Individual Giving & Engagement Manager

Title:
Individual Giving & Engagement Manager

Reports to:
Development Director

Job Type: Full time and Exempt

Salary Range: $90,000 to $96,000

Seattle Arts & Lectures (SAL) cultivates transformative experiences through story and language with readers and writers of all generations.

SAL fulfills its mission through educational, public, and community programming, in-person and online. Our public literary events bring the most talented and thought-provoking writers of our times to speak about and read their work. Our free Summer Book Bingo program (co-presented with The Seattle Public Library and the King County Library System) inspires our community to reconnect with the joy of reading through a series of fun challenges.

Our arts education programs include Writers in the Schools (WITS) and the Seattle Youth Poetry Fellowship (YPF) program. WITS places local, professional writers in public school classroom residencies to inspire K-12 students to tell their stories as they develop lifelong writing skills. YPF elevates the powerful voices of local youth poets committed to community engagement, education, and equity in our region.

All staff actively participate in SAL’s ongoing efforts to become an anti-racist organization and embody an organizational culture that supports and reinforces our inclusion, diversity, equity & access goals. Our 2026 Strategic Plan and SAL’s Equity Accountability Reports are available on the SAL website under “About.” This commitment and understanding should be demonstrated throughout the performance of the Individual Giving and Engagement Manager’s responsibilities and staff activities.

The Individual Giving & Engagement Manager leads Seattle Arts & Lectures’ individual giving program. The role carries a personal portfolio of approximately 100 donors and prospects with direct responsibility for qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship; directs SAL’s annual giving campaigns toward a $500,000 goal; and serves as SAL’s subject matter expert on portfolio and moves management, establishing the practices and rhythms that support donor relationships across the organization.

Working closely with the Development Director and Executive Director, this individual contributor position also maintains the data and operational processes that allow SAL to track progress and make informed fundraising decisions.

• Manage a robust portfolio of individual donors and prospects (~100 active portfolio members), with direct responsibility for qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.
• Build meaningful, long-term relationships with donors through personal meetings (3+ meetings per week), calls, correspondence, events, and other individualized engagement, and personally solicit philanthropic gifts.
• Develop and maintain clear, individualized strategies and next steps for donors within the portfolio, using disciplined moves-management practices to ensure consistent relationship development.
• Identify, qualify, and research prospective donors — assessing capacity, affinity, connections, and opportunities for deeper engagement — to build SAL’s individual giving pipeline.
• Partner with the Development Director, Executive Director, and other portfolio holders to develop donor strategies, identify appropriate next moves, prepare for meetings and solicitations, and support timely follow-through.
• Facilitate monthly portfolio strategy and major donor meetings focused on donor movement, opportunities, challenges, and next actions, and identify opportunities for SAL leadership, Board members, and other organizational ambassadors to meaningfully engage donors and prospects.

• Lead SAL's annual individual giving campaigns toward a $500,000 annual goal, in partnership with the Development Director and Executive Director. This includes year-end, fiscal year-end, re-subscribe, and GiveBIG campaigns.
• Develop campaign strategies that connect broad-based annual giving with donor acquisition, retention, and…