As Development Lead, you will strengthen fundraising strategy by identifying, evaluating, and developing high-potential funding opportunities across individual, foundation, corporate, and public-sector channels. You will lead prospect research and pipeline development, helping teams focus their time and resources on the relationships most likely to generate meaningful financial support. Working closely with fundraising professionals, program teams, and senior leadership, you will transform complex prospect intelligence into actionable recommendations that advance organizational priorities. You will improve prospect management systems, data quality, reporting, and workflows to increase visibility into opportunities and strengthen fundraising performance. By leveraging research tools, automation, and AI responsibly, you will help modernize prospect development while maintaining high standards of ethics, privacy, and human judgment. This remote opportunity is ideal for an experienced prospect research professional who combines analytical expertise, fundraising knowledge, and cross-functional leadership. You will contribute to a mission-driven organization focused on accelerating the transition to a clean energy future through strategic partnerships and impactful funding.
Lead and continuously improve prospect research and development activities across multiple fundraising channels, including individual donors, high-net-worth individuals, foundations, corporate philanthropy, corporate service partnerships, and public-sector funding.
Build and maintain centralized prospect lists and pipelines by integrating intelligence from business development initiatives, program teams, fundraising colleagues, events, executive engagements, and evolving funding opportunities.
Identify, assess, and recommend domestic and international funding prospects based on giving capacity, inclination, organizational affinity, relationship access, readiness, timing, and strategic alignment.
Prioritize opportunities that support unrestricted giving, flexible funding, general operating expenses, and high-priority programs, with particular emphasis on individual and major-donor prospects.
Apply recognized prospect development standards and ethical research practices to capacity analysis, relationship mapping, due diligence, reputational assessment, and privacy-conscious information management.
Lead cross-functional new business development initiatives by coordinating research delivery, facilitating meetings, maintaining accountability, tracking follow-up actions, and preparing concise prospect briefings with clear recommendations.
Manage prospect pipelines across individual programs and the broader organization, monitoring opportunity status, prospect movement, relationship ownership, next steps, and follow-up commitments.
Conduct pipeline analysis and financial reviews to identify funding gaps, high-potential prospects, outreach opportunities, and actions needed to advance fundraising objectives.
Partner with relationship managers and program colleagues to prioritize prospects, identify engagement gaps, improve follow-up, and escalate persistent barriers to fundraising leadership.
Translate prospect intelligence and pipeline data into actionable recommendations that guide relationship-building efforts and help senior leaders allocate their time and attention effectively.
Maintain accurate and reliable prospect information in Salesforce, including relationship records, ratings, attributes, opportunities, tasks, engagement activity, prospect status, and next steps.
Collaborate with Development Operations and data and technology teams to improve prospect data models, reporting environments, data standards, tagging, dashboards, and quality-control processes.
Develop standardized practices for assessing prospect capacity, inclination, affinity, and readiness, ensuring consistent qualification and prioritization across fundraising teams.
Evaluate research databases, prospect intelligence platforms, data enrichment services, AI-enabled tools, automation solutions, and external vendors to improve research effectiveness and operational efficiency.
Use AI and automation responsibly to streamline repetitive work, accelerate prospect discovery, improve reporting, and support prioritization while preserving human judgment, data privacy, documentation standards, and ethical oversight.
Identify and implement process improvements across research requests, prospect qualification, outreach handoffs, data management, reporting, and organizational knowledge-sharing.
Promote consistent adoption of prospect research standards by sharing knowledge, developing practical workflows, and training Development, Strategic Engagement, and Program colleagues.
Provide guidance to staff, contractors, interns, and external vendors involved in research, data management, and related operational activities as needed.