Director, Professional Advisor Relations, Donor Services
This position plays a key role in advancing the mission of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan by cultivating and maintaining strong relationships with professional advisors, including attorneys, financial planners, accountants, and wealth managers. This position serves as the primary liaison between the foundation and the advisor community, helping them understand and utilize the foundation’s philanthropic tools to serve their clients’ charitable goals. This position will also enhance and build upon the Community Foundation role in supporting charitable planned giving in the region.
About the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM):
The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan is a dynamic, full-service philanthropic organization dedicated to creating lasting, positive change across Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Monroe, Washtenaw, Livingston, and St. Clair counties. Since its founding in 1984, CFSEM has distributed over $1.4 billion through more than 85,000 grants, supporting initiatives in education, health, the arts, economic development, and more. As a trusted convener and advisor, the Foundation builds endowments, fosters collaboration, and champions equitable access to opportunity—ensuring Southeast Michigan is a place where everyone can thrive
Responsibilities:
- Build and maintain relationships with a network of professional advisors.
- Educate advisors on the foundation’s services, including donor-advised funds, planned giving, and other charitable vehicles.
- Lead the engagement of the Community Foundation’s Legal Financial Network meetings
- Develop and deliver presentations, workshops, and continuing education sessions for advisors.
- Serve as a trusted resource for advisors seeking guidance on charitable giving strategies.
- Coordinate a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy study group in conjunction with Planned Giving Roundtable of Southeast Michigan
- Assist with the development of new marketing materials for planned gifts
- Document new and existing planned gift relationships
- Develop tracking mechanisms to demonstrate annual activities/outcomes.
- Provide personalized service to donors who are referred by advisors, connecting them with other staff as appropriate, in order to ensure a seamless and rewarding philanthropic experience.
- Exercise sound judgment in managing existing relationships to meet the objectives of the donor while supporting the mission and operations of the Community Foundation.
- Participate in the life of the Community Foundation by attending appropriate events and programs, maintaining membership in key organizations, and participating in activities to expand the public’s awareness of the Community Foundation.
- Perform other duties as assigned including participation in other activities as assigned by the Vice President, Donor Services.
Qualifications:
- A commitment to providing quality service and stewardship to all constituents, and the ability to develop positive working relationships with staff, trustees, donors, contractors, and community stakeholders.
- Minimum of seven to ten years of experience in financial services, estate planning, or gift planning with nonprofit organizations.
- Strong understanding of charitable giving vehicles and philanthropic planning.
- Comfortable navigating complex financial and legal concepts.
- Strong technical proficiency and digital literacy required. Overall comfort with an ever-evolving technology landscape is a must. Proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite is a plus as well as project management systems.
- Experience in utilizing a CRM database for documenting, reporting and managing tasks is required. Experience with Salesforce is a plus.
- Strategic and creative thinking.
- Exceptional written and verbal communications skills.
- Strong people skills: ability to collaborate and work as part of a team.
- Outstanding organizational skills, attention to detail, and the ability to manage multiple deadlines and priorities. The ideal candidate is adaptable to changing priorities and able to drive progress despite ambiguity. Comfortable managing a diverse portfolio of projects with competing deadlines.
- Passion, strong work ethic, self-motivated drive, and love of connecting resources to needs and opportunities.
- Desire to build a rapport with co-workers and a commitment to building deep knowledge of CFSEM, its constituents, lines of business, and stakeholders.
- A commitment to CFSEM’s mission and values and a desire to be an integral part of the Community Foundation to ensure our permanence in the region we serve.
- The ability to work a flexible schedule with some nights and weekend travel is required.
Core & Leadership Competencies:
Core Competencies:
- Customer Focus - Prioritizes understanding and addressing the needs and expectations of our community and stakeholders. Demonstrates active listening, empathy, and responsiveness, with a consistent commitment to delivering exceptional service.
- Plans and Aligns - Invests time in planning, discovery, and reflection. Engages in active mindfulness to identify and adjust mental shortcuts and assumptions. Seeks out diverse perspectives and experiences to test thinking, proactively anticipates reactions and multiple outcomes, and plans for potential issues and industry trends.
- Collaborative - Works effectively with others—within the team and cross functionally—to achieve individual, departmental, and organizational goals. Values diverse input, shared accountability, and partnership as essential to producing strong outcomes.
- Decision Making & Problem Solving - Simplifies complex challenges using critical thinking and sound judgment. Gathers and evaluates relevant information, incorporates multiple perspectives, identifies root causes, and determines practical, effective solutions. Applies an audience centric approach by considering the needs of stakeholders when making decisions and implementing solutions.
Leadership Competencies:
- Interpersonal Savvy: Relates well to all kinds of people up, down, across, inside and outside the organization; builds appropriate rapport with peers and leaders; builds constructive and effective relationships; uses diplomacy and tact; can diffuse even high-tension situations comfortably.
- Leadership Professionalism: Exercises good judgement of what should be said to whom, where, and how. Maintains confidentiality. Stamps out rumor mills. Contributes to constructive solutions. Encourages peers and staff to deal with challenges and opportunities head-on. Models the behavior we expect. Expresses views in the right rooms with the right people, avoids undermining decisions of others with words, actions, or body language.
- Managerial Courage: Provides current, direct, complete and actionable feedback to others; Adroitly diagnoses people, process, practice, policy issues, and exercises good judgement in owning and addressing each in the right place and time.
- Building Effective Teams: Blends people into teams where needed, irrespective of reporting lines; creates strong morale and spirit within and across teams; shares wins and successes; creates a feeling of belonging; Presses in to understand the 'why' of decisions, then helps craft and own go-forward plans.
Benefits & Salary:
The Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan offers a robust total compensation package The targeted salary for those entering this role is $80,000 - $100,000. In addition to a competitive base salary, benefits include but aren’t limited to flexible schedule including a 4 ½ day work week, 20 days of vacation accrued monthly, 5 personal days, 11 holidays, 9 sick days accrued monthly, paid parental leave, and employer paid short/long term disability.
The Community Foundation also offers a pension retirement program after 1 year of service which contributes 10% of salary.
How to Apply
Application Instructions:
Internal applicants will be reviewed before external applicants and the deadline for all applicants is February 27, 2026 and those received before that deadline will take priority in our review process.
Please send your cover letter, resume, and salary requirements to careeropportunities@cfsem.org.
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