About the position
Reporting to the Associate Vice President for Marketing and Constituent Experience, the Executive Director will lead the Donor Experience, Annual Giving, and Advancement Marketing and Communications teams as part of a unified strategy to strengthen the lifelong relationship between Stony Brook University and its 220,000 alumni. This role is responsible for increasing alumni engagement and support, shaping a cohesive annual giving strategy, enhancing stewardship practices, and aligning messaging and outreach across Advancement. The Executive Director will partner closely with the AVP; Constituent Experience team leads, including Alumni Relations and Events; and other teams across the Advancement division to ensure these interconnected areas work in sync to deepen constituent relationships and advance divisional goals. The Executive Director will provide strategic oversight for donor experience, marketing, and annual giving initiatives, ensuring alignment with the mission, vision, and philanthropic priorities of the university and Advancement division. This includes building a best-in-class program to craft compelling storytelling, develop integrated marketing campaigns, and deliver a consistent, high-quality constituent experience that fosters long-term engagement and giving. The role also will lead efforts to evaluate and evolve programs using data, constituent feedback, and industry best practices.
Responsibilities
- Provide senior strategic leadership of the Advancement Marketing, Donor Experience, and Annual Giving teams, ensuring alignment with university and Advancement priorities.
- Develop and refine integrated engagement strategies that strengthen alumni and donor relationships and maximize impact.
- Foster a high-performing team culture rooted in creativity, collaboration, and accountability.
- Collaborate across Advancement to align strategy with initiatives such as Development, Planned Giving, Corporate Relations, and Talent Recruitment.
- Develop and apply constituent engagement metrics to guide strategy and track progress across teams.
- Direct multi-channel marketing and communications strategy, ensuring brand consistency and compelling storytelling across platforms.
- Guide audience segmentation and persona-based campaign development to deliver targeted and impactful outreach.
- Lead multi-year, multi-channel strategies aligned with campaign and philanthropic goals.
- Build and evolve digital marketing efforts using best practices and trackable metrics across web, email, and social media.
- Collaborate with partners to highlight donor impact and encourage community engagement.
- Oversee strategy and execution of annual giving programs to meet university goals of broadening donor support and building the philanthropic pipeline.
- Develop metrics-based strategies for renewal, retention, reengagement and acquisition of supporters.
- Create a comprehensive system to analyze results. Monitor KPIs and continually adapt strategies to optimize participation, retention, and pipeline development.
- Develop strategy and execute Stony Brook's donor stewardship and recognition program through personalized, high-quality donor experiences that support long-term engagement and giving.
- Create and lead robust donor experience strategies for donors of all philanthropic levels, including Annual Giving, Major and Principal level donors.
- Manage budgets, staffing, and resource allocation across assigned areas.
- Create operating systems that support efficiency, execution, and staff development.
- Contribute to Advancement-wide campaigns and initiatives as a senior team member.
- Partner with Advancement and university stakeholders to coordinate engagement efforts and messaging.
- Build strong partnerships with academic and administrative units to support shared engagement and philanthropic goals.
- Other duties or projects as assigned as appropriate to rank and departmental mission.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree (foreign equivalent or higher).
- Seven (7) years of full-time experience in constituent experience, alumni and donor relations, marketing and communications, and/or related areas.
- Experience working within a higher education, nonprofit, large healthcare system, and/or related field.
- Direct supervisory experience.
- Experience managing donor engagement strategies, annual giving programs, and/or comparable initiatives.
Nice-to-haves
- Advanced degree (foreign equivalent or higher).
- Experience designing and implementing comprehensive strategies to increase constituent awareness, engagement, and philanthropic support.
- Experience managing and tracking budgets.
- Experience coordinating staff, volunteers, and leadership to plan and execute large-scale initiatives.
- Experience presenting.
- Experience working in a public university setting.
- Marketing experience.
Benefits
- $4,000 UUP annual location pay, paid biweekly.
