VP of Philanthropy

Job Summary

The Vice President of Philanthropy owns individual giving and engagement at Scholars of Finance — the strategy, the relationships, the team, and the results. 

This is a builder’s role: you will turn a founder-led fundraising and engagement effort into a durable, scalable institution, while personally carrying a portfolio of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth donors and leading the team that grows that engine over time. You will advise leaders on how they invest their time, talent, and treasure. You build the motion for engaging hundreds of leaders, volunteers, and funders. You will own donor relationships end-to-end, deploying our CEO and Board as closing assets on your timeline. 

This role is a rare opportunity to take a proven nonprofit with a $10M+ track record and world-class backers and build the individual giving and engagement function that will carry it to the next order of magnitude. The starting salary for this role is $150K-$170K. This leader will report to the CEO and serve on our Executive Team.

About Scholars of Finance

Scholars of Finance is a rapidly growing organization on a mission to transform our economic system to help make the world a better place. We are sending thousands of purpose-driven, principled future leaders into the finance industry to positively influence the trillions of dollars it manages and allocates. College is the entry point into finance, so we provide leadership development to undergraduates and help them secure roles in finance where they can effect systemic change.

Since 2019, we've raised $12M+ and impacted 7,000+ students across 60+ universities, and we're just getting started. We're a close, motivated team with a big vision of a future where all finance leaders steward the world's capital with integrity, humility, compassion, and excellence. We are fortunate to be backed by world-class Founding Partners such as BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, KKR, and U.S. Bank, and are being advised by incredible industry leaders to achieve our mission.

Transformation You'll Drive

• Grow annual revenue from $2.5M to $10M+ by 2030, building the individual-giving engine that empowers us to deepen our impact, grow our team, and scale our mission to transform finance.

• Inspire hundreds of high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals across private equity, venture capital, investment banking, asset management, and beyond to invest their time, talent, and treasure in our mission.

• Turn a founder-led fundraising and volunteer engagement effort into a durable, scalable institution — with the team, systems, and discipline to compound results year over year.

• Scale the only organization in the world developing purpose-driven, principled future finance leaders with the character to steward the world's capital for good.

What You'll Do

Executive Leadership and Strategy

• Be a member of the Executive Team of this organization, build our culture, and steer us toward achieving our mission to transform finance.

• Set the vision, goals, and operating cadence for individual fundraising and volunteer engagement, aligned to strategy, revenue, and program outcomes.

• Own the number — the pipeline, the forecast, and the path to it — steering fundraising and volunteer engagement efforts day to day across our organization.

• Build and run the fundraising operating system (KPIs, dashboards, meeting rhythms, pipeline reviews) that gives leadership a clear view of performance and projections.

• Manage budget and resourcing, anticipating seasonal shifts in donor activity and adjusting plans accordingly.

Team Leadership and Development

• Take on and coach two direct reports, one fundraiser and one revenue operations manager, and strengthen their performance and output.

• Build, coach, and develop a high-performing fundraising team that multiplies our collective velocity rather than carrying it alone.

• Establish the systems, cadence, and accountability that enable individual giving and engagement to grow nonlinearly as the team expands.

• Build a culture of trust, ownership, and continuous improvement among the people you lead — across both fundraisers and operations team members.

• Work closely with Partnership, Events and Marketing team members to ensure a strong donor and volunteer experience, and establish clear unified forecasting.

• Bring in the CEO and Board strategically to help close 6- and 7-figure gifts on your timeline, deliberately and proactively utilizing leaders to drive your pipeline.

Gift Cultivation and Stewardship

• Personally identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward a portfolio of HNW and UHNW donors, building authentic relationships that inspire significant, sustained support.

• Grow existing donors — deepening relationships and inspiring them to expand their commitment to our mission over time.

• Represent SOF with credibility and warmth in high-stakes donor settings, holding the confidence of sophisticated, affluent leaders.

• Build and oversee the systems that grow mid-tier giving among mid-level professionals and monthly giving among alumni and young professionals, primarily through automated or low-touch processes.

• Develop the systems and processes that enable us to engage hundreds, and eventually thousands, of volunteers (via mentoring, speaking, advising, etc.) so we can fulfill our programs and build deep relationships with our volunteer community.

What You'll Need

Foundational Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant experience in nonprofit fundraising, major gifts, or philanthropy linked to finance, education, leadership development, or mission-driven organizations.

• 3+ years building, managing, and developing high-performing teams across multiple workstreams and timelines.

• Evidence of sourcing, closing, and stewarding major gifts and ownership of a significant relationship portfolio — and the appetite to build the function that scales it.

• Proven experience building systems, teams, processes, and stewarding hundreds of relationships of various types (e.g., donating, volunteering, advising)

• Ownership and execution in fast-moving, deadline-driven, high-empowerment environments — you create structure and don't wait to be handed a playbook.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication. You write with precision and speed and serve as a credible, compelling face of the organization with affluent leaders.

• Proven ability to set and execute a fundraising or revenue strategy with clear goals, data-driven decisions, and measurable outcomes.

• Proven comfort with working on a fully-remote team, and the ability to travel up to 10-20% of the time for off-sites and donor meetings.

Leadership and Management

• Experience building and running an operating cadence that drives execution: priorities, metrics, accountability, and adaptation.

• Ability to lead through others across full-time staff, interns, contractors, and senior stakeholders.

• Strong people leadership: you coach, set clear expectations, build followership, and develop others into successful fundraisers or revenue operations and analytics talent.

• Proven capacity as a "Multiplier": you know how to multiply the intelligence of your team and get the best from people.

Mentalities for Success

• Mission-driven: you love our mission, have a passion for making finance a force for good, and are excited to develop morally sound leaders.

• Ownership orientation: you take full responsibility for the numbers and the outcomes, and you drive the work rather than wait to be directed.

• Systems-and-scale orientation: you build repeatable processes that let fundraising scale consistently as the organization grows.

• Strong strategic judgment: you identify opportunities, anticipate risks, and make clear trade-offs, considering all stakeholders affected.

• Growth mindset: you seek and thrive on feedback, and you proactively drive your own growth and learning to expand your impact.

• SOF Values & Principles: you exemplify the four values and twelve principles of Scholars of Finance, both professionally and personally.

Preferred but not required

• Experience leading major campaigns, capital campaigns, growth campaigns, or transformational gift strategies.

• Demonstrated success scaling an organization (or a comparable function through a similar inflection) from early-stage traction toward sustainable mid-scale operations, including building the systems, team, and donor pipeline to support that growth.

• Experience in startups, scaleups, or high-growth environments.

• Time in (or experience working with) the finance industry at any type of firm, for any length of time. Our hypothesis is that people who have seen finance from the inside most fully appreciate why our mission matters and can speak credibly with the donors we serve. That said, we've found that big-picture, long-term systems thinkers who want to make a huge impact in the world also get very excited about what we do.

Benefits You'll Enjoy

• 401(k) match (100% match up to 5% of the base salary)

• Generous health, dental, and vision insurance

• Unlimited PTO; all federal holidays off

• Quarterly team offsites, expenses fully paid when in-person

• High-growth culture to accelerate your professional development

• A unique company ensuring all team members thrive holistically