Position Profile
NORTH CAROLINA SYMPHONY
Director of Philanthropy
www.ncsymphony.org
The Position:
Reporting to the Vice President for Philanthropy and serving as a senior member of a dynamic team that works to build a more robust giving program, the Director of Philanthropy is charged with generating operating and endowment support from varied sources to meet the needs of all artistic and educational programs and initiatives of the North Carolina Symphony. We are seeking an individual who has the talent and commitment to balance a range of responsibilities and work proactively to address the organization’s funding needs. The Director will qualify, cultivate, solicit and steward a portfolio of statewide major gift prospects and will also collaborate with the VP for Philanthropy in directing and executing strategies for strengthening the major gift pipeline through annual and planned giving programs.
Position responsibilities include all major gift functions, planned and annual giving, donor research, multi-year fundraising campaigns, strategic planning, and cultivation and solicitation of individuals, corporations and foundations.
Desired Qualities:
Substantial, progressively responsible experience in fund raising with a confirmed record of success, preferably in a performing arts or cultural institution. The successful candidate will demonstrate highly developed tactical planning skills; creativity; initiative and innovation; passion and persistence; excellent interpersonal, organizational, and communication skills; competence in budget preparation and management; attention to detail; be self motivating and goal oriented; and have experience in asking for and closing major individual and corporate gifts. The Symphony desires a candidate who is savvy and smart, with a sense of humor and fresh ideas, with a commitment to team-based management and the engagement and involvement of volunteer leadership, a desire to work in a fast-paced environment with high expectations, and a passion for the mission of the orchestra.
Compensation:
Competitive and negotiable; commensurate with experience. Benefits package includes health insurance through Blue Cross / Blue Shield of North Carolina, long term disability and life insurance.
The Organization:
The North Carolina Symphony is the premier performing arts organization in the state, celebrated by the citizens as the orchestra that has served them since 1932 with exciting concerts and innovative artistic collaborations. Currently entering its 78th season, the Symphony is a full-time orchestra with 68 members. It serves as North Carolina’s state orchestra and performs 180 concerts a year in its home base of “ the Triangle” – the Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill metropolitan area – and around the state. As no orchestra in America can rival the North Carolina Symphony’s commitment to statewide service and music education, the Symphony stands out as a shining example of orchestras as civic institutions in their communities.
The Symphony operates with an annual budget of $12.4 million and is led by Music Director Grant Llewellyn and Resident Conductor William Henry Curry. Its home concert hall is Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall in the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts, arguably the finest venue for the performance of live, unamplified music anywhere in the Southeast, and its summer home is the Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary’s Regency Park. Both venues have received rave reviews from audiences and media alike.
In the last five years alone, the Symphony has produced an internationally-acclaimed compact disc recording, toured the state over 14,000 miles per year, undertaken important partnerships with the Nasher Museum of Art, the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, and Playmakers Repertory Theatre, performed with internationally acclaimed artists including Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Midori, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Leonard Slatkin, Denyce Graves, Elvis Costello, James Taylor and the Bolshoi Ballet and fostered new artistic and community partnerships throughout the state with organizations ranging from the Food Bank of North Carolina to the North Carolina Community College System. In addition, the Symphony has championed the work of music teachers, advocated for arts education and inspired the children and citizens of the most rural and underserved areas of North Carolina, including performing more than 40 education concerts annually for more than 50,000 youth in schools and other venues across the state. The Symphony’s musicians and staff are committed to presenting stunning artistic programs of the highest caliber and building bridges in the community for access and inspiration.
The Area:
The Symphony’s home base of Raleigh is the state’s capital, located in the Piedmont (central) region of North Carolina. Raleigh is the largest city in a 3,500-square mile Metropolitan area known as the Triangle (Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill) and is the fifth fastest growing metropolitan area in America. Located within the area is Research Triangle Park, home to several corporate and regional headquarters: Fidelity investments, Duke Medicine, IBM, Red Hat, SAS, Quintiles, GlaxoSmithKline and Cisco all have large presences, to name a few. New home construction is steady and there is a stable real estate market for existing homes. Compared to other markets, housing is surprisingly affordable.
The home of many creative and well-educated citizens, Raleigh has been lauded as a “Best City for Business and Careers” by Fortune magazine and a “Best Place to Live in America” by Money magazine. It provides its people and businesses with a world-class combination of economic vitality, low unemployment, tremendous educational opportunity, environmental quality, and exceptional quality of life. The park system offers a vast network of recreational greenway trails that connect neighborhoods.
Thirteen institutions of higher education provide affordable and premium education, opportunities for adult and extension classes and a well-educated citizenry of students, graduates and faculty. The Triangle is also an area of tremendous resources where cultural and performing arts organizations thrive. Other major institutions include the North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, Carolina Ballet, American Dance Festival, Ackland Art Museum, Nasher Art Museum, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Morehead Planetarium, and Carolina Performing Arts at UNC-Chapel Hill. There are film, music, dance and crafts festivals, local theater groups and touring Broadway shows.
The Triangle is also a vital sports center. It is host to the NHL’s Stanley Cup-winning Carolina Hurricanes, baseball’s Durham Bulls, and the sports programs of ACC members Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University.
Apply To:
Send cover letter, resume, salary history, and a minimum of four professional references to:
Mary McFadden Lawson
Vice President for Philanthropy
3700 Glenwood Avenue, Ste. 130
Raleigh, NC 27612
mlawson@ncsymphony.org
No Phone Calls Please