Location: Golden, CO 

Hours: Full-time

Position Mission

The Director of Direct Response plays a critical leadership role in advancing mission-driven fundraising through strategic oversight of direct response programs, revenue performance, and donor engagement. This role is responsible for developing and leading integrated direct response strategies across channels and donor segments, ensuring campaigns are aligned to annual fundraising goals, organizational priorities, and a strong donor-centered experience. Working collaboratively across creative, data, digital, operations, finance, and agency partners, this leader sets direction, aligns stakeholders, and ensures effective execution of initiatives that drive acquisition, retention, reactivation, upgrade, and monthly giving performance. The right candidate brings both strategic vision and operational discipline, using data, testing, and market insight to forecast results, identify opportunities, and continuously improve performance. This role requires strong leadership, sound judgment, and the ability to influence across teams while building clarity, accountability, and momentum around shared goals. This is an ideal opportunity for a leader who is motivated by measurable results, committed to developing people and programs, and eager to help grow fundraising impact in service of a meaningful mission.

Position Responsibilities

Revenue and Portfolio Performance

• Lead and own direct response campaign and portfolio performance across assigned channels and segments in support of annual fundraising goals.
• Track results against plan, identify performance drivers, and surface risks and opportunities across acquisition, retention, reactivation, upgrade, and monthly giving.
• Develop and implement strategies that increase donor lifetime value, strengthen retention, and maximize net revenue contribution.
• Translate performance insights into actionable recommendations that improve fundraising outcomes and donor engagement.

Strategic Learning and Innovation

• Maintain expertise in direct response fundraising trends, channel performance shifts, donor behavior, and emerging best practices, and translate insight into actionable recommendations.
• Evaluate and recommend new fundraising strategies, tools, and growth opportunities.

Donor Journey and Stewardship Alignment

• Support a cohesive donor journey by aligning direct response campaigns across acquisition, onboarding, renewal, upgrade, reactivation, and stewardship communications.
• Partner across teams to strengthen donor experience, consistency of messaging, and long-term engagement.
• Ensure consistency of donor experience across channels and touchpoints.
• Identify opportunities to improve donor engagement, loyalty, and lifetime value.

Agency, Vendor, and Budget Management

• Lead agency and vendor relationships, ensuring strategic alignment, high-quality deliverables, service accountability, and continuous improvement across mail, digital, and production partners.
• Oversee campaign budgets, track expenses, and provide accurate forecasting and recommendations to support return on investment and broader portfolio decisions.
• Review and process agency invoices, ensuring charges align with approved campaign budgets, scopes, and project outlines, and flag discrepancies for follow-up.

Team Leadership and Talent Development

• Lead, coach, and develop direct reports to strengthen execution, increase ownership, and build future leadership capacity within the direct response program.
• Set clear expectations, provide feedback, and support professional growth while maintaining accountability for performance and collaboration.

Direct Response Strategy and Program Leadership

• Lead development of annual and multi-year direct response strategies across all channels and donor segments. 
• Develop campaign strategies, segmentation approaches, offers, messaging recommendations, and channel plans in alignment with annual fundraising priorities.
• Establish strategic priorities for acquisition, retention, monthly giving, donor cultivation, and revenue growth initiatives.
• Ensure direct response strategies align with broader fundraising objectives and organizational priorities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience in marketing, communications, nonprofit management or related field
• 5+ years in direct response fundraising, annual giving, non-profit marketing, or relevant revenue driving roles
• 3+ years of leadership experience, including cross-functional leadership and/or people management
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines in a fast-paced environment
• Familiarity with fundraising, donor communications, or mission driven organizations preferred
• Experience working with cross functional teams and external vendors
• Knowledge of donor segmentation, testing methodology, and performance optimization
• Experience managing agency or vendor relationships and campaign budgets
• Strong analytical skills with ability to interpret campaign performance, forecast results, and make data-informed decisions
• Experience developing campaign strategy across acquisition, retention, reactivation, upgrade, and/or monthly giving
• Demonstrated success owning revenue goals or fundraising performance across direct response channels

• Experience with CRM/fundraising platforms and reporting tools
• Familiarity with direct mail production and digital fundraising best practices preferred
• Preferred experience with Microsoft Office: Outlook, Word, Excel, CRM

Compensation & Benefits

For this role, we anticipate paying $100,000 - $130,000/year. This range is an estimate. The actual amount may be higher or lower than the provided range and will be adjusted based on various factors including qualifications, experience, abilities, geographic location, and duties.

As a FOCUS staff member, you and your family will have access to several benefits that are designed to help care for the whole person and make your career at FOCUS rewarding. You will receive:

• Medical, Vision and Dental insurance
• Ability to contribute to a Health Savings Account
• Employer-provided life insurance
• Long-term disability insurance
• Option to purchase additional life insurance for yourself, your spouse and your child(ren)
• 403(b) retirement plan with a discretionary employer-match for eligible staff
• Option to purchase LifeLock Identity Protection
• Integrity-based Paid Time Off
• Paid parental leave
• We observe many paid holidays recognized by fellow Americans and also some of the feast days of Holy Mother Church. In addition, we recognize the Sacred Christmas Respite by closing the office from December 24-January 1 each year.

Eligibility for benefits depends on the type of position you hold (full-time, part-time or temporary), and your tenure with FOCUS. Specific benefits may change at FOCUS's discretion.