Primary Purpose:
The College of Medicine raises between $6 million and $10 million annually in philanthropic support. The Advancement Officer, Annual and Leadership Giving, plays a key role in achieving fundraising goals by managing a portfolio of annual, leadership, and emerging major gift donors and prospects, while contributing to the College's overall fundraising and donor engagement objectives.
The Advancement Officer, Annual and Leadership Giving, is responsible for growing philanthropic support for the College of Medicine through annual giving, leadership giving, donor stewardship, and donor pipeline development. The position builds and advances donor relationships, helping move supporters from engagement and discovery to deeper, long-term investment in the College's priorities.
Nature of Work:
Reporting to the Director of Advancement, College of Medicine, the Advancement Officer works collaboratively with colleagues across the College of Medicine and University Relations to advance fundraising, donor engagement, and stewardship priorities.
This position operates in a dynamic, relationship-focused environment requiring initiative, sound judgment, discretion, and strong organizational skills. The incumbent manages multiple priorities while building and maintaining relationships with donors, alumni, volunteers, faculty, staff, and community partners. The role involves handling confidential donor and prospect information and requires a high degree of professionalism, accuracy, and attention to detail.
The position follows a hybrid work model and may require occasional evening, weekend, and travel commitments to support donor engagement and fundraising activities.
Typical Duties or Accountabilities:
Accountabilities
Annual & Leadership Giving
- Develop and implement annual and leadership giving strategies that strengthen donor retention, renewal, upgrading, and long-term philanthropic engagement.
- Manage relationships with annual, monthly, and leadership-level donors, generally below the major gift threshold.
- Conduct discovery and qualification conversations and meetings with new, existing, and lapsed donors to deepen engagement and identify future giving opportunities.
- Collaborate with central Annual Giving and Planned Giving teams to maximize donor engagement and philanthropic growth.
- Support class giving initiatives and other annual fundraising activities in collaboration with Alumni Relations and Engagement, where appropriate.
- Identify planned giving opportunities arising through annual giving and stewardship activities and advance them for strategy development.
Donor Stewardship & Recognition
- Lead stewardship coordination activities for the College of Medicine, including serving as the primary contact for annual donor impact reporting.
- Ensure donors receive timely acknowledgement, meaningful recognition, and clear reporting on the impact of their philanthropy.
- Coordinate stewardship activities with Advancement, faculty, Finance, UGME, PGME, Communications, and University Relations colleagues.
- Build strong donor relationships through stewardship calls and face to face meetings, ongoing engagement, and proactive communication.
- Support donor-funded student awards and bursaries by working collaboratively to ensure donor expectations and student impact reporting are fulfilled.
- Develop and strengthen stewardship processes, donor touchpoints, and engagement tracking to enhance the overall donor experience.
Major Gift Pipeline Development
- Manage a portfolio of approximately 100–125 annual, leadership, and emerging major gift donors and prospects while maintaining appropriate frontline activity to advance relationships through the philanthropic pipeline.
- Conduct discovery, qualification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship activities that advance donors through the philanthropic pipeline.
- Identify alignment between donor interests and College priorities while collaborating with the Director of Advancement and Advancement colleagues on strategy and prospect movement.
- Identify and refer major gift and planned giving opportunities emerging from annual giving and stewardship activities.
- Maintain appropriate frontline fundraising activity and pipeline metrics consistent with a blended annual and major gift portfolio.
Strategic Planning & Collaboration
- Contribute to annual and multi-year fundraising and donor engagement plans aligned with College priorities.
- Support donor engagement activities related to the Dean's Philanthropy Advisory Circle and other strategic initiatives.
- Foster a culture of philanthropy by building meaningful relationships with donors, faculty, leadership, and community partners.
- Collaborate across Advancement, Alumni Relations, Communications, faculty, and College leadership to achieve fundraising and stewardship goals.
Operational Excellence
- Ensure donor activity, stewardship interactions, and relationship management are accurately documented within the CRM system each week.
- Use donor data and reporting to improve segmentation, outreach planning, stewardship coordination, and portfolio management.
- Contribute to continuous improvement of advancement processes related to donor communications, stewardship, qualification, and pipeline management.
- Help ensure donor relationships have clear ownership, documented next steps, and coordinated engagement strategies.
Education:
- A diploma, certificate, degree, or equivalent combination of education and experience in a related field is required.
- A Certified Fund Raising Expert (CFRE) designation is preferred.
Experience:
Three to five years of progressively responsible experience in fundraising: including annual, leadership, major gift, or planned giving, with demonstrated experience in donor relations and stewardship.
Demonstrated success in building meaningful relationships, managing competing priorities, and achieving fundraising and engagement goals.
Experience using donor databases, CRM systems, and fundraising technology is an asset.
Skills: Exceptional interpersonal skills with the confidence and initiative to build relationships and engage donors, alumni, volunteers, and community partners.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including strong writing, editing, proofreading, presentation, and interpersonal abilities. Demonstrated ability to prepare professional correspondence, reports, presentations, donor proposals, and stewardship materials with accuracy, strong grammar, and attention to detail.
- Strong meeting facilitation, listening, and questioning skills, with the ability to gather information, identify opportunities, and advance relationships.
- Highly organized with strong project management skills, time management, attention to detail, and the ability to manage multiple priorities and deadlines.
- Demonstrated ability to maintain accurate records, prepare meaningful contact reports, and document activities within a CRM environment.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications, particularly Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams.
- Ability to work independently, exercise sound judgment, and collaborate effectively with diverse internal and external stakeholders.
Inquiries regarding this position can be directed to [email protected] 306-966-2600
Department: College of Medicine
Status: Permanent
Employment Group: ASPA
Full Time Equivalent (FTE): 1.0
Salary: The salary range, based on 1.0 FTE, is $69,035.00 - 107,868.00 per annum. The starting salary will be commensurate with education and experience.
Salary Family (if applicable): Specialist Professional
Salary Phase/Band: Phase 2
Posted Date: 7/31/2026
Closing Date: 9/11/2026 at 6:00 pm CST
Number of Openings: 1
Work Location: On Campus
The University of Saskatchewan aspires to be what the world needs and embraces equity, diversity and inclusion as foundational to excellence and innovation. We actively seek to create a welcoming environment where all individuals feel empowered to thrive, contribute, and grow. Applications from equity-deserving groups are encouraged as part of our ongoing efforts to reflect the diversity of the communities we serve: EDI Framework for Action.
We continue to grow our partnerships with Indigenous communities across the province, nationally, and internationally and value the unique perspective that Indigenous employees provide to strengthen these relationships. Verification of Indigenous Membership/Citizenship at the University of Saskatchewan is led and determined by the deybwewin | taapwaywin | tapwewin: Indigenous Truth policy and the Standing Committee in accordance with the processes developed to enact the policy. Successful candidates that assert Indigenous membership/citizenship will be asked to complete the verification process of Indigenous membership/citizenship with documentation.
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