Director of Development

About Us:

From Small Beginnings: We opened a food pantry in Somerville designed to demonstrate caring at its best. In May 2014, we began operating out of donated space in a small 30 member church, providing food during 32 family visits. Sixty percent of Emmanuel Church stepped up and volunteered to serve. As the church saw the impact of what was happening, they allowed use of all of their main floor space for pantry operations. Although we were open only a few hours each Tuesday, we grew very quickly. We distribute meat, fresh produce and non-perishables each month to veterans, the working poor, persons with disabilities, seniors and the unemployed. Many use 50% or more of their income for their housing. All this takes place in one of the richest counties in both NJ and the US, and for now, we are only reaching the tip of the iceberg.

Click Here to Learn More about Feeding Hands

About the Position:

The Director of Development is a senior leadership position responsible for creating, leading, and executing a comprehensive development strategy that provides the financial resources and donor relationships necessary to advance the mission and continued growth of Feeding Hands.

Reporting to the CEO, the Director of Development will lead the organization’s fundraising efforts across major gifts, individual giving, recurring giving, corporate partnerships, church relationships, foundations and grants, sponsorships, special events, planned and non-cash giving, donor communications, and stewardship. This leader will build upon Feeding Hands’ strong community reputation while developing a more strategic, disciplined, diversified, and scalable fundraising program.

The Director of Development will be both a strategist and a relationship builder. The successful candidate will be comfortable developing an annual fundraising plan, managing a donor portfolio, making direct asks, cultivating major donors, coaching organizational leaders in fundraising, overseeing development systems and data, and personally representing Feeding Hands throughout the community.

This role requires someone who understands that fundraising at Feeding Hands is not simply about raising money. Development is an invitation for individuals, churches, businesses, foundations, and community organizations to participate meaningfully in a mission that provides nourishment, dignity, connection, and hope to neighbors experiencing food insecurity.

Salary Range: $100,000 – $120,000

Reports to: CEO

Location: Hillsborough, NJ

Essential Responsibilities

Development Strategy and Leadership

Develop and execute a comprehensive annual and multi-year fundraising strategy aligned with Feeding Hands’ strategic priorities, operating needs, and growth plans.
Establish measurable annual goals for contributed revenue and develop clear strategies for achieving those goals.
Create a diversified development model that appropriately balances individual giving, major gifts, recurring gifts, corporate support, church partnerships, foundations, grants, sponsorships, events, and other philanthropic revenue.
Provide the CEO and Board with regular reports on fundraising performance, donor pipelines, opportunities, challenges, forecasts, and progress toward established goals.
Partner closely with the CEO, senior leadership, Board members, and development staff to create a strong organization-wide culture of philanthropy.
Assess current development practices and build the systems, processes, staffing structures, and accountability necessary to support continued organizational growth.
Monitor philanthropic trends and identify new opportunities for Feeding Hands to expand and diversify contributed revenue.

Individual Giving and Donor Engagement

Build upon and manage relationships with current and prospective individual donors.
Develop effective cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship strategies to strengthen individual donor relationships and financial support.
Develop additional strategies to convert committed volunteers into donors and ambassadors for Feeding Hands.
Personally cultivate relationships and make direct financial asks to individual donors and prospective donors.
Identify opportunities to encourage existing donors to increase their level of support through meaningful engagement and communication.
Create meaningful opportunities for donors to experience Feeding Hands’ mission firsthand through pantry visits, volunteer experiences, events, conversations with leadership, and impact updates.
Develop strategies for donor acquisition, retention, reactivation, upgrading, and long-term engagement.
Strengthen Feeding Hands’ recurring giving program and increase the number and value of monthly donors.
Work with the CEO and Board members to prepare them for donor meetings, fundraising conversations, and stewardship activities.

Corporate and Business Partnerships

Expand Feeding Hands’ network of corporate and business partners throughout Central New Jersey and the surrounding region.
Develop partnership opportunities that may include financial support, event sponsorships, matching gifts, employee giving, volunteer engagement, food and essential-item drives, in-kind contributions, and cause-related partnerships.
Create clear sponsorship and corporate partnership opportunities with appropriate benefits and stewardship.
Develop relationships with corporate executives, community relations leaders, business owners, employee resource groups, and corporate foundations.
Increase participation in employer matching-gift and volunteer-grant programs.
Ensure corporate partners understand the measurable community impact produced through their relationship with Feeding Hands.

Church and Faith Community Development

Work collaboratively with Feeding Hands’ church partnership leadership to strengthen and expand relationships with churches and faith communities.
Develop strategies for engaging congregations in financial giving, volunteerism, food and essentials drives, sponsorships, advocacy, and other mission opportunities.
Build relationships with pastors, church leaders, ministry leaders, and congregational champions.
Create resources that help churches communicate Feeding Hands’ mission and impact to their congregations.
Identify opportunities to deepen church relationships from periodic participation into sustained mission partnerships.
Represent Feeding Hands in church and faith-based settings when appropriate.

Foundation and Grant Development

Provide strategic oversight of Feeding Hands’ foundation and grant fundraising efforts.
Work closely with grant and marketing staff to identify, qualify, cultivate, solicit, and steward foundation and institutional funders.
Maintain an organized grants calendar and pipeline that includes application deadlines, reporting requirements, renewal opportunities, and relationship-building activities.
Ensure grant proposals clearly communicate Feeding Hands’ need, strategy, outcomes, financial stewardship, and community impact.
Develop relationships with foundation representatives when appropriate rather than relying solely on transactional grant applications.
Ensure grant commitments, restricted gifts, and reporting requirements are appropriately communicated internally and fulfilled.

Donor Stewardship and Retention

Create and implement a comprehensive donor stewardship program that helps supporters understand the impact of their generosity.
Establish appropriate acknowledgment, recognition, communication, and engagement standards for donors at different giving levels.
Develop personalized stewardship plans for major donors, corporate partners, foundations, churches, and other significant supporters.
Partner with communications and program staff to collect compelling stories, outcomes, data, photographs, and other content demonstrating donor impact.
Monitor donor retention and develop strategies to reduce attrition and strengthen long-term relationships.
Ensure donor communications consistently reflect Feeding Hands’ values of Empathy, Connection, and Stewardship.

Special Events and Community Fundraising

Provide strategic leadership for fundraising events, including Feeding Hands’ signature and community-based events.
Establish clear revenue, sponsorship, attendance, donor acquisition, and engagement goals for fundraising events.
Evaluate events based on both financial return and their effectiveness in cultivating long-term donor relationships.
Develop sponsorship strategies and personally secure significant event sponsors when appropriate.
Create pathways for event participants to become ongoing donors, volunteers, advocates, and organizational partners.
Encourage and support peer-to-peer and third-party fundraising initiatives led by individuals, churches, businesses, schools, clubs, and community organizations.

Development Operations and Donor Data

Ensure Feeding Hands maintains accurate, complete, and useful donor and prospect information within its development systems.
Establish consistent processes for gift entry, acknowledgment, donor records, prospect tracking, moves management, reporting, segmentation, and stewardship.
Use donor data to identify trends, opportunities, retention issues, major-gift prospects, and areas for improvement.
Develop fundraising dashboards and reports that allow leadership to evaluate development performance and forecast contributed revenue.
Ensure donor privacy and confidentiality are maintained.
Partner with finance and administration to ensure appropriate gift reconciliation, restricted-fund tracking, documentation, and financial reporting.

Campaigns and Strategic Growth

Help assess the need and readiness for future capital, capacity-building, or special fundraising campaigns.
Develop compelling cases for support that connect organizational priorities with donor interests and measurable community impact.
Build donor pipelines capable of supporting Feeding Hands’ future facility, staffing, storage, transportation, technology, and program needs.
Develop campaign leadership structures, prospect strategies, gift tables, timelines, and solicitation plans when major campaigns are undertaken.
Help Feeding Hands move from primarily annual fundraising toward deeper, longer-term philanthropic relationships and transformational giving.

Planned Giving and Non-Cash Gifts

Expand awareness and use of charitable giving vehicles beyond traditional cash gifts.
Promote opportunities for gifts of appreciated securities, donor-advised fund grants, qualified charitable distributions when appropriate, employer matching gifts, estate and legacy gifts, and other tax-advantaged charitable giving strategies.
Work with donors and their professional advisors as appropriate while avoiding the provision of legal or tax advice.
Develop a long-term planned-giving strategy appropriate to Feeding Hands’ donor base and organizational maturity.

Communications and Case for Support

Partner with marketing and communications staff to ensure fundraising communications clearly articulate Feeding Hands’ mission, impact, financial stewardship, and funding needs.
Develop compelling donor-centered messaging for appeals, proposals, presentations, sponsorship materials, campaigns, newsletters, digital communications, and donor conversations.
Translate organizational statistics and program outcomes into understandable stories of human impact.
Ensure fundraising communications maintain the dignity of Feeding Hands’ guests and never exploit individuals experiencing poverty for fundraising purposes.
Help communicate Feeding Hands’ strong stewardship model and the multiplying effect of donor support.

Board and Executive Partnership

Partner closely with the CEO on major donor relationships and significant funding opportunities.
Help Board members understand their role in philanthropy and provide them with practical ways to participate in donor identification, introductions, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship.
Prepare donor briefings, talking points, prospect information, and other materials for organizational leaders.
Participate in Board and committee meetings as requested and provide clear reporting on development strategy and performance.
Build fundraising capacity across the organization rather than allowing development to become the responsibility of one individual or department.

Team Leadership

Lead, coach, develop, and hold accountable development-related staff and volunteers assigned to the department.
Clarify roles, priorities, performance expectations, and measurable goals for development team members.
Create a collaborative development culture characterized by initiative, accountability, creativity, professionalism, and genuine care for donors and partners.
Ensure development staff work effectively with finance, operations, programs, volunteers, technology, marketing, and executive leadership.
Evaluate future development staffing needs as contributed revenue and organizational complexity increase.

Leadership Expectations

The Director of Development must be more than an accomplished fundraiser. Feeding Hands is seeking a relational leader who can build a sustainable culture of philanthropy around an organization that has already demonstrated significant community impact.

The successful candidate will understand that strong fundraising begins with authentic relationships. This leader should enjoy meeting people, hearing their stories, understanding what motivates their generosity, connecting their interests with meaningful opportunities, and communicating the impact of their investment.

At the same time, this individual must bring discipline to the development function. Strong relationships must be supported by clear goals, reliable data, donor segmentation, intentional cultivation plans, consistent follow-up, effective stewardship, and measurable results.

The Director of Development should be comfortable personally asking for significant gifts. This is not solely a strategy, communications, grant-writing, or event-management position. The person in this role will be expected to develop relationships and actively secure financial support for the mission.

Qualifications

A bachelor’s degree in nonprofit management, business, communications, marketing, public relations, ministry, or a related field is preferred. Significant relevant experience may substitute for formal educational requirements.
Progressive professional experience in nonprofit development, fundraising, advancement, major gifts, business development, donor relations, or a closely related field.
Demonstrated success personally cultivating, soliciting, and closing philanthropic gifts.
Experience building and managing relationships with major donors and prospective donors.
Demonstrated ability to develop and execute comprehensive fundraising strategies and achieve measurable revenue goals.
Experience with corporate partnerships, sponsorships, foundations, grants, events, annual giving, or recurring giving.
Experience working with churches, faith communities, or faith-based organizations is highly desirable.
Experience with donor databases, CRM systems, prospect tracking, moves management, fundraising analytics, and development reporting.
Strong written communication skills with the ability to create compelling donor correspondence, proposals, presentations, appeals, and cases for support.
Excellent interpersonal and verbal communication skills, including comfort meeting with donors individually and presenting to groups.
Strong financial understanding and the ability to develop fundraising forecasts, evaluate return on investment, and work effectively with organizational budgets.
Ability to manage multiple priorities, relationships, deadlines, campaigns, and initiatives simultaneously.
Experience supervising staff or leading a development team is preferred.
Knowledge of ethical fundraising practices and donor confidentiality.
Willingness to work occasional evenings and weekends for donor meetings, church engagements, community events, and fundraising activities.

Personal and Leadership Characteristics

Deeply relational and genuinely interested in people.
Mission-driven and energized by helping neighbors experiencing food insecurity and poverty.
Aligned with and respectful of Feeding Hands’ Judeo-Christian foundation and comfortable representing a faith-informed organization.
A confident fundraiser who is comfortable asking people to invest financially in a compelling mission.
A strong listener who seeks to understand a donor’s interests before presenting an opportunity.
Strategic and able to see both immediate fundraising opportunities and long-term relationship potential.
Persistent and results-oriented without becoming transactional.
An excellent storyteller who can communicate both measurable impact and the human significance behind the numbers.
Highly organized and disciplined about follow-up.
Entrepreneurial and comfortable creating new opportunities rather than simply managing existing programs.
Collaborative and willing to share relationships and fundraising success with the broader organization.
Emotionally intelligent, self-aware, mature, and trustworthy.
Committed to the highest standards of integrity and donor stewardship.
Comfortable engaging people across different socioeconomic, professional, cultural, and faith backgrounds.
Passionate about building a community in which donors, volunteers, churches, businesses, staff, and guests recognize that they are participating together in something larger than themselves.

Faith and Mission Alignment

The Opportunity

Feeding Hands is motivated by Judeo-Christian teachings and believes its work should reflect compassion for neighbors in need, responsible stewardship, meaningful human connection, and service that honors the Creator.

The Director of Development will be expected to understand, respect, support, and effectively communicate Feeding Hands’ mission, values, and faith-informed approach to serving the community.

Because the Director of Development will frequently represent Feeding Hands to donors, churches, businesses, foundations, and community partners, this individual must be able to authentically communicate why the organization exists, what makes its approach distinctive, and how financial generosity becomes tangible impact in the lives of neighbors.

Feeding Hands is at an important point in its organizational story. Community need is increasing, the organization’s geographic footprint has expanded, and thousands of individuals depend upon Feeding Hands for nutritious food and compassionate support.

That growth creates the need for a development program capable of growing alongside the mission. The Director of Development will have the opportunity to help move Feeding Hands into its next stage of philanthropic maturity by deepening donor relationships, expanding the major-gift pipeline, strengthening corporate and church partnerships, diversifying revenue, building fundraising systems, and developing a long-term culture of generosity.

For the right leader, this is an opportunity to build rather than simply maintain. The Director of Development will help connect generous people and institutions with an organization where their resources can produce direct, measurable, and deeply personal community impact.