Donor Relations Officer

Location: London

Remote/Onsite Requirement: 20% minimum onsite – Tuesday must be onsite

Duration of Contract: 6 Months

Days/Hours: 36.5 hours per week

Pay Rate: £18.88 - £21.68 per hour - PAYE

Desired Start Date: ASAP

Main duties and responsibilities:

• Be an integral part of a team delivering high-quality stewardship for major gift donors that connect them to the impact of their gift, including acknowledgements, reporting, events, tours, visits and meetings.
• Produce meaningful, donor-centric gift acknowledgments.
• Work with fundraising and academic colleagues to research, write and design impactful reports for donors both for bespoke gifts and pooled funds.
• Support on tours and visits for prospects and donors in line with their interests.
• Manage the team inbox and deal with general queries related to Donor Relations activity from across UCL Advancement, professional services and academic departments.
• Effectively track Donor Relations activity in the CRM to build understanding of the impact of team activity.
• Manage the supporter gift giving processes, including procurement, keeping track of gift inventories and creating bespoke gifts.
• Work closely with the Donor Relations Managers on the scholarship stewardship programme including the thank you letter process, liaising with scholarship recipients, dealing with related queries, organising meetings between scholarship recipients and their donors and identifying areas where processes can be improved.
• Work closely with the Donor Relations Managers on donor experience strategies for priority projects.
• Work closely with the Events team on relevant donor facing stewardship events including invitation processes, managing logistics and data recording.
• Work across the fundraising teams to ensure relevant institutional events and opportunities are capitalised on for donor cultivation and stewardship.
• Remain up to date with industry best-practice, work with the Donor Relations team to implement the latest donor retention and relations strategies as appropriate, and build effective networks with colleagues at other institutions.

Criteria:

Experience and knowledge:

• Experience of working in a busy customer care environment. Handling customer enquiries both in writing and in person.
• Experience of writing high quality, written impact reports/materials.
• Experience of using Microsoft Office software, including MS Outlook, Word and Excel.
• Experience of working in fundraising in the charity sector, higher education sector or equivalent.
• An understanding of the importance of stewardship and its role in successful relationship management.
• Experience of tracking information within a database.

Skills and abilities:

• Exceptional written and in person communication skills, including ability to write engagingly and persuasively to a range of audiences.
• The ability to build and foster strong working relationships across diverse groups of stakeholders including high net worth/influential individuals.
• Motivated with excellent organisational skills.
• Ability to prioritise own work effectively, including balancing short, medium and long term tasks.
• Excellent interpersonal skills: diplomacy, discretion, tact, persuasiveness, and the ability to handle confidential information in a sensitive way.

Ways of working:

• Responding to stakeholder needs with the intention to provide an excellent service.
• Able to recognise and support important innovation and change in the workplace.
• Demonstrating interest in personal development.