Development Director

Summary of role:

Attracting the finest and most distinguished historians, academics, leading thinkers, and writers from the UK and abroad, the Chalke History Festival is now firmly established as one of the must-attend events of the festival summer.

An exciting opportunity is available to lead all fund-raising activities for Chalke History Festival and the Chalke History Trust covering both commercial sponsorship of the festival and fund-raising from major donors, charitable organisations and patrons. Responsibility for delivering over £750k pa of sponsorship and donation income annually.

Details of role:

Fund-raising:

• Working with the Managing Director, to develop a new 5-year fund-raising strategy to build on the current platform of existing sponsors and donors to underpin and expand the current levels of non-ticket and non-concession income
• Identify new targets for fund-raising and build a network of potential funders
• Develop a new CRM system to manage all contacts throughout the fundraising pipeline
• Utilise the Founder & Creative Director as well as the Managing Director and all of the trustees, ambassadors and other connected parties to the organisation to maximise fund-raising efforts
• Manage the Sponsorship manager, the Patron manager and the team administrator to makes sure sponsor, donor and patron programmes are managed effectively

Commercial sponsorship:

• Manage the relationship with the new lead sponsor ensuring contractual obligations of CHF are delivered and achieve high satisfaction from the new lead sponsor from its sponsorship of the festival
• Develop the nascent 'Official Category Sponsor' tier of sponsors by identifying, pitching and negotiating official category sponsor deals with major national and international brands
• Migrate current local sponsors to official category sponsors or maximise revenue from junior sponsor category and talk sponsors

Donors:

• Develop relationships with existing donors to encourage continued giving and upscaling donations where possible
• Develop and implement a plan to target new HNWI donors and convert existing HNWI prospects into major multi-year donors
• Develop and implement a plan to target foundations and other charitable organisations that are non-personal & non-commercial fund-raising
• Develop and implement a plan to target existing and new individual donors for legacy giving
• Develop and maintain a donor database, ensuring accurate and timely recording of gifts and effective communication with donors
• Write summary reports to outline the effective use of donations, in line with the donor requirements

Patrons:

• Manage the current patron programme including setting annual prices and benefits
• Expanding in a controlled manner the number of patrons

Key attributes:

• Proven fundraising and project management ability
• Strong understanding of the funding process, grants and loan application
• Experience of selling commercial brand sponsorship
• Ability to sell the festival ethos, the charitable purpose and brand opportunity to prospects
• Maturity and presence to handle C-suite relationships as well as HWNIs
• Proactive collaborating and networking skills to work across diverse stakeholder groups
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite and CRM platforms
• Tactfulness and empathetic skills to professionally handle ambiguous and complex situations
• Excellent grant writing and verbal presentation skills
• Ability to track donor trends to increase the chance of securing project funding