Assistant Director Development Annual Giving

The Assistant Director of Development - Annual Giving for Creighton Athletics plays a key role in building and sustaining a robust annual giving program to support Bluejay student-athletes, teams, and competitive excellence in the BIG EAST Conference. Reporting to the Associate Athletic Director for Development, this position focuses on cultivating and stewarding annual giving donors while creating a donor pipeline to major gifts. The role emphasizes growing unrestricted and sport-specific annual funds, particularly the Bluejay Excellence Fund to provide flexible support for scholarships, operations, recruiting, travel, facilities, and student-athlete development.

Essential Functions:

• Lead Annual Giving Efforts: Design, implement, and manage comprehensive strategies to acquire, retain, and upgrade annual giving donors for Creighton Athletics. This includes direct mail, email campaigns, phonathons/digital solicitations, giving days, peer-to-peer fundraising, and targeted appeals to alumni, fans, parents, season ticket holders, and community supporters.
• Grow the Bluejay Excellence Fund: Serve as the primary steward and solicitor for the Bluejay Excellence Fund (and related sport-specific excellence funds), driving increased participation and revenue through unrestricted annual gifts. Set and achieve ambitious participation and dollar goals to provide critical flexible funding for athletics priorities, including student-athlete success, competitive edges, and emerging needs.
• Donor Pipeline Development & Collaboration: Partner closely with Major Gift Officers to identify, qualify, cultivate, and transition leadership annual giving donors (e.g., $1,000-$9,999 level) into major gift prospects. Build personalized cultivation plans, track donor progression and facilitate handoffs to major gift officers for five and six-figure opportunities.
• Prospect Identification & Management: Proactively identify major gift prospects within the annual giving donor pool through data analysis, wealth screening, giving history review, and engagement metrics. Manage a portfolio of annual giving donors/prospects, focusing on discovery, solicitation, and stewardship to maximize lifetime value.
• Stewardship & Engagement: Execute high-touch stewardship for annual donors, including impact reporting, event opportunities, and personalized communications to foster long-term loyalty and increased giving.
• Collaboration & Cross-Functional Work: Work collaboratively with athletics staff (coaches, sport administrators), university advancement teams, marketing/communications, ticketing, and corporate partnerships to align annual giving initiatives with broader fundraising goals, including integration with revenue sharing, campaigns and other priorities.
• Data & Reporting: Utilize CRM systems (e.g., donor databases) to track performance metrics, generate reports on annual giving revenue, participation rates, retention, upgrades, and pipeline movement. Analyze trends to refine strategies and forecast outcomes.
• Events & Volunteer Support: Assist in planning and executing donor cultivation events, giving campaigns, and volunteer-led efforts (e.g., varsity club, alumni, parent groups) to boost annual support.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree required.
• Minimum 3+ years of demonstrated sales experience is required.
• Experience with cultivating, soliciting and closing gifts
• Experience working in customer relations is preferred.
• Familiarity with Advance, or comparable fund-raising database
• Familiarity with Achtics, Advantage, Paciolin or comparable ticketing and donor database.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Demonstrate understanding of how Athletic Departments run in a University setting preferred and experience working with student-athletes, coaches and athletic department personnel.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and ability to speak in a public setting.
• Ability to think strategically and quickly summarize complex and detailed information.
• Ability to travel nationally for athletics donor events including during week nights and over weekends.
• Demonstrated knowledge of NCAA and BIG EAST Conference guidelines, policies, rules and regulations with the ability to interpret, apply, enforce and explain such policies and rules.
• Appreciation and understanding of Creighton University's mission and the ability to effectively communicate it.