Staff Assistant

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The Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) educates design, research, and scholarship leaders to make a resilient, just, and beautiful world. The GSD offers degree programs across a range of design disciplines—architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, urban design, design engineering, and real estate—as well as advanced research programs that cut across these disciplines and a robust public program of lectures, exhibitions, and publications.

The immense variety of people, programs, and ideas at the School sustains a vibrant and rich environment for learning, inquiry, and collaboration, unlike any other design school. For more information about Harvard GSD see: https://(Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

The GSD is Harvard's epicenter for scholarship and innovation related to the built environment. Our faculty and students address defining questions across architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and design, real estate, and design engineering, advancing fields that profoundly influence the human experience. At the GSD, research and teaching drive creative solutions to the world's most urgent challenges, reimagining infrastructure, communities, and cities on a global scale.

The Staff Assistant on the Annual, Leadership, and Planned Giving team (ALPs), part of the Development and Alumni Relations Office (DevAR), at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), supports giving programs, as well as administrative duties for the Senior Director of Annual and Leadership Giving. The key functions include administrative, logistical, and database support, including solicitation, reporting, tracking, and stewardship of annual donors;

as well as major gift fundraising support, including preparing briefings, maintaining follow-up, and tracking in the database. These activities are critical to the overall department’s fundraising, engagement, and stewardship efforts. The successful candidate will take on a variety of tasks with energy and enthusiasm, approach their work with curiosity, and be committed to supporting fundraising through annual, leadership, planned, and major giving efforts.

Reporting to the Senior Director of Annual and Leadership Giving, the person in this position works collaboratively and must be able to proactively help move projects and administrative tasks forward independently. This is a fast-paced work environment with multiple changing priorities; the Staff Assistant is expected to anticipate problems and help resolve them. The successful candidate will be proactive, creative, and pragmatic, interested in improving and expanding our fundraising efforts as well as contributing across the development team.

The Staff Assistant must adhere to timelines and be adept in project management, data maintenance, and crucial administrative duties. This is an ideal position for an organized, detail-oriented individual who is service-minded and interested in growing on a mission-driven alumni relations and fundraising team.

• Primary focus will be on annual giving program activities, including maintaining timelines for the annual appeal schedule for multi-channel engagement of solicitations, acknowledgments, and ongoing cultivation and stewardship.
• Assist with data pulls and data management. Maintain prospect and pipeline activity for the team.
• Run reports to track progress to goals. Maintain benchmarking data.
• Help coordinate logistics for solicitations, including data, mail house timelines, and processing expenses.
• Support the stewardship process and gift acknowledgments, working in collaboration with colleagues across DevAR.
• Maintain and enter all prospect updates in our CRM system.
• Support leadership giving and planned giving activities as needed.

• Prepare…