Director or Managing Director, Partnerships (Fundraising)

Position description

Lead resource mobilization efforts to fuel legal empowerment and systemic change efforts that protect fundamental rights and the health of the planet.

About the Position

Namati is entering a critical new phase. As we navigate a changing funding landscape and increasing risks to democracy worldwide, we seek a visionary, strategic, and collaborativeDirector or Managing Director, Partnershipsto lead our global resource mobilization (RM) efforts and help ensure Namati’s long-term sustainability and impact.

This is a senior leadership role charged with leading the execution and evolution of Namati’s fundraising strategy, managing a high-performing team, and owning a portfolio of high-stakes relationships with philanthropic foundations, bilateral institutions, and individual donors. The Director or Managing Director will work closely with executive leadership, program leads, and external partners to sustain and grow Namati’s $10M+ annual budget.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic leadership and planning

• Lead the execution of Namati’s current multi-year fundraising strategy, ensuring consistent progress on goals and data-informed decision-making.
• In close collaboration with leadership and the RM team, drive the long-term evolution of the fundraising strategy by analyzing internal data, monitoring external trends, and incorporating team learning from across the organization.
• Partner closely with Namati’s finance team to set clear revenue targets, forecast future resource needs and revenue scenarios, and help ensure that Namati is positioned for long-term financial health.
• While maintaining primary focus on Namati’s core fundraising strategy, contribute to long-term sustainability efforts through strategic experimentation. This might include expanding our grassroots donor base through digital fundraising, and serving as the internal counterpart to Namati’s earned revenue consultant.
• Contribute to overall organizational strategy and planning as a member of the senior leadership team.

Team management

• Supervise, develop, and manage a growing team of five fundraisers and two fundraising operations specialists, providing clear direction, support, and accountability.
• Provide ongoing and regular mentorship, coaching, and performance feedback to build a collaborative, goal-oriented, and resilient team.
• Oversee RM team operations, ensuring strong coordination and adherence to the team’s operating principles, processes, and systems.
• Ensure new opportunities and renewals are moved timely and strategically by monitoring key pipeline health metrics and assigning relationship owners to optimize fundraising outcomes.
• Promote a culture of learning, accountability, and joy both within the RM team and across teams.
• Partner with relationship owners, program leads, and finance to ensure both proposals for new funding and reporting on existing grants are timely and of the highest quality.

Donor cultivation and stewardship

• Act as a principle relationship lead for 10-15 key funder relationships, stewarding them through the fundraising lifecycle from identification to reporting to renewal.
• Engage funders with confidence, clarity, and heart to represent Namati’s vision and strategy in multi-program and organization-wide fundraising efforts.
• Develop and iterate thematic fundraising roadmaps, and advise relationship owners and program leads based on those roadmaps, to drive revenue growth across Namati’s priority themes (democracy, land/environmental/climate justice, and the Grassroots Justice Network Academy).

Thought leadership and external representation

• Serve as a senior spokesperson and thought leader for Namati’s mission: shape sector conversations, elevate the organization’s visibility, and strategically position Namati with current and prospective funders through compelling writing, speaking engagements, and relationship-building.
• Coach program leads to strengthen their external presence and donor engagement, including preparing for funder-facing events.
• Collaborate with the Strategic Engagement team to ensure consistent, creative, and compelling donor-facing communications.

Here’s what you might have tackled last week:

• Prepared a bi-annual fundraising update for the board, synthesizing pipeline performance, progress toward annual targets, and key risks and opportunities (which you also used to inform a strategy conversation with the executive team later in the week).
• Set up conversations with program and RM colleagues to refine the fundraising roadmap for the land, environment, and climate justice theme, with a goal of aligning outreach with upcoming program milestones and trends in climate philanthropy.
• Conducted a review meeting with the fundraising team to analyze the prior quarter’s fundraising data, identify potential gaps in thematic coverage, discuss trends in conversion rates, and refine 2026 revenue projections.
• Conducted one-on-ones with each RM team member, troubleshooting bottlenecks and advising on tactics to advance their work.
• Gave final greenlight to the Strategic Engagement team for our year-end digital fundraising messaging and schedule.
• Authored an op-ed on Namati’s approach to global solidarity and learning, drawing on the organization’s recent M&E report and tying into philanthropic discourse around locally-led solutions.
• Reviewed our new opportunity and renewal pipelines, reassigning two major funder relationship owners to better align fundraising goals with evolving RM team structure.

About You

Must-Haves

• Minimum 10 years of experience in non-profit fundraising, including at least 5 years in a leadership or senior management role with significant fundraising and staff management responsibilities.
• Proven track record of securing 7- or 8-figure gifts from institutional funders and/or individual donors.
• Strong people management skills and experience overseeing high-performing teams with humility and empathy.
• Ability to pair big-picture strategy with strong execution, both through your own work and by enabling excellence in your team.
• Exceptional relationship-building and communication skills that allow you to write and speak with clarity, humanness, and moral force.
• Cross-cultural competency and experience working across diverse teams, themes, and geographies.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience driving capital campaigns or building social enterprise is a significant asset.
• Prior experience in legal empowerment, human rights, or international development.
• Experience living in or fundraising for organizations in Africa, Asia, and/or Latin America.
• Experience leading teams through periods of change and/or growth.

Location and Travel

We’re looking for a successful candidate to be based in the Washington, D.C. metro area. We will also consider applicants from CT, MA, MD, NJ, NY, or VA. Please note that candidates must already be legally eligible to work in the United States to be considered for the role; Namati cannot sponsor visas.

If the successful candidate is based in/near Washington D.C., they will follow Namati’s hybrid office policy, which calls for staff to report to the office two days per week between Tuesday and Thursday.

The role typically requires 15-20% travel, including internationally. Travel requirements may change over time based on evolving priorities. The successful candidate will be expected to work non-standard hours occasionally to accommodate the various time zones of Namati’s teams.

Namati’s work has been featured in/onDemocracy Journal,Amanpour & Co.New York Times,the Guardian,Devex,WIRED,the Washington Post, among others, and has beendocumentedby the Sundance Institute. Vivek Maru, Namati’s CEO, gave aTED Talkin 2017 which has been viewed over 1.3 million times. In 2016, Namati was honored with theSkoll Award for Social Entrepreneurshipand in 2017, the Schwab Foundation named Vivek Maru and colleague Sonkita Conteh two of itsSocial Entrepreneurs of the Year. Namati has a perfect score, 100/100, onCharity Navigatorand has earnedGuidestar’sPlatinum Seal of Transparency.

About Namati

Since 2011, Namati has worked to build a movement of grassroots justice advocates worldwide. We’ve grown tremendously, from a small founding group of big-hearted change-makers to a global staff of 180+ people across 12 time zones in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The Grassroots Justice Network, which we co-founded and still convene to this day, has grown from 30 people in one room to the world’s largest community of justice advocates, with membership from 4,200 organizations across 175 countries.

Since our founding, we have supported local communities to take on thousands of justice issues, directly improving the lives of over 5 million people, protecting over 3 million acres of forests and grasslands, and strengthening rights for over 155 million people. Together with communities, partners, and Network members, we’ve envisioned - and won- transformative changes, like theCustomary Land Rights and National Land Commission Actsof Sierra Leone, and the world’s firstLegal Empowerment Fund.

About Resource Mobilization

Alongside the growth in our ambition and impact, Namati’s budget has increased, on average, by 18% per year -- from $5M to more than $15M in ten years. Our donor base has grown from 3 founding partners to over 40 bilateral and philanthropic funding partners. Major recent investments include an unrestricted award from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, and an 8-year, $20M award from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation through the Racial Equity 2030 competition. Many of our funding partners remain with us for the long haul. We are particularly proud that two longtime supporters, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation, went on to support the Legal Empowerment Fund, with an aim to mobilize $100M to support grassroots justice.

At the heart of our fundraising track record is our commitment to bold, inspired action as fundraisers: fundraising is organizing. Namati’s Resource Mobilization team does not take a transactional approach to fundraising; instead, we form relationships with funding partners committed not only to our organization, but to the entire legal empowerment movement. We strive to build and steward expansive, long-term, and high-level funding partnerships that match the ambitious scale of our vision.

This kind of fundraising requires a team of aligned, courageous, and strategic connectors who understand where Namati is uniquely placed to make a difference, who can learn continually from our work - and the work of our network and collaborators - to identify promising opportunities, and to create new ones.

Compensation and Benefits

We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate and the responsibility, scope, and complexity of the role. Namati's staff position bands range from 1 (entry level / assistant) to 9 (Managing Director). This position will either be at band 8 (Director) or at band 9 (Managing Director), based on the candidate’s experience and qualifications.

We base our compensation on the markets where our staff operate. The offer range for this position is likely to fall between $115,000 - $147,500 based on the final job level determined by the responsibility, scope, and complexity of the position; most offers are made in the first half of the offer range. We will discuss salary requirements and potential job banding with candidates early on in the hiring process to ensure alignment in the initial stages.

Namati offers a broad range of benefits, including:

Health insurance:we pay 80% of the base plan premium for individuals, and 50% for dependents.

Paid time off:new staff have 12 sick days and 3 personal days, and accrue 15 days of paid vacation (increasing to 20 after two years). Namati closes its offices organization-wide for “winter break” from December 25 to January 1. Additionally, we provide six weeks of paid parental leave.

401(k) retirement planning:Namati contributes 5% of your salary plus matches your contribution up to an additional 5%.

Professional development:we value – and set aside a professional development fund toward – staff having access to external professional development opportunities.

Application instructions

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