Sr. Director Prospect Operations & Data Strategy

Sr. Director Prospect Operations & Data Strategy

Located near Los Angeles, California, Pomona College is widely regarded as one of the nation's premier liberal arts colleges. Established in 1887, Pomona College is known for small classes, a challenging curriculum, close relationships between students and faculty, and a range of student research and leadership opportunities. Pomona is a member of the Claremont Colleges.

Job Purpose: The Senior Director of Prospect Operations & Data Strategy provides strategic leadership for the College's advancement data and prospect development functions. This role sets direction for prospect identification, qualification, and rating; portfolio development and tracking; and research to support fundraising priorities. The Senior Director also leads the Data Administration department, ensuring the accuracy, integrity, and security of advancement data. In addition, the position oversees analytics, including principal, major, and annual gift prospect modeling, as well as evaluation of fundraising performance across programs to inform strategy and drive results.

Pomona College advancement secures the philanthropic support to realize the overall educational mission of the college. This position reports to the Executive Director, Advancement Services and works very closely with colleagues in the operations department, all frontline fundraisers, the overall Advancement Division, the Office of the Vice President for Advancement, and campus partners. The Senior Director is responsible for engaging in a full range of prospect research, relationship management and analytics programs to support Pomona College. This leadership position is highly visible and plays an instrumental role in building and growing a sustainable donor pipeline by translating data into actionable insights and decision support tools.

Pomona is committed to a mission-centric approach to development. Every member of the Advancement staff plays a role in providing the College's donors with the service and attention that ensures an exceptionally positive and fulfilling philanthropic experience that results in a positive impact for the college.

Essential Functions: The Senior Director of Prospect Operations & Data Strategy is responsible for strategically building a collaborative and centralized prospect management system while delivering high-quality research, data administration, and analytics services in support of Pomona College's ambitious fundraising goals. Partnering with Advancement leaders, the Senior Director directs Advancement data strategies to align with the prospect process, reporting requirements, and overall fundraising priorities.

The role works closely with frontline fundraisers and other stakeholders to design strategies that encourage proactive research, data stewardship, and prospect management efforts, ensuring the College builds a broad-based principal, major, and leadership annual gift pipeline using both emerging technologies and established resources. Key responsibilities include proactively identifying prospects; developing relationship-based prospect research; leading strategic planning and reporting; and creating, implementing, and managing policies and procedures for prospect management, research, and data administration.

The Senior Director provides strategic leadership and oversight for business intelligence, data analytics, and insight practices within Advancement, fostering a sustained, data-informed, donor-centric operation. The position also assesses and plans for team development to ensure appropriate staffing and skill alignment to meet the College's fundraising objectives.

Currently, the Senior Director leads four core functions—Research, Relationship Management, Analytics, and Data Administration—overseeing a team that includes three direct reports and additional staff. The role provides vision, technical strategy, and business expertise to guide the successful implementation of Advancement systems, including the CRM, data warehouse, analytics, and reporting solutions, in collaboration with Advancement Services leadership. Reporting directly to the Executive Director of Advancement Services, the Senior Director plays a critical role in building, strengthening, and maximizing the impact of these functions for Pomona College.

The incumbent works independently and collaboratively to perform the following essential duties and responsibilities:

• Lead and supervise and mentor Prospect Research, Relationship Management, Data Administration, and Analytics department staff to achieve overall fundraising success for the College.
• In collaboration with the Executive Director, determine the strategic vision for the department, including short- and long-term staffing and growth plans; develop, socialize, and implement current and long-range program plans and operational goals in cooperation with the short- and long-term strategic plan.
• Provide clear direction and oversight of all department activities in order to develop and achieve annual goals, including budgeting, planning and staff development.
• Responsible for monitoring and evaluating direct reports, and overall department staff performance and daily assignments.
• Create and maintain an efficient, collegial, and proactive work environment within the office and collaborating departments.
• Innovate prospect management strategies and procedures to the benefit of the College, ensuring prospect research and management products meets the highest standards of analysis and accuracy, while maintaining discretion and confidentiality.
• Innovate and implement sustainable bespoke insight projects to the benefit of the College's goals, ensuring the highest standards of accuracy and accountability in support of decision-making.
• Maintain regular communication with Pomona's fundraisers to understand their needs and provide systems and data support to facilitate their work especially as it relates to prospect research and donor database.
• In collaboration with the Executive Director, provide project planning and oversight to cross functional initiatives, acting as business matter and/or technical expert as needed.
• Envision, create, and implement tools and reporting solutions to drive engagement and success for the VP, Board of Trustees, Executive Staff, and other high-level partners as needed.
• Creatively identify, research, and analyze new prospects and existing donors for principal and major gift cultivation and solicitation through review and strategic analysis of media, financial documents, files, databases, on-line information systems, and other resources.
• Prepare thorough, accurate, and concisely written research profiles to include biographical and financial information, potential for philanthropic support, areas of interest and affiliations on individuals, as well as similarly complex research on corporations and foundations.
• Develop and implement a comprehensive analytics program and business intelligence reporting solutions.
• In collaboration with the analytics staff, identify methods for integrating predictive modeling data and results in prospect management reporting and analytics.
• Provide ongoing development metrics and pipeline forecast reporting to advancement and development leadership.
• Analyze fundraising activities and gift trends, and provide projections based on prospect data (proposal data, fundraising totals).
• Develop the analytic and reporting tools necessary to maintain an informative prospect pipeline that relates directly to the goals and targets of Advancement and Pomona; constantly monitoring the pipeline.
• Adhere to all legal privacy requirements and ethical standards upheld by regulatory bodies and professional organizations.
• Develop and implement methods for identifying new potential principal, major gift, and leadership annual giving prospects for relevant areas of responsibility for development officers.
• Consult with and work highly collaboratively with the overall Advancement Services team to ensure full utilization of data integration, data analytics, and predictive analysis tools.
• Consult with VP for Advancement, AVP for Development, AVP for Planned Giving, principal gifts, major gifts and family giving programs, and reunion officers on fundraising needs and prospect strategy.
• Disseminate prospect news and rating information effectively; participate in planning meetings, strategy development, prospect qualification meetings.
• Introduce and manage special projects which may involve researching new markets, financial trends, industry analysis, and large fundraising campaigns; keep current on research and fundraising trends through regular contact with development and research colleagues at peer institutions as well as vendors.
• Facilitate ongoing educational meetings on fundraising or philanthropy trends.
• Provide oversight and guidance in setting policy and implementing the college wide prospect management and tracking program.
• Work with the frontline fundraiser management staff to develop procedural changes and techniques for the prospect management program to be responsive to the development program measurement goals.
• Ensure overall integrity of performance metrics for development officers, as captured in the prospect tracking area of the college's fundraising database.
• Work directly with new development staff to familiarize them with prospect management policies and conducting prospect management trainings to new development staff.
• Oversee quality assurance processes for advancement data, particularly during key reporting periods and in preparation of board materials, ensuring accuracy, completeness, and consistency in all deliverables.
• Oversee the Data Administration function, ensuring the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of data across the College's CRM, data warehouse, and related advancement systems.
• Direct the management, monitoring, and optimization of ETL (extract, transform, load) processes to ensure timely and accurate data integration between systems.
• Establish and enforce data entry standards, validation protocols, and quality assurance procedures to maintain high levels of data integrity.
• Lead ongoing data health initiatives, including routine audits, duplicate resolution, and system maintenance to support reliable reporting and analytics.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications: Education: Advanced degree strongly preferred; an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will be considered. Requires a minimum of four (4) years of full-time experience in prospect research or similar work, with demonstrated strong analytical skills and data-driven decision-making.

Experience: Ten to twelve years demonstrable leadership experience with increasing responsibility in the areas of prospect research, relationship management, database management, and analytics required. A