Executive Secretary, Principal Gifts
Deadline: 04-18-2024
Job No.: 936100
Department: University Advancement
Type: Administrative Professional
Salary Range: Negotiable
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Description
Michigan State University seeks an organized, strategic-thinking, and experienced professional to support the Office of Principal Gifts and select constituency programs. The ideal candidate will be flexible and enthusiastic, possess a consistent level of excellent communication and customer service skills, enjoy a fast-paced environment, and be adept at preparing reports. The work of this individual must be done with a high degree of accuracy while under pressure. Importantly for our team, the Executive Secretary should be able to independently prioritize tasks that require immediate attention while arranging the complex and detailed scheduling of both staff and donors. Prospective candidates will have excellent written and communication skills, with the ability to produce business correspondence, solicitation materials, appropriate letters of acknowledgment, and reports. They will have a demonstrated ability to establish and manage multiple high-level relationships with complex, multifaceted organizations successfully and simultaneously. The individual sought for this role will also have in-depth knowledge of the scope of development work within higher education.
The Office of Principal Gifts works with top-level donors and prospects with the ability to give $5M or more to the institution. Principal Gifts provides creative and visionary leadership in the coordination of fundraising endeavors at the multi-million-dollar level and across university-wide programs. The office tracks strategy and movement on a portfolio of over 300 prospects managed across the university.
Job Duties
Administrative:
- Coordinate, schedule, and confirm internal and external meetings and appointments for Principal Gift staff. Given the nature of the meetings and the high level of individuals involved, the scheduling of these meetings is complex; most include multiple attendees who also maintain complex schedules.
- Coordinate, schedule, and confirm UA-wide meetings for the Principal Gifts team, including Principal Gift Prospect Strategy Meetings and Principal Gift Workgroup Meetings to include leadership, prospect managers, prospect team members, and additional support staff.
- Coordinate meeting logistics and assist with presentations, reports, and communications. This includes preparing database reports using report generators, excel reports, PowerPoint presentations, and presentation packets.
- Communicate effectively: interact with external constituents (donors and prospects) with a high degree of professionalism, integrity, and personal warmth; convey time-critical messages, often through text or email; use strong writing skills needed to proof, edit, and/or draft correspondence to donors, fundraising staff, deans, university personnel, and potential candidates.
- Initiate and coordinate the completion of briefing reports in collaboration with development officers. Develop and manage a centralized electronic filing system and distribute briefing reports to appropriate individuals.
- Provide clerical support to the Office of Principal Gifts. This includes travel arrangements, requisitions and reimbursements, entry of contact reports and/or proposals, form and/or document preparation, mail, dissemination of letters, formatting letters and other documents, itineraries, and other documents, and ordering supplies.
- Utilize reporting tools and/or coordinate with Prospect Development and Advancement Services to develop donor and prospect lists for the Office of Principal Gifts and select Constituency Units.
Fiscal/Budget:
- Provide fiscal officer responsibilities, including coordinating Principal Gifts annual budgets with the Executive Director.
- Forecast, monitor, and analyze team member reports and constituency unit proposal activity. Schedule portfolio review meetings for development officers, preparing reports as requested.
- Handle the creation of folders and manage the filing system for the Office of Principal Gifts.
Other:
- Track constituency unit and Principal Gift Program memberships and travel schedules.
- Assist with logistics involved in candidate recruiting, including but not limited to coordinating candidate travel, lodging, itinerary, committee scheduling, and distribution of interview materials and evaluations.
- Assist with selecting and purchasing donor & interview candidate gift items, gift baskets, and special handling and shipping for the Office of Principal Gifts.
Supervision: Reports directly to the Executive Director of Principal Gifts & Constituency Units
Interacts with: Executive Director of Principal Gifts and Principal Gifts staff, Constituency deans and academic leaders, Advancement leadership, Development officers, Advancement Services, Alumni Relations and Engagement, and Spartan Athletics.
Qualifications
Knowledge equivalent to that which would normally be acquired through a high school education; five to eight years of related and progressively more responsible or expansive work experience in maintaining account ledgers, word processing, editing, desktop publishing, composing correspondence, taking dictation, spreadsheet, database and/or presentation software; or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Desired Qualifications
The optimal candidate will exhibit many of the following skills and abilities: a Bachelor’s degree; ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines; three to five years of related and progressively more responsible or expansive work experience with administrative and functional aspects of a unit or department office, working in a professional office setting, performing secretarial and administrative tasks, including experience with scheduling meetings, data entry, payroll processing, office machines, email and internet usage or in performing tasks related to the area of employment; experience in word processing, spreadsheet, mail merge, database, calendaring, publishing, and/or presentation software; or an equivalent combination of education and experience; advanced knowledge of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint; experience working in large databases and developing reports; solid skills in grammar, writing and editing; ability to proofread contracts and documents to include understanding basic mathematics; strong organizational skills; demonstrated experience to successfully work independently, as a team, and effectively prioritize workload; desire to understand principles of fundraising and the role of development in a university environment. Proficiency in MS Office 365 products, Ascend/SalesForce, Cognos reporting tool, and Enterprise Business System (EBS) at MSU; experience in a professional fundraising environment; excellent skills in grammar, writing, and editing; ability to solve problems and use initiative; demonstrated experience in analyzing, editing, and proofreading complex financial contracts and documents; experience in planning and executing high-level events and functions; focused and task-oriented; dependable and enjoys collaborating with others and being part of a team environment; outstanding customer service skills; ability to maintain highest level of confidentiality and sensitivity to personnel issues; ability to work effectively under pressure.
If you review this job description and have done many of the responsibilities or have transferable skills, we want to hear from you and welcome your application! We are seeking successful, ambitious fundraisers who want to become part of our team and, help us help us in our ambitious campaign!
How to apply
If you have any questions regarding this position, please contact Patricia Karam, Director of Recruitment, at karampat@msu.edu.
All candidates must submit an application resume and cover letter through the Michigan State University Human Resources web-based system, the URL for this website is careers.msu.edu. Please indicate the position number 936100 when submitting your application.
Screening of applicants will continue until the position is filled.
MSU is an affirmative action, equal-opportunity employer.
MSU is committed to achieving excellence through a diverse workforce and inclusive culture that encourages all people to reach their full potential. The University actively encourages applications and/or nominations of women, persons of color, veterans, and persons with disabilities.