The Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance Inc. (LBCA) is a national, fully remote independent charitable organization. LBCA focuses on providing education and advocating for more desperately needed funding for invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) cancer research to eradicate this tricky breast cancer type. We seek an individual who seeks a half-time+ junior level development role and is committed to supporting our nonprofit cause and assisting the Executive Director in all aspects of development and fundraising to ensure that LBCA continues to grow and thrive. Ideally the individual seeking this role has some experience with fundraising and nonprofit work and can commit to immersing themselves in understanding all that we do and being an excellent steward and an ambassador on our behalf to all donors and donor prospects in support of our mission. Because we are such a small and relatively young nonprofit, the individual in this role will have the opportunity to be involved in all aspects of development.
LBCA Mission and Vision
As the only organization in the US dedicated to Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer (ILC), LBCA’s mission is:
to make all who are touched by ILC aware of its unique characteristics and the critical need for more ILC research, to be the go-to source for information on ILC studies, clinical trials and educational tools, to foster partnerships among patients, scientists, clinicians and breast cancer organizations to increase dialogue about ILC and research advocacy, and to fund vital ILC research.
LBCA’s Vision is: a world in which lobular breast cancer is found early, treated effectively, and eradicated permanently.
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE (DA) POSITION SUMMARY (20-30 hrs/week)
Reporting to and in partnership with the Executive Director (ED), the Development Committee, and the Executive Administrator. The DA must be willing to learn all disciplines of a development operation – there will be an opportunity to spend a portion of time attending development training courses and presentations.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
1. Provide administrative support to the Moves Management process of cultivating and engaging donors including entering gift and donor data into the development database; managing all aspects of gift acknowledgements; notifying relevant staff about special gifts; documenting all stewardship activities including uploading new and updating existing donor information; ensuring automated acknowledgement and thank you correspondences occur timely and donor interactions in our CRM (Bloomerang).
2. Work with a portfolio of major donors to cultivate, steward, and manage relationships once established.
3. Provide support to the volunteer Development Committee chaired by the ED. Activities include conducting outreach to major donor prospects and working with committee members to develop fundraising events.
4. Conduct research to identify and outreach to corporations with charitable interest in or funds dedicated to supporting breast cancer advocacy and research. Project will include determining the best contacts at the corporations identified and working with the ED and Communications Director to develop materials for the outreach and ultimately, the pitches to the corporations likely to enter into sponsorship agreements with LBCA. Once established, steward the portfolio of corporate donors.
5. Draft development campaign letters and other development posts and letters to non-major donors as needed under the direction of the ED.
6. Help volunteers who reach out to LBCA and want to conduct peer-to-peer fundraisers to undertake these activities including helping to develop letters for volunteer to use to solicit local sponsors and in-kind donations, helping to set up the volunteer’s fundraising platform within Bloomerang, and helping draft commercial co-venture agreements, as necessary working with ED, volunteers, and LBCA general counsel.
7. Produces development reports and lists as needed.
8. Learn to work with GrantStation to support research into potential grantors.
9. Participate in LBCA staff meetings and speak with the ED at least once/week on a 1:1 basis, and more often, as necessary and become conversant in the mission and activities of the organization.
10. Assist with the planning and execution of virtual donor events.
11. Attend the very infrequent evening donor reception and/or fundraising events as needed.
QUALIFICATIONS:
The ideal Development Associate candidate:
* Must embrace the mission of LBCA and have great interest in gaining a working understanding of the characteristics and challenges created by invasive lobular carcinoma as well as a willingness to thoroughly understand the advocacy activities that are provided by LBCA and their importance.
* Personal connection to breast cancer preferred.
* Must be entrepreneurial, highly self-motivated, energetic, a good listener and enjoy developing relationships.
* Must have demonstrated experience effectively managing a part-time position, particularly if the individual is engaged in other work during the work week.
* Displays a positive attitude, shows concern for people and community, demonstrates presence, self-confidence, and common sense.
* Must possess strong interpersonal and writing skills and the skills to work with and motivate staff, committee members, and other volunteers.
* Must be organized, timely with deliverables, able to work independently with little supervision and as part of a team.
* Have two years of development experience, ideally in direct fundraising.
* A bachelor’s degree (MA a plus).
* Strong computer skills, including Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and Google Suite; Experience with donor databases, such as Bloomerang, ideal.
* Experience with remote fundraising, ideal.
* Experience with writing fundraising appeal letters, ideal.
BACKGROUND ON LOBULAR BREAST CANCER
What is ILC and Why is it So Troubling
Invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC) or “Lobular Breast Cancer” is 15% of all breast cancers diagnosed in the US each year (about 44,000 annually). It is the second most common breast cancer type, the 5th most common cancer in women and more common than ovarian cancer. Until 2015, ILC was not typically thought to be different from the more common invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), particularly among treating clinicians. Many individuals with this breast cancer subtype were not necessarily told they had it because there are not yet any different treatments for ILC than the much more common IDC. But studies have demonstrated that it behaves quite differently from IDC and has some distinct biological characteristics that need to be better understood and for which specific, targeted treatments must be developed.
1. ILC is referred to as the “sneaky breast cancer” because the tumors typically form in lines and not lumps making them extremely hard to detect through routine screening mammograms or even to be felt. As a result a disproportionate number of lobular tumors are not found until they are larger, are at later stages or in some cases, have already metastasized. Because lobular tumors are so hard to visualize with imaging it is harder for surgeons to know they are removing all of the tumor cells and women undergoing lumpectomies frequently need more than one lumpectomy to do so;
2. ILC sometimes metastasizes to different organs from those where ductal tumors metastasize, and are hard to detect there, such as the gastrointestinal tract;
3. Some studies show that in some cases patients will experience a recurrence or their ILC will have metastasized many years later than recurrences of IDC typically occur, though it is not clear yet why and no one can predict which cases. Studies now suggest that a diagnosis of ILC may suggest a poorer prognosis.
Despite these specific differences, and the fact that clinicians are acknowledging them and the need for ILC-specific, targeted treatments to be developed, there are still none and to-date there have been only a handful of clinical trials to test drug treatments.
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