Scholarship and Financial Operations Manager

Position Title: Scholarship and Financial Operations Manager
Department: Foundation (FOU)
Division: Foundation (FOU)
Employee Status:  Full-time (Position begins January 2025)
Type: Professional Staff Association (PSA)
Grade: M
Salary ($62,000-$66,000 annually)
FLSA: Exempt
  Reporting Relationships
Report to: Chief Development Officer (CDO) and serves as a key liaison to College Senior Accountant 
Supervision Exercised: Functional supervision may be exercised over student workers. 

Job Summary

The Scholarship and Financial Operations Manager will lead all Foundation scholarship efforts with primary focus on the total administration and oversight of scholarship database and online application, implementation, awarding, and evaluation of the scholarship process.  The Scholarship and Financial Operations Manager will serve as the administrator of a sophisticated donor database system, including alumni, donor and constituent management, prospect research, as well as gift and fund processes. Must demonstrate strong, working knowledge of relational databases and have a commitment to continued education to ensure knowledge is current. Must be fiscally responsible, must have a basic understanding of standard accounting principles as well as fund accounting, and must work with Chief Development Officer to establish and uphold solid financial processes for all funds held by Foundation. The individual must exercise a high degree of independent judgment, initiative, curiosity, organization, communication, and problem-solving skills. This individual will work closely with donors and RVC faculty/staff and should therefore have exceptional inter-personal skills. The Scholarship and Financial Operations Manager should have fund development experience and understand the intricacies of Foundation principles and donors’ rights. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following.  Related duties may be assigned.

 

• Oversee, maintain, evaluate, and execute a complex scholarship program including:
  • Allocate scholarship funds based on endowment earnings and annual gifts in conjunction with the College Senior Accountant;
  • Develop and generate endowed and annual scholarship reports for over 200 individual scholarships;
  • Award scholarships to qualified recipients based on restricted criteria, data, and donor’s original intent gained through trusted conversations and relationship building;
  • Track continued eligibility of recipients and balances of scholarship funds;
  • Communicate and promote online application process through strategic marketing campaigns, hands-on student workshops, and community presentations;
  • Implement manual awarding processes for programs outside of the scope of the scholarship database;
  • Write award notifications to recipients and correlating donors;
  • Work closely with RVC Financial Aid department and accounts receivable;
  • Track and report scholarship trends and financials.
• Maintain contact with the Development team and other college personnel as necessary regarding scholarship recipients and donors.
• Meet with prospects and donors, as assigned by the CDO, to secure new scholarship funds and write or edit any necessary scholarship documentation.
• Navigate alumni, donor, board member, administration and student relationships with care and professionalism.
• Manage complex donor database system and all integrated systems:
  • Create security levels and manage access for all users to the Raiser’s Edge Database, AcademicWorks, Merchant Services web portal, NetCommunity web portal; Citrix hosting site and the Blackbaud website.
  • Design, implement, document, and manage coding & usage policies;
  • Liaison with Blackbaud for maintenance, upgrades, contracts, and database performance;
  • Train RVC Foundation database users;
  • Design reports in both donor database and Microsoft Access and Excel for financial reporting, list management, data clean-up, etc. and execute as required;
  • Trouble-shoot access and utilization issues;
  • Utilize prospect research tools to create prospect rosters and reports for CDO and the Director of Development (DOD)
  • Support the Development team and Foundation Board of Directors through data analysis, research, and reporting.
• Manage the day-to-day gift processing activities and ensure accuracy of financial processes.
  • Comply with IRS and CASE standards for all gifts processing, recognition and entering into donor database system.
  • Reconcile deposit slips with gift batches and oversee the accurate processing of checks, credit cards, stock transfers, and electronic funds transfers for unrestricted and restricted gifts to ensure financial integrity and accuracy.
  • Extensive interface with the Senior Accountant to investigate discrepancies and resolve issues between Colleague and the Foundation’s donor database system.
  • Verify and update biographical data in Raiser’s Edge to ensure accuracy, run periodic National Change of Address (NCOA) in conjunction with appeals and stewardship mailings
  • Record pledges, track outstanding pledges, and produce pledge reminder letters to donors.
  • Adjust transactions, make corrections and request journals as needed. Issue pledge write-offs with the approval of the Chief Development Officer.
  • Provide pledge cash flow and pledge status reports to the CDO, the Chief Financial Officer and the Board of Directors
  • Reconcile monthly gift and credit card reports for Senior Accountant
  • Serve as financial and scholarship point person for all audit reporting.
• Support Foundation initiatives through information dissemination and analysis.
• Prepare reports related to specific duties as requested by the CDO and Foundation Board of Directors.
• Attend Foundation Board and committee meetings as requested.
• Regular attendance is expected.
• Learn and utilize College CRM to verify student information, prepare reports for CDO, and use for donor/constituent research.

 Qualifications
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skills, and/or abilities required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
 
Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required with three years of database administration and implementation experience.  Experience with Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge and AcademicWorks (Award Management) is preferred. Competency with accounting methodology is required and crucial. Possess a working knowledge of fundraising principles, including the Donor Bill of Rights and the CASE standards for gift accounting and reporting. Represent the college in the most positive manner with donors, prospects, RVC faculty/staff, and students. Possess strong administrative and organizational skills to lead staff through education and execution of sophisticated donor database. Ability to research, develop and execute varied technical aspects of a relational database. Read, understand, and express oneself clearly and effectively in oral and written form. Conduct office activities in a manner that is consistent with department, college, and fundraising objectives, guidelines, policies and protocol. Demonstrate strong inter-personal skills to build trusted relationships with donors of all personalities.

Maintain a high degree of confidentiality regarding donor records consistent with professional fundraising standards and student records consistent with FERPA regulations. Energetic and highly self-motivated individual with strong analytic and organizational skills.
 
Work Environment
While performing the duties of this job, the employee regularly works in an office setting.

Physical Demands
Physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job:

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to use hands and fingers to handle, feel, or operate objects, tools or controls, and reach with hands and arms. The employee is frequently required to stand, talk and hear.