Client Development Advisor - Philanthropy

• Atlanta
• Austin
• Boston
• Charlotte
• Chicago
• Cleveland
• Columbus
• Dallas
• Detroit
• Houston
• Miami
• Minneapolis

You will serve as a dynamic force multiplier for our critical work in this space - driving growth, innovation, and measurable societal impact across McKinsey's Philanthropy subsector within the Social, Healthcare & Public Entity (SHaPE) Practice.

You will be part of our Global Philanthropy Practice leadership team, supporting our Partners in shaping opportunities for at-scale impact with private foundations, high net worth individuals/families, NGOs, and nonprofits.

Your work serves as the essential connective tissue between Client Service Teams (CSTs), Practice leadership and firm experts across the entire client development lifecycle. A core focus of this role will be proactively initiating, shaping, and driving strategic outreach to secure high-impact new client introductions. You will help cultivate deep relationships with foundations and social sector pioneers, identify and mature new opportunities, and execute thoughtful growth strategies across the philanthropic ecosystem.

Critically, you will not advise from the sidelines—you will roll up your sleeves, hold the pen, and drive execution. You will lead end-to-end client activation activities, build rigorous pipeline hygiene, orchestrate executive-level client convenings, and shape forward-looking strategies that enable our CSTs to work with foundation clients on emerging issues and challenges, ranging from artificial intelligence to the rapidly evolving risk environment.

Success is measured not by generating passive market intelligence, but by opening doors, forging trusted relationships, elevating strategic problem solving, and turning visionary aspirations into lasting societal impact.

You will work closely with Philanthropy Practice leadership (both in North America and in other regions) to expand the firm's impact across the sector. You will play a key role in supporting practice and client service leaders in building their relationships with high-potential prospective clients; developing and sustaining a robust pipeline of concrete client service opportunities; and successfully pursuing those opportunities by delivering best-in-class development & proposal experiences for priority clients.

To do this effectively, you will need to actively gather market intelligence about actors in the sector, monitor our proposal pipeline, detect emerging challenges / questions / trends that senior philanthropy leaders are grappling with, and explore innovative go-to-market approaches that may help us amplify our impact, as well as additional service offerings we should be developing to bring to our clients.

You will deeply integrate with client service teams and practice leaders to orchestrate client development strategy development and implementation. You will drive client activation strategies end-to-end, running point across all elements of the process (i.e., creating and aligning on a workplan, setting up a meeting cadence and developing agendas, capturing next steps and driving follow through, etc.) - as well as guiding colleagues on research & analysis needs, creating and sharing gold standard Practice resources, developing materials, event planning, etc.

to advance the CST or Practice priorities for client development.

You will help Practice leaders support foundations in navigating the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence across their strategies, programs, and operations. You will co-create the offerings to educate social sector executives on AI governance and strategic deployment. Internally, you will accelerate AI-driven client activation capabilities by adopting generative AI proposal agents, qualification tools, and dynamic market intelligence.

You will lead the strategy, content, and on-the-ground operational logistics for flagship convenings and conferences both established and yet to be launched (i.e., our Philanthropy CEO Roundtable). You will cultivate external partnerships with hyper scalers, philanthropic networks, and industry conveners to co-develop innovative offerings and expand our collective societal reach. This will include strategically engaging with external forums that gather major philanthropies/funders to determine where we can develop partnerships that would help catalyze action across the sector.

Driving lasting impact and building long-term capabilities with our clients is not easy work. You are the kind of person who…