Director of Annual Giving

Join our vibrant community of dedicated faculty and staff who work to create a transformative educational experience rooted in faith, reason, and justice.

Eastern University is a nationally-recognized Christian university enrolling approximately 9,000 students in a wide array of undergraduate, graduate, professional, and seminary programs. The university’s main campus is located in St. Davids, PA, with many programs also offered online. Eastern’s core values of Faith, Reason, and Justice are woven into all of its educational offerings. Through dynamic programs, a vibrant campus community, and meaningful service learning opportunities, Eastern University is committed to providing students with transformative, accessible, and affordable education.

The Director of Annual Giving leads the strategy, execution, and continued growth of Eastern University's comprehensive annual giving program. As the University's primary annual giving professional, the Director develops and implements a coordinated, year-round program designed to grow philanthropic revenue and participation through donor acquisition, retention, reactivation, renewal, upgrades, recurring giving, leadership annual giving, and other strategies that strengthen Eastern's donor pipeline.

This is a hands-on fundraising role requiring both strategic leadership and strong execution. The Director personally drives annual giving initiatives across direct mail, email, and digital fundraising;
University Giving Societies; faculty and staff giving; stewardship; fiscal year-end fundraising; and other University priorities. The Director also manages a portfolio of approximately 40-60 annual and leadership-level donors and prospects, with responsibility for qualification, cultivation, solicitation, stewardship, renewal, and growth, while helping identify donors with potential for deeper philanthropic engagement and future major giving.

The successful candidate will be a strategic, self-directed, and highly collaborative professional who takes ownership, anticipates needs, manages multiple priorities, and brings ideas and solutions forward. The Director will embrace technology, automation, and emerging tools to create smarter, more efficient, and repeatable ways of working, reducing unnecessary manual processes and allowing greater focus on fundraising and donor engagement. Working closely with Advancement colleagues and campus partners, the Director must be adaptable and receptive to collaborative review and changing priorities.

Equally important, the Director will be a positive, value-added presence who contributes to a mission-centered team culture and approaches the work with professionalism, humility, initiative, generosity, and a genuine sense of purpose and service to Eastern's mission, vision, and values.

• Lead all aspects of Eastern University's comprehensive annual giving program from planning through execution, evaluation, and continuous improvement.
• Develop annual and multi-year fundraising strategies, goals, budgets, solicitation calendars, audience segmentation, ask strategies, messaging, and integrated donor journeys for the Eastern Fund and other University priorities.
• Develop and execute coordinated strategies for donor acquisition, retention, reactivation, renewal, upgrades, recurring giving, leadership annual giving, faculty and staff giving, fiscal year-end fundraising, and other annual giving initiatives.
• Personally manage the hands-on work required to move campaigns from concept to completion across direct mail, email, digital, personal outreach, stewardship, and other appropriate channels, including copy development,…