Director of Development

Feel like saving the world today? Or at least giving it your all alongside a group of passionate, funny, kale-obsessed co-workers? Grist, the nation’s leading environmental news platform, seeks a Director of Development to oversee and expand the fundraising operations of our nonprofit organization. Grist is growing by leaps and bounds, with a monthly audience of more than 2 million and exciting new projects underway — now all we need is you.

As a member of Grist’s senior management team, the Director of Development will work closely with our President, Founder, and other staff to shape and implement organizational strategies and to achieve contributed income goals. Reporting to the President, you will manage a team of 3-4 people responsible for raising funds from major donors, members, and institutional sources; the team will likely grow in upcoming years. This is a Seattle-based position with significant travel required. We are seeking an exceptional someone who thrives in an entrepreneurial environment, but who also know the ins and outs of moves management. (We also like boundless enthusiasm, if you can swing that.)

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Design and manage Grist’s comprehensive fundraising strategy, plan, and budget, encompassing major gifts, legacy gifts, membership gifts, foundation grants, and corporate support.
  • Expand our fundraising operations, creating new programs to solicit funding, especially from high-level major donors.
  • Oversee collaborative initiatives across departments to identify prospects, develop proposals, and secure funding.
  • Create strategies and initiatives to cultivate donors; solicit funding from high-level major donors, foundations, corporations, and other identified targets; and steward current relationships.
  • In concert with Grist’s Founder, manage a diverse portfolio of top prospects and donors.
  • Lead and mentor members of growing fundraising team.
  • Serve as a member of Grist’s senior management team, contributing to the development and implementation of the organization’s operating and strategic plans.
  • Serve as fundraising liaison to Grist’s board — which consists of influential philanthropists, journalists, technologists, and other changemakers — including staffing the board fundraising committee and assisting with special board projects.
  • Ensure the timely, accurate creation and production of fundraising materials, including grant proposals, donor appeals, annual report, correspondence, and collateral.
  • Oversee the planning and execution of key activities such as donor events, targeted online appeals, and membership drives.
  • Supervise the timely and accurate processing of gifts and acknowledgements and reporting on fundraising results.
  • Oversee use of Salesforce database system, including improvements to it over time.
  • Perform other tasks, as appropriate, to achieve Grist’s fundraising goals.
  • Travel and flexible work schedule required.

Our Ideal Candidate

  • Bachelor’s degree required; CFRE certification preferred.
  • 7+ years of senior-level fundraising experience, with proven success in the areas of individual and institutional giving; background of developing earned-income revenue streams and shepherding corporate sponsorships a plus.
  • Demonstrated ability to build, expand, and manage a development program responsible for at least $3.5 million annually.
  • Entrepreneurial spirit, with experience creating diverse new funding opportunities and identifying fundable projects.
  • Truly outstanding written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills, with track record of engaging and influencing a wide range of donors.
  • Strong management experience (both up and down within an organization).
  • Experience managing and motivating high-impact board members for fundraising initiatives.
  • Attention to detail and strong time-management and organizational skills.
  • Experience with fundraising databases (Salesforce preferred) and strong comfort with Google Docs and MS Office, including presentation software (Google Slides and PowerPoint).
  • Strong financial skills, including the ability to develop and review budgets and to develop management reports that present a clear financial picture of fundraising activities.
  • Ability to work cooperatively and effectively with colleagues.
  • Experience with marketing and communications preferred.
  • A sense of humor never hurt!

To apply, please send a cover letter and resume, to iknowfundraising@grist.org with “Director of Development” in the subject line. We are looking for a thoughtful, personalized cover letter that displays your qualifications, enthusiasm, and communication style. No phone calls, please. Grist is an equal-opportunity employer.

About Grist

Grist is an independent nonprofit media organization that shapes the country’s environmental conversations, making green second nature for our monthly audience of 2,000,000 and growing. We reach the next generation by cutting through the noise to connect big issues like climate change to daily life, and by spotlighting the people and ideas leading us to a more sustainable future. (Also by posting videos of baby animals.) Founded in 1999, Grist has been featured by media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC’s Today show, and Time, and has won many prestigious awards for our pioneering media work.

Community Engagement Manager

Grist publishes smart, funny green news that is mobilizing millions of people on behalf of this here planet. You want in? The Community Engagement Manager is responsible for helping Grist — a nonprofit — create and execute strategies designed to deepen our relationship with our readers, retain our current donors, and turn new readers into donors. Who you are:

  • A self-starter and digital native with a deep knowledge of and passion for emerging technologies, social media, and fundraising strategies to support journalism with a cause.
  • An excellent writer and communicator. You will be the face and voice to Grist’s community of readers, focused on deepening our relationships with our users, with the goal of moving them up the ladder of engagement — from reader to participant to donor and beyond.
  • You have a passion for journalism with a cause. In addition to driving our users to adopt and spread green values, you will increase overall user lifetime value and strengthen Grist’s economic wherewithal by reducing churn and spurring our audience to be more responsive to fundraising appeals.
  • You’re an excellent project manager and big thinker who enjoy working cross-departmentally. You’ll be collaborating with key internal teams, including fundraising, editorial, and product, and report to the Marketing & Audience Development Manager.

 Responsibilities:

  • Create, execute, and track fundraising campaigns designed to meet revenue goals and increase audience reach, engagement, and user lifetime value.
  • Help develop and manage Grist’s audience development plan.
  • Serve as the face and voice of Grist to our community and to low-dollar donors.
  • Write, schedule, and track performance of communications to community members and donors, including fundraising drives.
  • Analyze and report generally on data and performance trends, identifying KPIs and other engagement success metrics; e.g., the points at which users become repeat visitors, donors, etc.
  • Collaborate with fundraising team to identify major donor prospects, advise on audience segmentation, and optimize fundraising-related messaging.
  • Maintain engagement content calendar, working closely with key departments to produce content relevant to predictable annual/quarterly/monthly events.
  • Organize reader meet-ups and other creative community-building efforts.
  • Participate in wider-ranging collaborative projects as needed.

 Requirements:

  • 3+ years of marketing, fundraising, or related experience
  • Bachelor’s Degree
  • A passion for journalism with a cause, and for building loyal, action-oriented communities around journalism.
  • Exceptional writing skills; you are a creative soul who can master our voice.
  • Experience managing fundraising and/or community engagement campaigns.
  • Experience using Salesforce, audience segmentation, analytics, A/B testing, email marketing, social media outreach, and other tools to deepen engagement and drive revenue and user growth. A willingness to learn new skills in these areas.
  • Budgeting, market research, and constituent relationship management skills and techniques.
  • Strong project management and organizational skills.
  • Experience producing events preferred.
  • Experience managing paid social media campaigns a plus.

Salary will depend on experience. Grist offers excellent benefits, a delightful workplace, and the opportunity to play a crucial role in an organization with a mission.

To apply, please send a cover letter and resume to communitymanager@grist.org with “Community Engagement Manager” in the subject line. We are looking for a thoughtful, personalized cover letter that demonstrates your qualifications, enthusiasm, and communication style. No phone calls, please. Grist is an equal-opportunity employer.

About Grist

Grist is an independent nonprofit media organization that shapes the country’s environmental conversations, making green second nature for our monthly audience of 2,000,000 and growing. We reach the next generation by cutting through the noise to connect big issues like climate change to daily life, and by spotlighting the people and ideas leading us to a more sustainable future. (Also by posting videos of baby animals.) Founded in 1999, Grist has been featured by media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC’s Today show, and Time, and has won many prestigious awards for our pioneering media work.

WordPress Web Developer

Grist is looking for a front-end web developer with strong experience with WordPress plugin and theme development. If you have experience working in the media, aim for excellence, see failure as a learning opportunity, and believe it’s possible to crack a joke and change the world at the same time, this could be the job for you.

Grist is a fast-growing organization that combines the energy, creativity, and initiative of a young internet company with the spirit of a nonprofit. Yeah, we said nonprofit; that means no free smoothies and foosball every time you turn around, but it also means walking into work with the feeling that what you do actually matters. That’s a good feeling, trust us. (And we’re not above the occasional Fruit Ninja tournament.)

Here’s a short list of some of the opportunities this job offers:

  • The challenge to develop for a rapidly growing mobile audience.
  • The chance to be creative and participate in product design.
  • Work with journalists on stories to provide interactive content build with new Web technologies.
  • The opportunity to work in WordPress in an enterprise environment.

You’ll work in close collaboration with designers and developers on a new Macbook Air in a daily scrum to develop our custom WordPress theme ( based on Zurb-Foundation 5) with a focus on creating a great reading experience. You’re passionate about UX and are conversant about modern Web design. You’re experienced with responsive design techniques and have a deep appreciation of the challenges in designing for mobile audiences. You’re interested in taking our site to the next level by employing backbone.js and developing new features for both our readers and authors. You’ll help us tailor our site for a majority mobile audience and will help us optimize for the reading experience though A/B testing and code performance.

This is a unique opportunity to be part of a fast-growing organization that combines the energy, creativity, and initiative of a young internet company with the spirit of a nonprofit. This is a full-time salaried position with good benefits. Our team is located in downtown Seattle, and we prefer local candidates who can work with us in person.

Apply here

User-Analytics Engineer

Grist is looking for a web developer with strong passion for improving site performance and business processes through user analytics and split-testing. If you have media experience, aim for excellence, see failure as a learning opportunity, and believe it’s possible to crack a joke and change the world at the same time, this could be the job for you.

Grist is a fast-growing organization that combines the energy, creativity, and initiative of a young internet company with the spirit of a nonprofit. Yeah, we said nonprofit; that means no free smoothies and foosball every time you turn around, but it also means walking into work with the feeling that what you do actually matters. That’s a good feeling, trust us. (And we’re not above the occasional Fruit Ninja tournament.)

You’ll work closely with designers and web developers in a daily scrum to optimize our site and other products.You’re passionate about UI that deliver results. You know how to devise meaningful A/B tests and know how to measure user behavior. Most importantly you know how to make sense out of the mass of data you’ll collect. You have an instinct for how to distinguish actionable metrics from the mere vanity measures.

Sometimes you’ll break up your continual analysis of traffic and business optimization work to be creative and build something new based on your research or as a way to test a hunch. It could be a new way to increase email signups or a friction-free way to accept donations. You’re a Web developer with a passion for meeting business goals, or an business analyst with great coding chops. You know your away around the Google Analytics api – and many other tracking software apis too.

You’ll also give guidance to other teams such as fundraising and editorial to help them collect and make sense of data, and to help them improve their products and efforts. For example you’ll help plan and implement A/B testing of email newsletters for the editorial and fundraising teams with the aim of increasing traffic to the site and increasing reader donations respectively. You’ll work with the management team to define, track, and help champion the core metrics of the organization.

Essentially, you are familiar with setting up goal funnels in Google Analytics and managing cohorts in Kissmetrics. You know how to optimize these tools and can train others in their use. You’ve got good basic understanding of statistics and can communicate the concepts to non-experts to help them understand the data they work with.

You’ll get to work with a smart, small group of fun people who are interested in creating a site optimized for our readers. This is a great opportunity to help us take our mission to the next level. We’ve grown our audience to 2+ million a month, and with your help we know we can grow larger.

Skills & Requirements

  • Experience with Google Analytics API and Kissmetrics API.Experiences with other tracking software and services.
  • Keen statistical analysis skills, and good skill at communicating with non-experts.
  • Experience building sites with HTML, CSS, JavaScript.
  • Experience with Query or backbone.js preferred.
  • Competence with WordPress theme and plugin development preferred.
  • High interest in A/B testing, increasing conversions, Web analytics.
  • Experience in audience growth through site optimization.
  • Experience working with both editorial and marketing teams at publishing, media or content sites.
  • Experience in WordPress, Zurb Foundation a plus.

Apply here

Web developer application