, dental, and vision premiums for both employee and their spouse, domestic partner, and dependents 
• Voluntary life and short and long term disability insurance with supplemental coverage 
• Option to enroll in pre-tax healthcare and dependent care flexible spending accounts
• 3.5% employer match contribution to your retirement fund 
• ID monitoring and protection benefits 
• Paid family medical leave when needed
• Employee Assistance Program free to employees
• $50/month stipend for cell phone and home internet
• Generous accrued paid time off (PTO includes 10 holidays, 2 additional floating holidays, 1-week summer break closure, 2-week winter break closure, and about 10 vacation days for first year of employment)
• 4-day work week schedule

Timeline and How to Apply

To submit an application, please submit an application to Equitable Hiring Group at this page no later than Friday June 19th at 5:00 pm EST.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Strong Families, a Project of Tides Center, is an equal opportunity employer. Strong Families centers equity in our hiring process, organizational culture, and programmatic work. We are committed to racial and gender equity and encourage candidates who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of color, and LGBTQ to apply for positions. No applicant will be discriminated against because of their race, religion, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, marital status, or medical condition including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS-related conditions. Where required by state law, our fiscal sponsor utilizes E-Verify as a part of our employment authorization process.
 

Applicants with Disabilities

Reasonable accommodations will be provided to ensure all interested candidates can participate in our interview process. We encourage you to contact Melanie Damm at Equitable Hiring Group ([email protected]) to discuss any accessibility needs you may have.