The Colburn School
Los Angeles, CA
Located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles, The Colburn School is an internationally recognized leader in performing arts education and is part of the fabric of the Los Angeles cultural community. With a world-renowned faculty, Colburn trains local and international students in four different units: Colburn Conservatory of Music, Colburn Community School of Performing Arts, Colburn Music Academy and Colburn Dance Academy. The Community Engagement office serves all four units with various programmatic initiatives.
The Colburn School's mission is to provide the highest quality performing arts education at all levels of development in an optimal learning environment.
Summary of Position:
Reporting to the Vice President for Advancement, the Advancement Coordinator is the internal and external liaison for the advancement department. Develops and implements strategies and programs that ensure coordinated access and high-quality service for external constituents as well as internal awareness and understanding of the advancement function in support of the School’s mission.
Proactively communicates with a variety of constituencies (staff, faculty, alumni, students, parents, donors, potential donors and the local community) for the purpose of enhancing engagement with the advancement function and connecting to fundraising and community-building activities.
Supports current and prospective donors to deepen their relationship with and increase support of the Colburn School. They will achieve this through excellence in advancement operations, including: donor services, gift processing, reporting, and event support. They will also deepen the relationships across the School as the internal advancement liaison and as such will ensure timely, accurate, and inclusive information flow within the advancement team and then across the School.
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Supports the advancement team’s responsibility for accomplishment of annual contribution revenue budget, for advancing the School's current endowment campaign and for accomplishing an ambitious building fund campaign.
- Responsible for advancement department customer service activities: answering the donor relations information phone line and email; gift processing and acknowledgements, including data entry, maintenance of data integrity, and donor support services; special events support; coordination of advancement team activities;
- Will create and implement a proactive internal engagement across departments and divisions at the School, including academic and operations teams;
- Contributes to the effective management of the advancement expense budgets through meticulous expense tracking and reporting in alignment with advancement goals;
- Builds and maintains internal advancement communications protocol to ensure internal communication amongst staff members and promotes interaction with donors and prospects through participation and collaboration on major events throughout the year including: Colburn Society events, Gala, house concerts, recitals and other key events to attract and retain new and existing donors;
- Helps advancement team and senior leadership with donor research activities to align donors’ specific interests with the Colburn School’s programs. Provides input on prospects and donors as a results of customer service interactions to support the cultivation/solicitation/stewardship cycle, and helps coordinate with Colburn administrative and academic leadership;
- Maintains and develops best practices and ensures a coordinated and collaborative approach; establishes credibility and collaborative relationships with senior leadership, Board members, donors, volunteers, and colleagues from all academic units and other departments;
- Helps prepares reports, donor stewardship materials and briefings for senior leadership, and solicits input from advancement team members to ensure robust reporting;
- Designs and executes data integrity projects including returned mail, address updates, merge and inactivation processes;
- Responsible for having a current, thorough, and comprehensive understanding of the Colburn School’s mission, areas of excellence, student and faculty profiles, services, programs, and goals, to serve as a reference for advancement department colleagues;
- Performs other duties as required.
Education and Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree and minimum of two years of related work experience in advancement including awareness of fundraising vehicles and stewardship, experience with patron/customer services and databases and reporting;
- Ability to successfully manage multiple projects under tight deadlines;
- Demonstrated skill in planning, prioritizing, organizing, and following through;
- Ability to apply strategic and creative thinking, while being persistent, motivated and energetic, along with the ability to work in detail-oriented fashion;
- Demonstrated stature and integrity to gain the trust and confidence of academic, administrative, and volunteer leadership and peers, as well as donors, students and their families, ticket-buyers, and prospects;
- Outstanding interpersonal skills; must have credibility, good judgment, integrity, discretion and exercise diplomacy in dealing with a variety of constituents;
- An effective communicator who is articulate and persuasive in writing as well as verbally; adept at crafting donor correspondence, agendas, and department briefs; comfortable creating and giving presentations to a variety of audiences;
- A team player who can skillfully coordinate activities with the VP of Advancement and peers;
- Decisive and resourceful with the ability to anticipate and act on events and opportunities;
- Direct experience with special events, catering, or other hospitality experience;
- Must be available to work a flexible schedule including weekends, evenings, and night hours as needed;
- Knowledge of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint; Adobe Creative Suite experience is a plus;
- Must have appreciation of performing arts and education; experience in an education setting, especially a professional performing arts institution, including being a performer, is preferred.
Excellent salary and great benefits including medical, dental, life, LTD, 403(b) retirement plan and more!
