Transcend
Development Manager
🇺🇸 Remote - US
🕑 Full-Time
💰 TBD
💻 Development & Advancement
🗓️ July 25th, 2025
Salesforce
Edtech.com's Summary
Transcend is hiring a Development Manager to join their Storytelling, Partnerships, and Opportunities Team, focusing on private fundraising for institutional funders and high-net-worth individuals. The role involves executing fundraising strategies, coordinating development team efforts, and conducting prospect research to secure flexible national funding supporting Transcend's mission to create equitable learning environments.
Highlights
- Manage fundraising execution by preparing reports, proposals, and coordinating funder meetings.
- Maintain and update master funder database using Salesforce and Notion.
- Facilitate team meetings and ensure coordinated actions across the development pipeline.
- Conduct prospect research to identify and expand funder pipeline.
- Familiarity with Salesforce, Notion, and G-Suite required.
- Exceptional project and operations management skills with the ability to juggle multiple workstreams.
- Requires excellent written communication and collaborative team mindset.
- Supports flexible, fully remote work with occasional travel (~10% quarterly).
- Compensation adjusted based on geographic bands within the US, with benefits including medical, dental, vision, paid time off, and parental leave.
- Strong commitment to Transcend's mission to build equitable learning environments across the US.
Development Manager Full Description
Development Manager
Start Date: Immediate
Role Type: Full-time employee
Location: Flexible -- Fully remote/virtual team
Travel: Willingness to travel once a quarter, ~10% of the time
Manager: Catherine Townes; Partner, Development
Who We Are
Transcend’s mission is to support communities to create and spread extraordinary learning environments for all. Founded in 2015, Transcend has partnered with over 390 schools/partners, which collectively serve thousands of students in over 30 states across the country. As a research & development hub for the education field, Transcend provides schools and systems with research-backed, community-driven models and capacity so they can make significant leaps to reimagine the future of education. Transcend is a nonprofit that operates with a fully remote, nationwide team; currently with 120+ teammates and growing. For more information, follow us on LinkedIn, check out this podcast featuring our two co-founders on Class Disrupted, or read this recent article that illuminates the need for this work.
The Role
The Storytelling, Partnerships, and Opportunities Team (SPOT) is Transcend’s revenue team: we support Transcend’s annual revenue goal through partnership cultivation, philanthropic fundraising, government grants, and aligned and strategic marketing and communications. Transcend’s Development function focuses on all aspects of private fundraising across both institutional funders and high-net worth individuals, with a focus on both flexible funding for Transcend and project-specific fundraising support across the organization.
We’re excited to add a Development Manager to the SPOT team. This role will be critical in helping deepen our impact by bolstering our efforts to secure flexible, national funding that powers our mission. At any given time, the role will work across the following workstreams:
Fundraising Execution: ~50%
Support the tactical execution of our fundraising strategy across key funding areas like national foundations, high-net-worth individuals (HNWI), and philanthropic advisors. This includes:
- Drafting and submitting high-quality reports, proposals, and concept notes for all flexible/national funders
- Preparing logistics for funder meetings by drafting meeting agendas, materials, and following up with next steps
- Coordinating outreach for new flexible/national funder prospects, including network mapping and preparing outreach materials
- Contributing as a thought partner to the team’s fundraising strategy—bringing insight, ideas, and a learning orientation to how we grow and sustain our funder relationships.
Team Coordination: ~30%
Drive strong coordination, systems-building, and communication across the Development team to ensure we are taking consistent, proactive, and coordinated actions with all funders and philanthropic advisors. This includes:
- Maintain master funder database in Salesforce and Notion with up-to-date contact information, giving history, funder goals/strategies, and next steps for full funder pipeline
- Assign and track completion of all funder follow-ups and deliverables across team members; escalate delays or bottlenecks
- Design, coordinate, and facilitate new Development team meetings to align on recent and upcoming funder actions, assign follow-ups, and surface strategic decisions. You will own both the facilitation of this meeting and the development of systems that strengthen coordination and collaboration across our funder pipeline
- Ensure all team members have visibility into relevant funder activities across portfolios to identify collaboration opportunities
- Owning logistics and agenda-setting for existing weekly Development check-ins, and participating in all key team routines (e.g., Dev meetings, SPOT standups, RM meetings, and quarterly/trimesterly SPOT + portfolio gatherings)
Prospect Research: ~5–10%
Help expand our funder pipeline by identifying and researching potential new funders. This includes:
- Conducting monthly or quarterly prospect research aligned to specific needs – either portfolio-specific or topic-specific
- Responding to ad hoc research needs based on names surfaced through meetings or networks
- Synthesizing research into clear, actionable insights to inform outreach strategy
The remainder ~10-15% of the role’s allocation is dedicated to org-wide collaboration, community-building spaces, and learning and development opportunities.
Who You Are
You are a coordinator, executor, and collaborator who thrives on making big things happen behind the scenes. You have outstanding project management and love to keep track of all of the details. You love building systems that center people, make complex work more seamless, and help a mission-driven team thrive. To all of this, you also bring the following knowledge, skills, and orientations:
- A wholehearted dedication to Transcend’s mission to build and spread extraordinary, equitable learning environments for all
- A values-driven approach that centers trust, collaboration, and equity across a wide range of teammates
- Flexibility, curiosity, and a deep hunger for feedback—you’re excited to learn, grow, and adapt
- A collaborative spirit and team-first mindset—you enjoy working across functions and roles to move work forward and make each other better
- Exceptional project and operations management skills—you’re organized, proactive, and able to juggle multiple workstreams without letting anything slip through the cracks
- The ability to coordinate and galvanize a group—ensuring clarity of roles, assigning tasks, and keeping momentum across diverse teammates
- Clear, persuasive, and high-quality writing skills
- A systems mindset—you can connect strategy to execution, build and improve team-wide processes, and bring thoughtful structure to ambiguity
- Comfort and fluency with tech tools like Salesforce, Notion, and G-Suite to keep information flowing and collaboration running smoothly
- Research chops—you’re able to lean in on prospect research by surfacing new funder prospects, synthesizing what you learn into actionable insights, and staying attuned to the broader philanthropic landscape
- You care deeply about people and believe that strong relationships are at the core of the work
Application & Hiring Process
We review applications on a rolling basis and are committed to a thoughtful and human-centered hiring experience that helps candidates feel what it’s like to work at Transcend. Here’s what you can expect if you are selected to move forward:
- Initial interview with the team via Zoom to learn more about your background. A note on compensation: during your initial interview with the team, we will share the salary range for your particular location. *More on how we determine this is below.
- Try-on activity to engage in a role-aligned exercise. This helps us get a sense of how you approach the work and gives you a feel for what the role might be like.
- Try-on task debrief with the team.
- Compensation & benefits convo where we’ll share information around where we anticipate you’ll share within the range, share more about our employment policies and benefits for the role, and answer any questions you may have.
- 1:1 with the hiring manager to debrief the role, talk more about working styles, and create the space to explore the role more deeply.
- Final interview with our Chief Partnerships Officer.
- Reference checks to learn more about your superpowers and working style.
A Few Nuts & Bolts
We are an experienced team focused on extraordinary learning for all. We welcome candidates who are passionate about ensuring that all students thrive. We are also committed to providing our colleagues with a competitive benefits package and offer medical, dental, and vision coverage options, org-wide holidays, paid time off, paid parental leave, professional development opportunities, and fully remote work. We take pride in our collaborative environment, exceptional team, and shared commitment to principled, impactful work.
*As a national team, we apply a cost-of-labor adjustment by adjusting salaries into 3 geographical bands (geo-band) in order to offer competitive compensation for all employees across the US. These geo-bands help us tailor compensation appropriately based on the specific location of each teammate.
We look forward to learning more about you!
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