Director of Institutional Partnerships

Do you feel called to serve in a Christian Ministry?

Do you want to serve where you make a difference in the lives of others?

Are you looking for a life-changing work experience?

If so, consider joining us at the Atlanta Mission, where we provide life-transforming experiences for everyone that joins our team: employees, clients, donors, and volunteers. We serve over 1000 men, women, and children every day by providing food, shelter, clothing, counseling, vocational and spiritual guidance. We get to experience and witness radical life transformations.

As the Director of Institutional Partnerships, you will provide strategic leadership over Atlanta Mission's institutional fundraising portfolio — foundation, corporate, and government funding — and the department that pursues it. You will translate the organization's needs and strategic plan into a coordinated revenue strategy, build a high-performing team that operates as one unit rather than three separate lanes, and personally steward the Mission's most strategic institutional relationships.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Planning

• Maintains strategic-level oversight of the department, prioritizing strategic altitude over day-to-day execution, which is delegated to the Institutional Partnerships Manager, Government Compliance Officer, and Grant Writer

• Conducts organizational needs assessments in partnership with program and executive leadership to identify funding priorities and ensure the department's strategy directly advances the organization's strategic plan

• Sets the department's annual revenue plan and fundraising goals across foundation, corporate, and government funding streams, and oversees execution of that plan

Pipeline, Prospecting & Grants Strategy

• Builds the annual grant and sponsorship pipeline, sized for the organization's trajectory toward $30M by 2030, and oversees its execution

• Establishes and owns the department's prospecting strategy and go/no-go framework — including targeted prospecting with existing and new funders based on needs identified through organizational needs assessments — setting the process by which opportunities are identified and the criteria by which they are evaluated and pursued

• Owns analytics and forecasting for the department, consolidating pipeline, account, and grant data into a single departmental inventory report and translating performance into the organization's broader financial picture

Portfolio & Relationship Management

• Personally cultivates, solicits, and stewards a caseload of the organization's top-tier accounts (approximately 100 existing relationships, with an active prospecting pipeline of approximately 50 additional opportunities), serving as the lead point of contact while engaging the broader team to build multi-threaded relationships within each account

• Collaborates annually with the organization's donor officers and their Director to align on revenue goals and strategy for institutional accounts they personally hold

• Supports relationships personally held by the CEO and CDO, providing the proposals, briefings, and coordination needed to sustain those partnerships

• Determines which institutional accounts warrant executive-level engagement

Team Leadership & Development

• Manages, coaches, and sets priorities for the Partnerships Manager, Government Compliance Officer, and Grant Writer, nurturing a strong sense of team unity, shared resources, and professional growth

Cross-Departmental Collaboration

• Builds credible, trusted relationships with Program leadership, serving as a reliable strategic partner in identifying and pursuing funding for programmatic priorities

• Builds and maintains strong cross-departmental relationships with Programs, Marketing, In-Kind Donations, Volunteer Engagement, High Engagement, Finance, Human Resources, Facilities, Thrift, and IT, and collaborates regularly with fellow Directors across the organization

• Partners with the Marketing team to develop fundraising materials and shape social media strategy

Systems, Tools & Infrastructure

• Partners with the IT team to strengthen departmental processes and systems, and owns the selection and adoption of tools and technology — including Salesforce for moves management, stewardship, and reporting — that support the department's fundraising, prospecting, and grant management efforts

• Builds and oversees automated donor communication sequences that ensure consistent stewardship across the department's mid- and entry-tier partners

• Determines and directs development of departmental infrastructure, including the proposal database, partner tiering framework, and CRM standards

Financial & Resource Stewardship

• Directs resource allocation across the foundation, corporate, and government segments based on return on investment, using the department's tiering framework to prioritize where the team invests its time and effort, and oversees major vendor and consultant decisions

• Supports organizational leadership in the strategic design and implementation of capital campaigns and special initiatives

• Builds and owns the department's operating budget, maintaining a clear understanding of how departmental performance rolls into the organization's overall financial picture

Organizational Representation

• Increases the visibility of Atlanta Mission throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area and the broader region among major institutions

• Represents departmental strategy and performance to the Chief Development Officer, Chief Executive Officer, and Board of Directors