Development Manager, Major Gifts and Prospects

Development Manager, Major Gifts and Prospects

Posted

October 2026

Location

Remote. Candidates located in the Northeast or on the West Coast are preferred

Status

Full-time, Regular, Exempt

Reports to

Director of Individual Giving

Organization

Founded in 1968, the Guttmacher Institute is a global leader in advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. Through a unique and interrelated program of high-quality research, evidence-based advocacy and strategic communications, the Institute works to generate new ideas, encourage enlightened public debate, and promote sound policy and program development; its overarching goal is to ensure the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health and rights for all people worldwide.

The Institute is engaged in building a more inclusive, transparent and equitable organization.

Position summary

Reporting to the Director of Individual Giving, the Development Manager, Major Gifts and Prospects is a frontline fundraiser responsible for qualifying, cultivating and closing gifts from individual donors with major gift capacity, including a core group of physicians and academics giving at the mid-and major gift levels. In addition, the manager qualifies the Institute’s highest-touch planned giving prospects, managing a dedicated planned giving portfolio and working to secure bequest pledges and blended gifts alongside outright major gifts.

This role also writes donor materials and supports events for high-touch donors across the development team’s major and principal gift portfolios.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a thought partner to the Director of Individual Giving on cultivation and pipeline movement strategies for donors with capacity, helping shape how prospects are advanced from qualification through solicitation
• Work with colleagues on the discovery process for major donors—identifying prospects for portfolio and facilitating donor pipeline management
• Travel up to 30% of the time primarily within the US for donor visits, events, and in-person collaboration with Guttmacher colleagues
• Create outreach and engagement plans specific to interests of prospects and donors. Conduct discovery and qualification outreach (calls, emails, and meetings) to prospective donors with major gift capacity, moving qualified prospects into an active portfolio of approximately 100 donors
• Work across Guttmacher’s individual and institutional giving functions to support engagement with family foundations connected to individual donors
• Qualify the Institute’s highest planned giving prospects, building and managing a planned giving portfolio of up to approximately 50 donors, and solicit planned giving and blended gifts, with an expectation of securing bequest pledges
• Cultivate, solicit, and steward a core donor group of medical doctors and academics giving at the mid- and major gift levels, with an expectation of closing gifts of five figures and above and moving donors further up the giving pipeline over time.
• Write elevated, donor-facing materials—including campaign emails, mailings, solicitation proposals, and stewardship reports—tailored to the division’s major and principal gift prospects and donors.
• Help plan and implement donor events in support of cultivating and stewarding major and principal gifts and planned giving donors and prospects.
• Maintain timely record keeping of donor interactions and plans within donor database.
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned by the supervisor.

Qualifications and skills

• 7 years of experience in fundraising, with a demonstrated track record of closing major gifts of five figures and above and securing bequest pledges or other planned gift commitments, or demonstrated transferable experience
• Comfort with a frontline, donor-facing role, including…