OVERVIEW
A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.
Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR. This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.
Intro to Position
NPR is entering a period that requires sustained growth in philanthropic revenue and a fundraising organization built to deliver it consistently. The Vice President, Individual & Institutional Giving leads that organization: a team of approximately 20 across institutional giving, planned giving, individual giving, and donor recognition, accountable for ~$75M+ in annual revenue.
This is a systems leadership role. The VP does not carry a personal donor portfolio. Their leverage comes from the performance of five direct reports and the fundraisers beneath them — from pipeline discipline, coaching, and the standards they set for how NPR shows up with its donors. Reporting to the Chief Development Officer and partnering closely with the VP, Digital Revenue & Operations, the VP builds the infrastructure and the talent that make growth repeatable rather than episodic.
Responsibilities
Revenue Leadership
- Own delivery of ~$75M+ in annual revenue across institutional, planned, and individual giving, with accountability for accurate forecasting and early warning when performance diverges from plan.
- Set portfolio strategy and capacity targets across the team, allocating fundraiser time toward the relationships with the highest potential rather than the highest familiarity.
- Partner with the CDO and Finance to build multi-year revenue projections grounded in pipeline evidence.
Pipeline & Moves Management
- Own the moves management discipline across all frontline teams: stage definitions, advancement criteria, portfolio review cadence, and the accountability that makes them real.
- Work with the Executive Director of Development Operations to build the reporting that gives every fundraiser and manager a clear view of their pipeline, and use it to drive weekly and monthly decisions rather than quarterly retrospectives.
- Set the quality standard for the briefing materials, proposals, reports, and engagement strategies the team produces, so that every executive donor meeting has a defined purpose and a defined next step.
- Diagnose where relationships stall and address the cause — whether that is skill, capacity, strategy, or a gap in what NPR can offer.
Team Leadership & Fundraiser Development
- Lead and develop five direct reports across institutional giving, planned giving, individual giving, and recognition, holding each accountable for team performance while building their capability as managers.
- Define what excellent fundraising looks like at NPR and build the coaching, training, and evaluation practices that produce it, with clear expectations by level and visible paths for advancement.
- Develop fundraisers into compelling representatives of NPR — people who understand journalism deeply, can articulate what it costs and why it matters, and can hold a substantive conversation with a sophisticated donor.
- Attend donor meetings regularly as coach and observer, present to develop the fundraiser rather than to own the relationship.
- Partner with the CDO and the People team on hiring, performance management, and org design as the team scales.
Stewardship & Donor Recognition
- Oversee the design and rollout of a tiered donor recognition system that works across giving channels and can be adopted organization-wide.
- Build stewardship practices that treat retention and upgrade as designed outcomes rather than byproducts of goodwill.
Capacity & Efficiency
- Identify where AI and automation can absorb the research, preparation, drafting, and analysis that consume frontline time, and redirect the capacity created toward the work that requires a human being: relationship depth, judgment in the room, and the ability to make NPR’s mission land.
- Bring fluency with current AI tools and the judgment to distinguish genuine leverage from novelty, and build a team culture where adoption is expected and evaluated.
Cross-Functional Partnership
- Partner with the VP, Digital Revenue & Operations to create a coherent donor experience across digital and frontline giving, with clear handoffs as donors move between channels.
- Work with Member Station colleagues and the Network Growth team to coordinate donor engagement across the public media system.
- Align fundraising priorities with editorial and executive leadership so that what the team is selling reflects where NPR is going.
The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. Other duties may be assigned, and this job description can be modified at any time.
In the first year, you will:
- Install pipeline standards. Define stages, advancement criteria, and conversion benchmarks across institutional, planned, and individual giving, and establish the review cadence that holds the team to them.
- Define fundraising excellence. Publish skill expectations by level across all frontline roles, with an assessment approach and a development plan for every fundraiser on the team.
- Launch tiered recognition. Design and implement a donor recognition structure built for adoption across NPR.
- Free up frontline capacity. Identify the highest-cost manual work across the team, deploy AI and automation against it, and demonstrate the hours returned to donor-facing activity.
Minimum Qualifications
- 15+ years of professional experience, including 7+ years leading multi-team organizations and managing through managers.
- 5+ years in development. Experience in enterprise sales, executive search, or another discipline built on long-cycle, trust-dependent relationships is a strong substitute for a longer fundraising tenure, and we encourage those candidates to apply.
- Demonstrated accountability for a revenue program of comparable scale, with evidence of sustained year-over-year growth.
- Proven track record of building pipeline systems and coaching practices that improved team performance, distinct from personal production.
- Fluency with pipeline data and CRM reporting, and a habit of using it to make decisions about where people spend their time.
- Working fluency with AI tools and a track record of finding practical efficiency gains with them.
- Strong listening, writing, and speaking skills, with the ability to represent a complex organization to sophisticated audiences.
Preferred Qualifications
- An understanding of complex fundraising organizations or federated nonprofit models.
- An understanding of media/public broadcasting organizations and the relationship between NPR and its Member Stations.
- Experience leading teams through a period of rapid growth or structural change.
Education Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in work experience required.
Work Location & Requirements
- NPR Remote-Permitted: This is a remote-permitted role. This role is based out of our Washington, D.C. office, but the employee may choose to work on a remote basis from a location that NPR approves. You will have the option of working (a) remotely from a location of your choosing within the United States that is supported by NPR; (b) on-site at an NPR facility, based on the availability of desks and approval from NPR; or (c) a combination of both. Regardless of where you choose to work from, you may be expected to travel to other locations from time to time to perform the duties of your position.
Job Type
- This is a full-time, exempt position.
Compensation
Salary Range: The U.S.-based anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $216,000-$240,000 plus benefits. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salaries NPR expects to provide for new hires for the position across all US locations.
NPR Benefits: NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents. Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options. Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being. Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.
Does this sound like you? If so, we want to hear from you.
#LI-REMOTE
NPR is an Equal Opportunity Employer. NPR is committed to being an inclusive workplace that welcomes diverse and unique perspectives, all working toward the same goal – to create a more informed public. Qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, age, religion, religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, lactation, and reproductive health decisions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, transgender status, gender non-conforming status, intersex status, sexual stereotypes, nationality, citizenship status, personal appearance, marital status, family status, family responsibilities, military status, veteran status, mental and physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, genetic characteristics of yourself or a family member, political views and affiliation, unemployment status, protective order status, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, or any other basis prohibited under applicable law.
If you are a person with a disability needing assistance with the application process, please reach out to [email protected].
You may read NPR’s privacy policy to learn about how NPR may handle information you submit with any application.
Want more NPR? Explore the stories behind the stories on our NPR Extra blog. Get social with NPR Extra on Facebook and Instagram. Find more career opportunities at NPR.org/careers.
