Director, Individual Giving + Partnerships

DIRECTOR, INDIVIDUAL GIVING + PARTNERSHIPS Denniston Hill ORGANIZATION OVERVIEW

Denniston Hill was established in 2004, when artists Julie Mehretu, Lawrence Chua, and Paul Pfeiffer transformed a 150‑year‑old farmhouse and its surrounding 200+ acres of rolling farmland, wetlands, and protected forests (ancestrally known as the Lenapehoking) into an interdisciplinary arts organization guided by the principle that creative and critical voices are essential in shaping a more just and equitable society. In 2008, they formalized as a 501(c)(3) whose core objectives are to offer a place where queer and BIPOC creators see themselves mirrored back in the heart of an organization, and to ensure that the voices of the most vulnerable, risk‑taking artists continue to be heard.

Today, nearly 20 years in continuous operation, Denniston Hill’s residency program has welcomed artists from around the world to live, work, build new ideas, and better understand our shared human conditions together. Our campus is a place of collective refuge for so many people who experience ongoing precarity in their lives, art‑making, and activism.

We embrace a set of interdependent values that shape our organization and our programs. Read more about them on our website, linked here.

As Denniston Hill continues its transition from an artist‑led “startup” to an artist‑founded organization, our visions for the future of the organization are rooted in expanding our role as a catalyst for social change through artistic practice. We plan to grow beyond our current identity as a residency program to become a multifaceted platform for civic engagement, ecological stewardship, and artistic innovation.

Current and future programs include curated residencies that support important pillars of justice work (human rights, food, and the climate crisis), a print publication shaped as a refuge for writers and public intellectuals, and campus renovations led by artists and architects to ensure that disabled artists can participate in our residencies—setting a new standard for accessibility worldwide. Denniston Hill is on view now in the 61st International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, bringing our work to a global audience and highlighting the impact of artist‑founded organizations across the field.

Over the past five years, Denniston Hill has built the infrastructure needed for this roadmap. We have hired our first full‑time Executive Director, established a headquarters in Manhattan, engaged consultants for finance and human resources, stabilized the residency program with a full‑time Residency Manager and a revamped campus operations team, a fixed residency season calendar, IT backend and program management software, campus building upgrades, and more.

We’ve expanded our fundraising capacity with fresh initiatives, including an annual gala, cultivation events, individual giving circles, and a for‑profit partnership with Antica Terra winery. Internally, our organization's growth focuses on an expanded Board of Trustees and governance structure; establishing 3 new full‑time salaried staff positions (for a total of
5), launching a strategic plan (2027) and an endowment campaign (2028). Denniston Hill aims to serve as a model for how artist‑led organizations can evolve and scale while maintaining their core values and mission.

Denniston Hill seeks a Director, Individual Giving + Partnerships to lead a growing development strategy for the organization and steward the main pillars of our fundraising portfolio—individual giving, donor cultivation, corporate and commercial partnerships, giving circles, and special events.

The Director is an active, front‑line fundraiser who directly contributes to individual fundraising, donor stewardship, and major gift solicitation. Denniston Hill maintains a broad donor base that already generously supports our work, so the Director will deepen existing relationships, identify new opportunities for creative collaboration, and use this base to expand into new cultural scenes and income streams.

The Director will annually raise between $1.5 million and $1.7 million from public and private…