Associate Director, Principal Gifts Communications

Associate Director, Principal Gifts Communications

ABOUT THE FOUNDATION

The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, in partnership with Stanford Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, unlocks philanthropy to transform health for children and families in Northern California - and around the world. Through fundraising and grantmaking, the Foundation drives scientific research, innovation, and policy change that will improve care, advance cures, and reform healthcare systems for this and future generations.

MAIN FOCUS: Reporting to the Director, Strategic Communications, Principal Gifts on the Donor Relations team, you will serve as a strategic thought partner and bring your persuasive writing skills and expertise in communications strategy to engage, build and deepen relationships with the Foundation’s principally rated donors.

LOCATION: Hybrid Position – the candidate will work an average of eight (8) days per month in our Palo Alto, CA office; the successful candidate will be based in the Bay Area.

WHAT YOU'LL DO...

As the Associate Director, Principal Gifts Communications, you will partner closely with Principal Gift Officers and faculty to translate their research ideas into compelling philanthropic communications including proposals, case statements, vision documents, impact reports, talking points for faculty and leaders, stewardship letters, and other communications.

The compensation range for this role is $120,000-$130,000 annually.

• Working closely with gift officers in shaping the communication strategy for principal gift donors.
• Consistently developing and producing inspiring, custom communication pieces to build relationships with principal gift donors. This includes collaborating closely with principal gift officers and regularly interacting with faculty and translating vision, research, and priorities into a compelling story, writing proposals, white papers, stewardship impact reports, and other materials.
• Effectively crafting talking points, briefings, and messaging for faculty, foundation and hospital leaders for donor meetings, programs, events, and other activities. Managing the production of various communication projects at the same time.
• Coordinating reviews by internal and external partners and incorporating feedback.
• Independently tracking and managing project timelines while adhering to deadlines.
• As and when needed, researching a particular area diligently within and across Stanford and beyond for critical data on a particular field.
• Serving as a trusted source of information about maternal and child health care programs, and pediatric research at Stanford.
• Collaborating across internal and external teams of communicators to share resources and ensure consistency of messaging.
• While this position is primarily focused on communications and writing, an ability to work with designers and help guide the development of compelling visuals is strongly preferred.
• Ensuring all communications are consistent with the Lucile Packard Foundation and Stanford Medicine Children’s Health brand and platform.
• Leading projects with freelance writers, consultants, designers, and other outside vendors.
• Recommending new approaches, procedures, and processes to effect continual improvements in efficiencies across the Foundation.
• Performing other related duties as assigned.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 7 years’ related experience demonstrating progressively increasing responsibilities.
• Interest in and basic knowledge of science and medicine.
• Experience creating donor-facing writing in similarly complex contexts (e.g., creating donor-facing materials in service of medical research or higher education fundraising, managing a complex donor communications strategy for a national organization, etc.).
• Experience translating scientific/medical (or otherwise highly complicated/technical) concepts into lay language and synthesizing material from multiple sources to produce materials for diverse audiences, including smart lay audiences.
• Experience managing multiple tasks simultaneously, coordinating the roles of various project contributors,…