Assistant Director of Planned Giving – The College of Wooster

Job Description:

Location: Wooster, OH Category: Staff Posted On: Wed Jul 17 2024 Job Description:

 Summary:

The Assistant Director of Planned Giving serves as the primary contact for donors with life income and bequest gifts. This role coordinates with Advancement Services and the Business Office to administer and track all planned gifts. This position facilitates new bequest conversations through a robust, multi-channel marketing program. The Assistant Director creates and executes a comprehensive stewardship plan for legacy society members. Additionally, they assist the AVP for Development in setting the programs’ vision and annual goals.

 

Essential Departmental Duties and Responsibilities:

• Creates and executes a multi-channel marketing plan (print, e-newsletters, e-blasts) through Crescendo and other marketing vendors.
• Adheres to budget and timeline for all marketing projects.
• Coordinates schedule and timing with other messaging from Development and Alumni & Family Engagement.
• Maintains the Planned Giving website, ensuring keeping consistency with the College and Alumni and Family Engagement websites,  including donor profiles and seasonal updates.
• Prepares donor illustrations and other major gift/planned gift proposals.
• Partners with the reunion giving team, particularly for 50th reunions, to educate prospective donors and secure planned gifts.
• Establishes bi-annual educational opportunities for Development team, including Annual Giving team and expand planned giving knowledge.
• Maintains portfolio of top planned gift donors for stewardship – both to maintain disclosed planned gifts and encourage future acceleration or outright gift opportunities.
• Represents the College as the front-line responder for planned gift inquiries.
• Tracks the comprehensive stewardship of 1866 legacy society members, including the distribution of recognition items and annual reports.
• Coordinates and promotes recognition events and other events.
• Maintains data integrity in Blackbaud NXT, GiftWrap, and other systems.
• Processes claims for bequests, life insurance, beneficiary designations and other gifts.
• Maintains data at Kaspick or other 3rd party money manager of life income assets.
• Manages process to establish new gift annuities.
• Coordinates with Advancement Services team to maintain records of estates, received funds, and active administrations.
• Tracks life insurance gifts and oversees premium payments.
• Provides annual reports on fund values and executes all tax deliverables for CGA, Trust, and PIF accounts.
• Coordinates with the Business Office to manage charitable gift annuity registration and annual renewals.
• Assists in producing reports and enhancing program reporting on the bequest pipeline.
• Assists in the producing and tracking gift agreements tied to bequest gifts.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Job Requirements:

Qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

 

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree required with 3-5 years’ experience in higher education development, non-profit, or legal setting preferred.
• Experience tracking a project across a long period of time while maintaining regular workflow preferred.
• Experience with database management, preferably with Blackbaud NXT, PG Calc GiftWrap, and/or Crescendo is preferred.

 

Knowledge Skills and Abilities:

Skills: 

• Strong organizational, interpersonal, and oral communication skills, including friendly and efficient telephone etiquette, are essential.
• Ability to work independently and collaborate effectively with colleagues and staff.
• Proven capacity to multi-task, manage projects simultaneously, set priorities, and meet competing deadlines.
• Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form.
• Strong writing and editing skills.
• Commitment to adhering to data entry standards set forth by departmental guidelines.

Knowledge: 

• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals.
• Ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent.
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations where only limited standardization exists.
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office, particularly Word and Excel, including mail merge, tracking changes, V-lookup, multi-layer sorting, and pivot tables as well as proficiency with PDF file usage.

Abilities: 

• Commitment to upholding professional and ethical standards in handling confidential donor information.

            

 Work Environment: 

• This staff member will work in an office setting, collaborating often with colleagues on-campus, in person.
• Must be able and willing on occasion work nights and weekends for special events as needed.

 

Physical Demands: 

• While performing the duties of this job, the staff member is regularly required to sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel objects, tools, or controls; reach with hands and arms; and talk or hear. 
• The employee frequently is required to stand, walk, and climb stairs. 
• Specific vision abilities required by this job include close vision, distance vision, peripheral vision, depth perception, and the ability to adjust focus.
• The individual must regularly lift and/or move up to 10 pound as the role involves organizing as well as maintaining physical materials/documentation related to planned giving operations. 

Additional Information:

The College of Wooster does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex/gender, gender identity, gender expression, medical condition, political affiliation, religion, creed, ethnicity, national origin (including ancestry), citizenship status, disability, age, marital status, family responsibilities, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, or any other characteristic protected by institutional policy, or by state, local, or federal law. All offers of employment are subject to verification of the legal right to work in the United States as required by federal law. The College of Wooster is committed by policy and practice to diversity, equity and inclusion. For more information see our nondiscrimination policy.