Director, External Relations Operations

City Harvest is New York’s first and largest food rescue organization, helping to feed millions of New Yorkers who struggle to put meals on their tables. As the city emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, we will rescue more than 75 million pounds of fresh, nutritious food and deliver it—free of charge—to nearly 400 food pantries, soup kitchens, community partners, and our own Mobile Markets® across the five boroughs. We work alongside our community partners to boost community capacity, expand nutrition education, and strengthen local food systems. For more than 40 years, City Harvest has always been there to feed our city—one day, one meal, one New Yorker at a time. To learn more, please visit cityharvest.org.
PRIMARY PURPOSE (Overview): Oversee the External Relations Operations team of 6 responsible for gifts processing, financial reconciliation, prospect research, donor stewardship, database administration, and fundraising analytics. Identify and implement operational strategies and solutions, provide project management, and collaborate with key stakeholders and executive leadership to optimize processes and achieve goals. Contribute towards achieving External Relations revenue goal of $51M by streamlining, automating and enhancing fundraising operational processes as well as identifying efficiencies with technology costs and other operations expenses.
Primary Responsibilities

• Provide strategic direction for and manage total fundraising platform technology, including Blackbaud and prospect research platforms, to advance organizational and revenue goals.
• Oversee database security risk and contribute regular updates to the External Relations risk profile for City Harvest
• Provide industry best practices, research, recommendations and generate workflows related to database and fundraising technologies so that systems are compatible, ensuring that duplicative systems/processes are prevented and/or minimized.
• Supervise and guide External Relations Operations team responsible for gifts processing, financial reconciliations, prospect research, donor stewardship and analytics, technical fundraising operations and database administration.
• Partner with revenue directors and teams to provide thought partnership and support on identifying and implementing operational strategies, solutions, and improvements, provide project management, and collaborate with key stakeholders and executive leadership to optimize processes and achieve goals.
• Establish and monitor team performance towards projections, operations goals, annual and six-month benchmarks, and work plan. Work collaboratively across the organization to help External Relations achieve revenue goal of $51M.
• Partner with revenue teams across External Relations to identify operational solutions and develop collaborative strategy for fundraising analytics, donor stewardship and prospect management/research.
• Oversee budgeting and expenses and identify efficiencies where appropriate.
• Leads on-going staff training efforts related to the adoption/implementation of RE NXT database, bridging the gap between non-technical External Relations staff and City Harvest's IT.

POSITION SCOPE: Manage and/or perform highly technical or complex work, requiring ingenuity and capacity to evaluate and respond to new and changing issues.
DECISION MAKING/PROBLEM SOLVING: Evaluate risk factors with potential to disrupt cross-functional or division-wide goals and set appropriate course of action in response. Consult with organizational leaders and external partners to determine appropriate solutions, weighing potential impact on the organization.
FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY: Develop and administer budget.
Position Requirements
Experience: Minimum 7-10 years relative experience in a staff/departmental management role; supervisory experience a must.
Related Skills or Knowledge: Must have strong verbal communication skills, ability to speak to technical and non-technical audiences. Database administrator experience, including data analysis, software integrations and problem solving. Subject matter expertise in Fundraising Operations and familiarity with various CRM software solutions, in particular Blackbaud software suite. Strong knowledge of gift tracking and donor database best practices. Ability to analyze complex, intricate data to high-level overviews for varying levels of project stakeholders. Experience with vendor relationship management.
Why choose City Harvest?
There are many fantastic reasons to choose a career with City Harvest. In addition to fighting food insecurity in New York, City Harvest offers a competitive salary, full benefits (including medical, dental, and vision) with employer contributions towards premiums, employer-provided life insurance and a 403(b) retirement savings plan with matching employer contributions. We also offer discounted staff perks (movie tickets, gym memberships, etc.), generous time off, and professional development opportunities.
At City Harvest, we enjoy working in a team-based environment and value the benefits of a diversified workplace that values the communities we serve. City Harvest is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to the practice of equity and inclusion.