Chief Development Officer

Description BACKGROUND The Organization Since 1984, STRIVE has helped individuals facing significant barriers to employment gain access to meaningful careers, economic mobility, and long-term opportunity. Through its proven Five-Pillar Model, STRIVE combines career readiness, occupational skills training, career coaching, job placement assistance, and lifetime support to help participants secure and sustain employment. Over four decades, STRIVE and its affiliates have served more than 90,000 individuals nationwide. Today, STRIVE operates direct-service sites in New York City, Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Northern New Jersey, and will open a new site in Houston in Spring 2027.

Additionally, STRIVE supports a growing network of partner-operated programs across the country. The organization has earned national recognition for achieving strong outcomes while serving individuals who face some of the greatest barriers to employment, including housing instability, justice-system involvement, and substance use recovery. In 2023, STRIVE launched an ambitious ten-year growth and impact plan to scale our nationwide programs and services over the next decade and expand from serving 2,000 annually to 10,000 annually by 2033.

Thanks to a generous $5 million gift from Blue Meridian Partners and with support from The Bridgespan Group, STRIVE built an extensive action plan to measure milestones for success that will inform our approach and practice as we move rigorously toward our goal. To achieve this vision, STRIVE is investing in organizational capacity, fundraising, public funding strategy, technology, evaluation, and national infrastructure. The organization's next Chief Development Officer will play a critical leadership role in securing the resources, partnerships, and strategic investments necessary to fuel this growth and national expansion.

To learn more about STRIVE, please visit www.strive.org The Position The Chief Development Officer reports to the Chief Executive Officer, serves as a member of STRIVE's Executive Leadership Team, and leads the organization's Development function. STRIVE enters this search from a position of strength. The organization has built a highly capable fundraising team, established sophisticated development systems and processes, and secured support from many of the nation's leading philanthropic institutions including Ballmer Group, Blue Meridian Partners, and MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving.

The next Chief Development Officer will focus on accelerating growth, expanding revenue, strengthening organizational positioning, and securing transformational investments that support STRIVE's long-term vision for national scale. Over the coming years, STRIVE must demonstrate its ability to expand into new markets, support partner-operated sites, increase public funding, activate local fundraising ecosystems, and sustain a growing national network. The Chief Development Officer will serve as the architect of that fundraising…

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