Job Opportunity for Associate, Development at Teach for India in Pune

Position Summary

The Mission of the Development team is to build lifelong champions of the cause and to acquire financial support for the movement. As one of the most external-facing teams, we build high-impact sustainable partnerships and strong champions for the movement through various engagement avenues and immersions with our students, Fellows, Staff, and our Board. The Development team has repurposed fundraising efforts by building strategic partnerships, newer channels of giving, and strong teams and systems resilient to future threats.

The Associate, Development (Fundraising) will support the engagement team in building deep partnerships with existing donors, create bespoke volunteering engagement activities for donors, generate high-quality reports and proposals and achieve operational excellence in their day-to-day work.

We are seeking a proven leader who possesses exceptional communication skills, a collaborative and proactive approach to working in teams and a deep personal belief in Teach For India’s vision and mission.

Team Overview

Teach For India embarks on a bold vision – to create a pipeline of 50,000 leaders by 2032 on the path to developing their own leadership and working towards educational equity in India. This ambitious growth needs to be supported by financial resources which the Development team will help secure in addition to building partnerships that go beyond providing only financial support to fuel this growth. 

Development is one of the critical backbones of the organization as the organization is completely dependent on donations in its current form. The team raises funds from various sources – Corporate CSR will continue to be our mainstay for the immediate and medium-term. We will also be exploring HNIs as our next bet while will continue to cultivate Foundations as our medium-term priority. Over the past year, we have also piloted two online campaigns, and are looking to continue with such campaigns on a yearly basis. 

The opportunity – What’s in it for you?

Being a team that works mostly with external stakeholders, our work takes us through a huge learning curve both professionally and personally on relationship management strategies and networking in the sector. We work directly with the Senior Leadership of TFI and our partners are the finest in their respective sectors.

The skill sets – communication, building relationships, data analysis, representation, comfort with systems like Salesforce, etc. – acquired in the role are transferable skills in any domain/sector or for higher education.

Responsibilities

The Associate, Development (Fundraising) will be a part of the engagement team based in Mumbai and report directly to the Manager, Partnerships. Specific responsibilities include:

As Associate, Development, you will be working on:

Donor Cultivation:

• Work closely with the Manager/Senior Manager/Director for renewal efforts for the portfolio of existing donors – CSR, Foundations, and Individuals. 
• Strengthen donor cultivation and engagement efforts by developing targeted donor stewardship touch points, planning and executing high-quality, customised engagements (i.e. event planning, employee volunteering, tracking MOU commitments).
• Support the Manager, Engagement in setting up centralised engagements, sourcing and creating high quality engagements across regions.
• Develop high-impact communications such as drafts on behalf of Director/CEO, engagement collaterals, presentations for donor meetings, short narratives for marketing and promotion pieces, blog postings, and website content.
• Conduct donor research to determine their giving capacity to target upgrades, foresee any potential risk of giving.
• Create strategic meeting briefs for the Director/Leadership team with appropriate objectives, asks, angles, and donor history that anticipate potential questions from funders and propose potential responses.

Donor Reporting:

• Design and develop high-quality quarterly reports according to donor requirements and timelines.
• This would include collecting and analysing data, editing stories from the Fellows, and drafting visually compelling reports.
• Centrally manage the reporting process by creating quarterly project plans, sharing timely reporting updates, timelines, and insights with the entire team.
• Conduct regular quality checks of team reports to ensure excellence in reporting.

Engage multiple-stakeholders:

• Collaborate with cities to collect Fellow stories and regional updates.
• Work with the Finance team to ensure accurate and timely financial reporting.
• Work with the Strategy and Learning team and the Training and Impact team to report the most accurate impact data.

Build and sustain operational excellence, at scale:

• Maintaining up-to-date and accurate data on donors in our online CRM system (Salesforce) and driving rigorous usage for renewal/upgrade projections and data-driven insights.
• Support Manager to drive progress-to-goal process for most accurate projections through data systems (Salesforce). This would include effective monitoring and tracking fundraising efforts across cities, identifying and ensuring next steps are completed by team members, and making strategic suggestions.
• Adherence to MOU commitments, governance structures and policies like Child Protection Policy, field-trip policies, and educate the team and donors for compliance.
• Align with all donor-related systems and processes – Impact Reporting, Stewardship, Audits,
• Finance, Knowledge management, and due diligence.

Additional Responsibilities

• Work closely with operations track leads on operationalising, developing and improving internal processes.
• Work with the Finance team to process fund utilization, receipts, and projections throughout the year.
• You will be required to help during the selection of new Fellows. Volunteering and immersing in classrooms is highly recommended to keep in touch with why we do what we do.
• Providing other administrative support and working on special projects on an as-needed basis.
• You may also have the opportunity to manage interns and Fellows working on specific projects under their workstream.

As an Associate at Teach For India

• Contributing to the team goals and priorities beyond individual goals and priorities.
• Serving as an ambassador of the Teach For India brand and an advocate for our work and for educational equity in our country through both internal and external communication after committing time in our classrooms to understand our work more deeply.
• Supporting key organizational areas such as Recruitment, Selection, Fundraising, Volunteering, and Movement Building.

Minimum Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• Graduate (in any stream) with 2+ years of full-time work experience preferably in a role that required writing proposals and reports.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. 
• Excellent critical thinking skills and ability to analyze complex financials and data sets, drawing conclusions, narratives, and communicating impact stories to external partners.
• Knowledge and ability to run targeted online campaigns to achieve crowdfunding targets.  
• Mastery over Microsoft Office and Google Suite.
• Excellent project and time management skills.
• Strong interpersonal skills to build meaningful relationships with diverse & ensure better collaboration.
• Commitment to Teach For India’s mission and values.
• Commitment to excellence, accuracy, attention to detail.
• High on integrity, accountability and drive.

Preferred Qualifications, Experiences and Expectations

• Past experience in fundraising, business development, marketing, or project management.
• Has worked in the CSR department of a corporate, fundraised for an international NGO or worked in a foundation on the grants side.
• High sense of possibility and an anything-it-takes attitude.