Vice President, Development

Vice President, Development
Jewish Graduate Organization (JGO)
Full-Time | Remote
About JGO
Jewish Graduate Organization (JGO) is building the Jewish future by reaching young Jews at one of the most consequential stages of their lives: graduate school.
Graduate students are becoming tomorrow’s doctors, lawyers, business leaders, academics, entrepreneurs, communal leaders, and philanthropists. Yet for many, graduate school is also the moment when they become disconnected from organized Jewish life.
JGO exists to change that.
We build Jewish community on graduate school campuses and create meaningful opportunities for graduate students to connect—to Judaism, to Israel, to one another, and to the broader Jewish community.
Since 2011, JGO has grown into a national organization reaching thousands of graduate students across campuses throughout North America. And we are just getting started.
The Opportunity
We are looking for someone exceptional.
Yes, this person needs to be an outstanding fundraiser. They need to know how to walk into a room, build trust, develop meaningful relationships, make significant asks, and raise serious money.
But we are not simply looking for a fundraiser.
We are looking for a member of our executive team who can help lead JGO into its next chapter.
Someone entrepreneurial, ambitious, creative, deeply relational, and a little unconventional.
Someone who can sit across the table from a major philanthropist in the morning, coach a fundraiser in the afternoon, brainstorm a completely new initiative with our leadership team an hour later, and spend the evening talking with graduate students about what they actually need from the Jewish community.
This person should be equally comfortable building relationships, building teams, building ideas, and building an organization.
The VP, Development will report to the Director of Operations, manage JGO's development team, work closely with the CEO and senior leadership, and serve as one of the organization's senior external representatives.
This is a significant leadership role for someone who wants to do much more than manage a development department.
We want someone who wants to build.
What You'll Own
Raise Serious Money
Fundraising will be a major part of this role—and we are looking for someone with the track record and drive to deliver.
The VP, Development will:
Personally cultivate, solicit, and steward a portfolio of major donors and prospects.
Build relationships capable of generating significant 5-, 6-, and 7-figure investments in JGO.
Develop new relationships with philanthropists, foundations, community leaders, executives, and connectors.
Spend significant time meeting with donors and prospects—not just managing fundraising from behind a desk.
Make direct asks and confidently close significant gifts.
Develop creative strategies for opening doors to people who don't yet know JGO.
Build relationships that grow over years, not just through individual transactions.
Carry a meaningful personal fundraising goal and be accountable for delivering significant revenue for the organization.
Lead the Development Team
You will lead JGO's development team while remaining a frontline fundraiser yourself.
You will:
Manage, coach, and develop JGO's fundraising professionals.
Help each fundraiser build stronger portfolios, strategies, pipelines, and relationships.
Establish clear expectations and accountability around fundraising activity and results.
Lead regular portfolio and pipeline strategy conversations.
Identify opportunities across portfolios and connect the dots between donors, prospects, programs, regions, and relationships.
Create a development culture that is ambitious and accountable without becoming transactional.
Help recruit and build the development team JGO will need for its next stage of growth.
Help Lead JGO
This is where the role goes beyond traditional development leadership.
The VP, Development will be a thought partner to JGO's Director of Operations, CEO, and senior leadership on questions that extend beyond fundraising.
You will:
Help think strategically about where JGO is going and what it could become.
Identify opportunities, partnerships, people, and ideas that could accelerate JGO's growth.
Represent JGO with donors, foundations, Jewish communal leaders, partners, and other external stakeholders.
Build relationships that may begin as fundraising conversations but grow into partnerships, introductions, programs, or entirely new opportunities.
Bring ideas to the table—even the unconventional ones.
Challenge assumptions and help us think bigger.
Step into important organizational initiatives when leadership, creativity, or relationship-building is needed.
We don't expect this person to stay neatly inside a job description. In fact, we'd prefer that they don't.
Tell

Employment type
Full-Time

Work arrangement
Yes