Nonprofit Remote Digest - Issue #735
Our mission is to understand and improve the lives of wild animals.
Wild Animal Initiative Although the natural world is a source of great beauty and happiness, vast numbers of animals routinely face serious challenges such as disease, hunger, or natural disasters. There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution to these threats. However, even as we recognize that improving the welfare of free-ranging wild animals is difficult, we believe that humans have a responsibility to help whenever we can.
Development Coordinator
Job title: Development Coordinator
Department: Development
Application period: December 20, 2021 to January 17, 2022
Earliest start date: February 28, 2022
Application materials:
A one-page resume concisely describing your educational, professional, and other relevant experiences (PDF).
Responses to the following questions, totaling one page or less (PDF). This is in lieu of a cover letter, and does not need to be formatted as a letter. You may draw on experiences in either your professional life or your personal life in your responses to any of the questions.
What interests you about ensuring that donors feel good about supporting our work?
What makes you a good fit to do administrative work?
What is the most complicated project you have managed?
Submit an application using this form.
About our mission
Wild Animal Initiative is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to understand and improve the lives of wild animals.
Even in nature, most wild animals struggle to survive every day. Unfortunately, preserving habitats or species does not guarantee that animals themselves have good lives. At Wild Animal Initiative, we believe we have a responsibility to act to improve the well-being of wild animals, whether they live in captivity or somewhere else.
Yet, responsible action requires sound science. There is still so much we don’t know about which animals are sentient, what their lives are like in the wild, and how we can responsibly help them. Our work supports the study of wild animal welfare by funding cutting-edge science, supporting the careers of researchers in the field, and contributing original research.
The success of our mission depends on the diversity of our team. We are looking to work with people that approach our mission as an inherently inclusive endeavor and celebrate the differences of others. We strongly encourage people of every color, religion, age, origin, class, citizenship, parental status, disability status, genetics, veteran status, sexual orientation, and gender to apply. Note that we are unfortunately not able to sponsor work visas at this time and require candidates to already be eligible to work in the jurisdictions where they live or will live by the start of their employment.
Please feel free to reach out to Executive Advisor Mark Onley at mark.onley@wildanimalinitiative.org if:
You have any questions about our hiring process or open positions;
You would like to help us find excellent candidates to join our team; or
You are interested in working with us in a capacity not listed below (in which case, a resume and some details about your professional interests would be helpful to receive).
Thank you for considering Wild Animal Initiative as the next part of your vocational journey, we hope to hear from you!
Terms of employment
Location:
Full-time remote
U.S. preferred. Must be able to work with colleagues in U.S. Pacific, Central, and Eastern time zones on most days of the week. Must be able to meet with colleagues on U.K. or Central European time a few times a week.
Note: We are not able to sponsor work visas and are only considering applicants who are eligible to work in the country they plan to work in.
Reports to: Executive Director
Travel:
Potential travel within the U.S. and internationally to attend in-person staff retreats (maximum of two per year and minimum of zero)
As desired for professional development (e.g. attending in-person conferences or training workshops)
Salary: $44,784 to $59,136
Benefits:
Comprehensive health and dental insurance.
Four weeks of paid vacation, 12 holidays, and two weeks of sick leave.
A fully remote work environment that allows you to choose when and where you work.
A friendly, open work culture that encourages feedback, collaboration, experimentation, and evidence-based innovation.
Opportunities for advancement as our team and programs continue their growth trajectory.
Note: This benefit structure is what we use for our U.S. staff and largely similar to what we offer to many non-U.S. staff, but may be different depending on the legal requirements of the country you work in.
Responsibilities
Position mission statement:
As Development Coordinator, you will help us secure critical funding to enable WAI to help as many wild animals as much as possible. You will ensure that donors feel good about supporting our work and directly serve the administrative needs required for a financially healthy organization.
Supervisory responsibilities:
None currently, but if you are interested and able, we are open to your responsibilities evolving to include managing other development staff as our organization grows.
Core Responsibilities:
Donor relations: You will thank all donors in a timely manner according to their giving history and preferences; ensure donor information and preferences are accurate and recent in our contact databases; help our most engaged supporters run peer-to-peer fundraising campaigns; and remind coworkers when they should reach out to major donors.
Donation recordkeeping: You will facilitate WAI’s transition to a new donor relationship management (DRM/CRM) system; manually enter and update transaction data; run reports on giving data; log major donor interactions in Airtable; update the development department’s dashboard for leadership; and ensure privacy and anonymity of donor information as needed.
Grants: You will review grant opportunities for fit; coordinate our grant application process; manage milestone deadlines and timely consult and inform relevant coworkers; draft grant proposal outlines; and support the relationships between WAI staff and grantmakers.
Development operations: You will identify and implement improvements to our current fundraising processes and collaborate with our research, operations, and communications staff where projects overlap.
Qualifications
This role will require you to have the following qualifications:
Excellent time management and organization skills.
Ability to independently stay on top of the small details of multiple projects.
Ability to accurately perform repetitive data entry work at a reasonable pace.
Ability to shepherd fundraising performed by others (including leadership) by being proactive about communicating deadlines, monitoring progress, and providing reminders whenever helpful.
Ability to write clear, clean, personable emails that make donors feel appreciated and that represent the organization well.
This role might also benefit from you having some of the following qualifications. Even if you don’t have some or all of these qualifications, you should still apply:
Experience applying for grants, running fundraising campaigns, stewarding major donor relationships, or experience with other aspects of nonprofit fundraising.
Ability to effectively research and evaluate improvements to fundraising operations, particularly relationship management platforms.
Motivated by a desire to improve the lives of wild animals.
Proficiency with Google Drive, Airtable, Asana, or a donor/contact relationship management platform. We currently use Funraise and are considering migrating to Salesforce, Airtable, or EveryAction.
Credentials and experience:
Note that we do not require any specific academic credentials or prior work experience for you to be considered for this position, as research shows that such requirements can diminish the quality of candidate pools by deterring individuals who would otherwise be a great fit for a role from applying.
Feel free to email mark.onley@wildanimalinitiative.org with any questions about the role or the application process.