Director, Principal Gifts

Director, Principal Gifts

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health seeks an experienced leader to join our dynamic team dedicated to raising resources to improve child and maternal health. Our 98-member staff directs all fundraising for Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and for the maternal and child health programs at Stanford University School of Medicine. Fundraising totaled more than $190 million last fiscal year.  

The Principal Gifts team is growing in order to cultivate and steward a robust portfolio of approximately 500 donors and prospects who have the potential to give gifts of $10M or more. The Foundation is currently in the quiet phase of a campaign, which will allow for the continued growth of Stanford Children’s Health as a leader in pediatric and obstetric care and research. This is a time when innovation in child and maternal health is flourishing, and the Principal Gifts team will drive the most transformative gifts to the Hospital and School of Medicine.  

The Director of Principal Gifts is a new position reporting to the Vice President of Principal Gifts. This role will work directly with a portfolio of the Foundation’s most generous donors and prospects, lead principal gift asks, advise on principal gifts across the Foundation, and manage staff.

We are open to scoping this role as a Senior Director and encourage applicants who exceed the qualifications to apply.

Role 

Principal Gifts Fundraising:  

• Build direct relationships to motivate giving from a portfolio of 40+ prospects who have the capacity to give $10M+ or more. Part of the role will be building a portfolio from a list of high capacity individuals, including grateful patient families, with the potential to make transformative investments.
• Activate, coach and support faculty, physicians, administrators and senior staff in cultivating and soliciting prospects. Proactively collaborate with colleagues across the Foundation and at Stanford University to develop effective and coordinated strategies for each donor.  
• In partnership with faculty and senior leaders, develop compelling gift opportunities and complex proposals. Ensure each proposal is appropriately scoped, well-crafted, and meets the priorities of both the donor and the organization.  
• Initiate and oversee strategic events for cultivation, stewardship, and solicitations to advance principal gifts. 
• Ensure each gift is well-stewarded, drawing on other team members for appropriate, timely, and consistent recognition.  
• Engage principal gift donors, as appropriate, as volunteer leaders, so that they connect the Foundation to other prospects, provide guidance and ideas, and support the team’s solicitations. 

Team Management:

• Manage full-time staff, current direct reports include an externally facing principal gifts fundraiser and an internally facing associate director of program, to progress toward goals, coaching and developing them to maximize their impact and build their skills.  

Program Leadership:

• Advise and partner with team members who staff principal gift donors, including senior staff and major gift officers, on donor strategy, engagement and stewardship.
• Strategically oversee and guide team level engagement events.
• Partner with Vice President to lead principal gift strategy meetings:

1. Senior Director role will partner with the Vice President to ensure team-wide results and take on team level leadership in one or more areas, such as:
2. Partner with Vice President to review principal gift proposals to ensure all asks of $5M+ are appropriately scoped and include appropriate recognition.
3. Partner with Vice President to lead weekly team meetings and donor strategy huddles.
4. Partner with Vice President and the Prospect Research team to lead prospect assignment process and ensure a steady flow of grateful patient prospects into gift officer portfolios.
5. Partner with Vice President to design and lead Top Donor Stewardship program.

Skills, Experience, and Job-Related Requirements

Required:

• A deep commitment to advancing the mission of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the Stanford School of Medicine through philanthropic investment. 
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• 7-10 years of experience as a frontline major and principal gift fundraiser with progressively responsible fundraising and leadership experience. Proven success over time in raising numerous seven and eight figure gifts.
• Demonstrated ability to guide, lead, and coach faculty and senior leaders to be effective fundraising partners  
• Demonstrated ability to craft complex proposals in a complex environment with multiple stakeholders.  
• Superior relationship building skills, including ability to create and sustain mutually beneficial relationships with people who have a wide range of personality types and diverse cultural backgrounds. 
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to inspire and motivate through both logic and emotion. Can recognize, curate, and communicate complex and nuanced information. 
• Routinely demonstrates excellence as a leader, collaborator, and team builder. Can work across multiple high-level internal and external stakeholders to be able to drive execution. 
• Self-motivated, dedicated to goal achievement, impeccable follow through.  
• Proven ability to be resilient and adaptable in the face of changing priorities. 
• Ability to work occasional evenings or weekends and travel as necessary for donor meetings.
• Demonstrated success driving strategy and implementation for top level engagement events, stewardship, and/or pipeline development. (Required for Senior Director role)
• Deep experience and sophistication working on gifts that created new programs and/or required collaboration with institutional partners to deliver results on donor gifts. (Required for Senior Director role)
• Proven experience developing and coaching fundraisers and gift officers to progress toward goals. (Required for Senior Director role)

Preferred:

• Demonstrated experience successfully managing and growing frontline fundraisers.  
• Medical fundraising background highly preferred or successful fundraising experience in a complex organization for a complex or technical cause.  
• Demonstrated pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion; direct experience and content knowledge of DEI practices highly valued. 

SALARY AND BENEFITS

We provide competitive compensation and a wide range of benefits designed to meet the needs of our employees and their families. We are strong supporters of work life balance. Learn more by visiting the careers page on our website.

Apply online by submitting a cover letter and resume.

We know that building a diverse and inclusive workforce is key to our success and enables us to do extraordinary work for kids and their families. When you become part of our team, you’ll be joining a group of passionate and dedicated individuals who truly care about and believe in the work they do.

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health is an equal opportunity employer. Women, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are encouraged to apply.