Officer, Prospect Research at International Rescue Committee

The Officer, Prospect Research - Global sits within GPPS’s Prospect Research & Management team, supporting the IRC’s sustainability by finding opportunities for funding, focusing our resources, and protecting our reputation through due diligence. They are responsible for rigorously synthesizing data and information sources, providing senior staff and frontline fundraisers with high-quality research on foundations, corporations, and individual donors based outside the US, as well as strategic feedback for board meetings, donor meetings, and events. The right candidate will build positive relationships across internal teams and external vendors, while delivering superior research and reporting services that ultimately increase philanthropic support for our clients.

Major Responsibilities:

• Create confidential biographical, financial, and due diligence research profiles on foundations, corporations, and global HNWI donors and prospects, applying different online and electronic sources;
• Build robust pipelines for fundraisers by identifying, rating, and qualifying HNWI donors capable of significant financial support;
• Implement and improve tools and methods to support comprehensive prospect research and portfolio management, including relationship mapping, analytics, predictive modeling, and other appropriate metrics;
• Integrate data-driven and qualitative analyses of specific client and broader trends into tactics and strategies for client management, opportunity development, and maximized revenue;
• Promote research support services to colleagues through presentations and reports, and establish benchmarking to evaluate efficiency of research recommendations and products;
• Collaborate with global frontline fundraising colleagues to develop strategic recommendations for donors and prospects, with the broader goal to increase support for the IRC’s clients;
• Manage a suite of resources (e.g. CRM database, subscription databases and media tools) to understand and respond to market-led and client-specific opportunities;
• Conceptualize special projects (e.g. electronic screening by vendors, data mining analyses, ad hoc reports, etc.) and conduct proactive research projects in partnership with colleagues across the organization.

Essential Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree – Master’s degree preferred
• Knowledge of quantitative and qualitative analysis and business intelligence work in support of non-profit fundraising, with familiarity of corporations, foundations, and/or markets outside the US;
• High proficiency in internet search engines and sophisticated search techniques, fundraising software, data retrieval services (e.g. LexisNexis, iWave, Foundation Directory, etc.), MS Office (Word, Outlook and Excel, in particular).
• Experience working with a relational database a necessity, preferably Salesforce;

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

• Research/database management (Salesforce);
• Analyzing, interpreting, and synthesizing data;
• Ability to develop proactive prospecting methodologies to support organizational goals, including data mining, sophisticated constituent database queries, etc;
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills as well as, an overall ability to be clear and concise in all communications.

Desired Qualifications:

• Keen understanding of philanthropic trends, in particular the impacts on humanitarian aid sector
• Knowledge and curiosity about emerging concepts and practices in the field of strategic philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, Public Private Partnerships, and impact investing;
• Strong interpersonal and time-management skills; confirmed ability to prioritize and deliver on time;
• Ability to act with sensitivity and discretion while working with highly confidential information;
• Knowledge of languages other than English a plus;
• Prior experience working at an international organization outside the US.