About the role
About The Position
The Major Gift Officer plays a critical role in increasing philanthropic support for PHA and serves as a trusted ambassador for the organization's mission. This position is responsible for identifying, qualifying, cultivating, soliciting and stewarding major donors and prospects, aligning their interests and passions with opportunities to make a transformational impact on the pulmonary hypertension community. Through strategic portfolio management and a strong understanding of both the science and art of fundraising, the Major Gift Officer helps ensure that donor engagement is data-informed, highly personalized and grounded in relationship-centered best practices. This role is instrumental in inspiring donors to give, retaining them as long-term partners, and meaningfully upgrading their giving and involvement over time. The Major Gift Officer also helps foster a broader culture of philanthropy across PHA by championing donor-centered thinking and reinforcing the importance of philanthropy as a shared organizational responsibility.
Success in this role requires exceptional listening, empathy, emotional intelligence, and relationship-building skills, along with the ability to engage donors and families with authenticity, compassion, and purpose. Because PHA serves a rare, progressive, and life-altering disease community, the Major Gift Officer must bring sensitivity and empathy to every interaction, honoring the lived experiences of patients, caregivers, families and supporters while helping them connect their philanthropic goals to meaningful opportunities for impact. The Major Gift Officer must also be highly collaborative and able to work effectively with executive leadership, board members, volunteers and cross-functional staff to develop compelling giving opportunities and deliver exceptional donor experiences. By communicating PHA's vision with clarity and heart, and by ensuring donors feel deeply connected to the mission and valued in their partnership, this role helps strengthen donor loyalty, expand philanthropic investment and advance PHA's ability to serve all those affected by pulmonary hypertension.
What You'll Do
The Major Gift Officer plays a critical role in increasing philanthropic support for PHA and serves as a trusted ambassador for the organization's mission. This position is responsible for identifying, qualifying, cultivating, soliciting and stewarding major donors and prospects, aligning their interests and passions with opportunities to make a transformational impact on the pulmonary hypertension community. Through strategic portfolio management and a strong understanding of both the science and art of fundraising, the Major Gift Officer helps ensure that donor engagement is data-informed, highly personalized and grounded in relationship-centered best practices. This role is instrumental in inspiring donors to give, retaining them as long-term partners, and meaningfully upgrading their giving and involvement over time. The Major Gift Officer also helps foster a broader culture of philanthropy across PHA by championing donor-centered thinking and reinforcing the importance of philanthropy as a shared organizational responsibility.
Success in this role requires exceptional listening, empathy, emotional intelligence, and relationship-building skills, along with the ability to engage donors and families with authenticity, compassion, and purpose. Because PHA serves a rare, progressive, and life-altering disease community, the Major Gift Officer must bring sensitivity and empathy to every interaction, honoring the lived experiences of patients, caregivers, families and supporters while helping them connect their philanthropic goals to meaningful opportunities for impact. The Major Gift Officer must also be highly collaborative and able to work effectively with executive leadership, board members, volunteers and cross-functional staff to develop compelling giving opportunities and deliver exceptional donor experiences. By communicating PHA's vision with clarity and heart, and by ensuring donors feel deeply connected to the mission and valued in their partnership, this role helps strengthen donor loyalty, expand philanthropic investment and advance PHA's ability to serve all those affected by pulmonary hypertension.
What You'll Do
- Manage a portfolio of 150 major gift prospects ($10,000 and above).
- Serve as the primary relationship manager for assigned portfolio, developing and implementing a written strategy for each donor, and recording all meaningful interactions in the database.
- Seek out appropriate programmatic updates and plans to create proposals, asks and impact reports. Individual goals and plans for each person in that portfolio will be driven by each donor's particular interests within PHA and communications preferences.
- Communicate with prospects through virtual and face-to-face cultivation, solicitation and stewardship meetings; ensure that each major donor and prospect has a clear strategy and timeline for cultivation, solicitation and stewardship.
- Develop and grow a robust major gift pipeline through proactive prospecting, referrals, relationship mapping, donor research, and other strategic acquisition efforts to identify and engage new major gift prospects.
- Provide strategic and organizational support to leverage PHA leadership (CEO, VPs Board members) engagement with major gift prospects and donors, including preparing briefing materials, identifying relationship opportunities, coordinating outreach and follow-up and helping maximize leadership involvement in cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship efforts.
- Manage donor information in iMIS database with discretion, entering donor contacts and constituent data as obtained, reviewing donor reports and ensuring the overall integrity of donor data.
- Ensure proper donor recognition in appropriate publications.
- Promote planned giving to donors as appropriate.
- Represent organization at fundraising events as needed.
- Respond to donor-related inquiries and correspondence as needed.
- Minimum 3-5 years of experience managing major gift level donor relationships with demonstrated success throughout the major gifts cycle - from identification to closing - for gifts of $10,000 and above.
- Ability to conceive, plan and execute a major gifts program.
- Strong analytical and strategic skills, with the ability to interpret donor data and fundraising metrics to uncover opportunities, inform strategy and drive major gift growth.
- Knowledge of complex gift structures
- Skilled at working both independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced environment.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite required; experience using iMIS or other databases.
- Superior interpersonal skills, ability to communicate professionally both verbally and in writing and attention to detail.
- Excellent relationship building and networking skills.
- Strong multitasking and organizational skills.
- Demonstrated passion for fundraising and commitment to mission.
- Ability to travel frequently.
- Experience working in a healthcare environment preferred.
- Bachelor's degree required.
- Strong commitment and adherence to PHA values.