CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER
NEW YORK, NY
WWW.NAACPLDF.ORG
THE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) is the country’s first and foremost civil and human
rights law organization. Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, who subsequently
became the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, LDF was launched at a time when the
nation’s aspirations for equality and due process of law were stifled by widespread state-sponsored racial
inequality. From that era to the present, LDF’s mission has always been transformative: to achieve racial
justice, equality, and an inclusive society.
LDF’s litigation, public policy advocacy and public education programs in the areas of criminal justice,
economic justice, education and political participation seek to ensure the fundamental and basic human
rights of all people to quality education, economic opportunity, the right to vote and fully participate in
democracy, and the right to a fair and just judicial system. Please visit http://www.naacpldf.org/ and see the
attached appendices for more information.
In 2014, LDF was on the front lines pushing for change in communities like Ferguson and Detroit, before
Congress, in the Supreme Court, and through the media. The organization also celebrated the 60th
Anniversary of LDF’s iconic victory in Brown v. Board of Education, a singular catalyst for racial equality in
America and the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which brought meaningful transformation
to countless spheres of our society.
In 2015, LDF celebrates its 75th anniversary with the launch of a new research and advocacy center within
LDF called the Thurgood Marshall Institute. The LDF Thurgood Marshall Institute combines a
multidisciplinary approach to advocacy with LDF’s traditional litigation strengths in order to advance a
modern vision of racial justice. It will also enhance LDF’s use and mobilization of research. LDF has received
a $5 million grant, including a $2 million matching challenge, to help launch the center.
As the organization embarks on this exciting next chapter, LDF seeks a mission-driven Chief Development
Officer. This is a critical role within the organization; reflecting this, the CDO will report to the President
and Director-Counsel and serve as a key member of the senior management team. He or she will work
closely with senior staff and the Board of Directors to gain an in-depth understanding of LDF’s current and
future substantive work and needs. Based on this information, the CDO will conceptualize, organize and
implement a comprehensive and strategic fundraising program, aimed at increasing and diversifying income
sources.
The ideal candidate for this opportunity will be passionate about LDF’s mission and work. The CDO will be
a dedicated and creative fundraising leader with an established track record of increasing philanthropic
revenue (with an emphasis on major giving), ideally for an advocacy or human rights organization. He or
she will have the demonstrated ability to engage constituents in a manner that generates excitement, shared
purpose, meaningful action, and long-term relationships. As a key advocate of LDF, the CDO will possess
the stature, interpersonal skills, and communication acumen to compellingly share LDF’s goals and
programs to diverse audiences.
LDF has retained Freeman Philanthropic Services, LLC to assist on this executive recruitment.
LDF: Page 1
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
The Chief Development Officer will direct and lead LDF’s efforts to advance philanthropy, community
understanding, and goodwill for the programs and priorities of the organization. With primary responsibility
to expand funding, the CDO’s key responsibilities include:
Strategic Planning
 Understand LDF: its mission, culture, policies, values, history, key stakeholders, programs and
finances;
 In partnership with the President and Director-Counsel and Board, establish a strategic vision for
LDF’s fundraising and development activities;
 Develop and implement short-term and long-term fundraising plans, with the goal of increasing and
diversifying income sources;
 Communicate effectively with the Board of Directors and draw on their talents, resources and ideas
to enhance fundraising activities;
 Develop and maintain close working relationships with the philanthropic community, individual and
corporate donors and sponsors.
Fundraising
 Increase and diversify the organization’s support from individuals, corporations and foundations,
including the maximization of a recently secured $2 million challenge grant;
 Maintain a proactive, creative leadership role in the identification, cultivation and solicitation of
individual, foundation and corporate contributions;
 Identify, cultivate, directly solicit, and steward major donors;
 Provide ongoing and timely development information to the President and Director-Counsel and to
the Development Committee of the Board of Directors in preparation for donor meetings and events;
 Ensure effective, ongoing and productive communication with LDF’s donors and donor prospects,
including proper outreach, follow-up and stewardship of donor relationships;
 Plan and implement or delegate all personal solicitations and other activities included in the
fundraising program;
 Ensure successful planning, coordination and implementation of LDF’s annual special events;
 Understand, assess and oversee the work of LDF’s local fundraising committees; provide direction
and support for their activities;
 Maintain and enhance relationships with major donors and work with the Manager of Major Gifts to
identify and cultivate new major donors;
 Serve as spokesperson and advocate for LDF’s mission and programs in the funding community.
Management
 Manage and supervise team of Development professionals, including Director of Data and Donor
Services, Director of Strategic Partnerships and Special Events, Database Information Coordinator,
Development Assistant, Development Associate, Development Research Assistant, and Grants
Manager (consultant);
 Evaluate current Development department staffing needs; identify, cultivate and recruit new
members of the development team, as appropriate;
 Provide oversight and coordination for activities related to our fundraising information systems and
software;
 Provide ongoing fundraising training, education, and support to senior management, staff and Board
members;
 Make donor stewardship a priority throughout the organization, coordinate production of
fundraising related materials with the LDF communications team.
LDF: Page 2
IDEAL EXPERIENCE & QUALITIES
The ideal candidate for this role will have the professional experience necessary to effectively meet the
responsibilities listed in the preceding section. The CDO must have experience working with high level
donors, have a proven fundraising track record, and be passionate about the LDF mission. Other expected
experience and personal qualities include:

Proven leadership experience (more than eight years) developing and implementing a successful
fundraising effort for a not-for-profit organization;

Record of personally identifying, cultivating and soliciting individual donors, corporations and
foundations for support and an ability to develop and implement successful donor stewardship plans;

Deep knowledge and understanding of the national and New York City funding community;

Track record of organizing and implementing a comprehensive fundraising operation, including
major gifts, annual funds, planned giving, corporate and foundation giving, e-philanthropy, and
direct mail;

Stature and demonstrated ability to work effectively with various constituencies, including Board,
staff members, potential donors, corporate and foundation and civic leaders;

Inclusive management and team building skills to help guide a results-oriented operation, while
maintaining best practices, camaraderie, clear goals, and shared accountability;

An effective communicator; highly skilled in writing and speaking; adept at crafting proposals, donor
correspondence and other kinds of materials;

Agile and creative leader who takes initiative and applies cutting-edge approaches to engagement
and fundraising strategies in order to create momentum and leverage resources;

Experience in the legal services, advocacy or human rights arenas is helpful but not required;

Cultural sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and commitment to the highest standards of
professionalism;

Bachelor’s degree in related field required. Advanced degree a plus, along with demonstrated effort
of continuing education in fundraising;

Ability to travel as needed.
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
The CDO’s compensation and benefits package will be competitive and commensurate with the selected
candidate’s background and experience. This position is based in New York City.
LDF is an Equal Opportunity Employer. LDF is committed to providing equal employment opportunities
without regard to race, creed, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, veteran status, sexual
orientation, and disability.
LDF: Page 3
CONFIDENTIAL INQUIRIES & HOW TO APPLY
LDF has retained Freeman Philanthropic Services, LLC to assist on this recruitment.
FPS
(www.glfreeman.com) is a national leader in executive recruitment for the not-for-profit sector and brings a
proven track record of recruiting top talent to diverse organizations.
Please send confidential inquiries and applications directly to FPS via e-mail: [email protected]. To be
fully considered, applications must include: an up-to-date resume and a formal letter of interest that
specifically cites the experiences that best prepare the applicant for this role and why this particular
opportunity is desired. Additional materials and information will be requested during the search and
interview process.
LDF: Page 4
APPENDICES
MISSION
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is
America's premier legal organization fighting for racial justice.
Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF seeks
structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and
achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of
equality for all Americans. LDF also defends the gains and
protections won over the past 75 years of civil rights struggle and
works to improve the quality and diversity of judicial and executive
appointments.
HISTORY
LDF is the country’s first and foremost civil and human rights law
firm. Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall,
who subsequently became the first African-American U.S. Supreme
Court Justice, LDF was launched at a time when the nation’s
aspirations for equality and due process of law were stifled by
widespread state-sponsored racial inequality. From that era to the
present, LDF’s mission has always been transformative: to achieve
racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society.
Please visit http://www.naacpldf.org/history to learn more about LDF’s history, impact, and achievements.
WHAT WE DO
LDF seeks to:
 Diminish the role of race in the criminal justice system and the role of the criminal justice system in
community life;
 Increase fairness and African-American participation in all aspects of economic life;
 Increase equity in education and eliminate tolerance for schools that fail students; and
 Achieve full African-American civic engagement and participation in the democratic process.
Among its current priorities, LDF seeks to ensure that the job selection process does not negatively impact
African Americans, reduce employment barriers to those with criminal records, decrease disproportionate
incarceration and sentencing as well as racially biased exercise of discretion by police and prosecutors,
increase equity in education by increasing graduation rates (K-12 and college) among African Americans,
foster adoption of racially equitable and research-based approaches to school discipline, achieve more
African-American engagement and fairness in the next round of redistricting, and ensure compliance with
the Voting Rights Act, NVRA, and other voting rights laws.
LDF works both through the courts and through advocacy to the executive and legislative branches,
educational outreach, monitoring of federal and state government activity, coalition building and policy
research. Additionally, through its scholarship, fellowship, and internship programs, LDF helps students to
attend and graduate from many of the nation’s best colleges, universities, and law schools and to develop a
lasting commitment to racial justice and public service.
In 2015, LDF will formally launch the Thurgood Marshall Institute. This “policy arm” will build on LDF’s
litigation expertise – providing LDF with additional research, strategic communications, organizing and
advocacy capacity. These critical tools will enable LDF to be innovative and to challenge our system to think
differently about civil rights. This integrated approach will provide a needed boost to win gains in civil
rights.
LDF: Page 5
PROGRAM AREAS
Criminal Justice
LDF works to ensure that our nation’s criminal justice laws are
administered fairly and without regard to race. Today, the criminal
justice system remains riddled with racial bias. LDF uses litigation,
advocacy, and public education to eliminate the improper role of
race in the criminal justice system. We stand at the forefront of this
effort.
Economic Justice
LDF fights for African Americans to be able to work, live, and thrive
without racially imposed barriers. In one of our first cases in 1940,
LDF secured a vital decision that required equal pay for black and
white teachers. Through litigation, advocacy and public education,
LDF continues to fight to increase fairness and equal opportunity
for African Americans in all aspects of the economy.
Education
From its inception LDF has been engaged in the fight to remove
barriers to educational access and opportunity. LDF’s education
docket has involved a number of seminal Supreme Court decisions,
including Brown v. Board of Education. Through its present work in
and out of the courts, LDF is fighting to ensure racial equity in
education for African-American students and secure a safe,
inclusive, and high quality education for all students.
Political Participation
Since its founding in 1940, LDF has been a pioneer in the struggle
to secure and protect the voting rights of African Americans. LDF
has been involved in nearly all of the precedent-setting litigation
relating to minority voting rights. LDF’s Political Participation
Group uses legal, legislative, public education and advocacy
strategies to promote the full, equal and active participation of
African Americans in America’s democracy.
Washington, D.C. Advocacy
LDF continues to defend the gains and protections attained over the
course of its history through its advocacy in Washington D.C. The
D.C. office serves as the advocacy branch of LDF, monitoring civil
rights legislative issues before Congress and federal agencies
responsible for civil rights enforcement, as well as strengthening
civil rights laws and opposing efforts to undermine them.
LDF: Page 6
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
LDF: Page 7
SENIOR STAFF
For a complete listing of LDF’s senior staff, please visit http://www.naacpldf.org/staff.
Sherrilyn Ifill is the seventh President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Ms. Ifill is a long-time member
of the LDF family. After graduating law school, Ifill served first as a fellow
at the American Civil Liberties Union and then for five years as an
assistant counsel in LDF’s New York office, where she litigated voting
rights cases. Among her successful litigation was the landmark Voting
Rights Act case Houston Lawyers’ Association vs. Attorney General of Texas,
in which the Supreme Court held that judicial elections are covered by the
provisions of section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In 1993, Ms. Ifill joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law, where, in addition to
teaching Civil Procedure, Constitutional Law and variety of seminars, she continued to litigate and consult
on a broad and diverse range of civil rights cases while grooming the next generation of civil rights lawyers.
In addition to teaching in the classroom, Ms. Ifill launched several innovative legal offerings while at
Maryland Law School, including an environmental justice course in which students represented rural
communities in Maryland, and one of the first legal clinics in the nation focused on removing legal barriers
to formerly incarcerated persons seeking to responsibly re-enter society. From her base in Baltimore, Ifill
emerged as a highly regarded national civil rights strategist and public intellectual whose writings, speeches
and media appearances enrich public debate about a range of political and civil rights issues.
A critically acclaimed author, her book “On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the
21st Century,” reflects her lifelong engagement in and analysis of issues of race and American public
life. Ifill's scholarly writing has focused on the importance of diversity on the bench, and she is currently
writing a book about race and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Ifill is the immediate past Chair of the
Board of U.S. Programs at the Open Society Institute, one of the largest philanthropic supporters of civil
rights and social justice organizations in the country. Ms. Ifill is a graduate of Vassar College, and received
her J.D. from New York University School of Law.
LDF: Page 8
Janai Nelson is the Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, Inc. She is also a former director of LDF’s Political
Participation Group and a former NAACP LDF/Fried Frank Fellow.
Prior to rejoining LDF’s staff, Ms. Nelson was the Associate Dean for Faculty
Scholarship and Associate Director of the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil
Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law
where she also served as a full professor of law.
Ms. Nelson is recipient of the 2013 Derrick A. Bell Award from the American
Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Minority Groups and was recently named one of Lawyers of
Color’s 50 Under 50 minority professors making an impact in legal education. Her scholarship centers on
domestic and comparative election law, race, and democratic theory and she has taught courses in Election
Law and Political Participation, Comparative Election Law, Voting Rights, Professional Responsibility, and
Constitutional Law.
In the year prior to joining St. John's faculty, Ms. Nelson was a Fulbright Scholar at the Legal Resources
Center in Accra, Ghana, where she researched the political disfranchisement of persons with criminal
convictions and the advancement of democracy in Ghana. Prior to receiving the Fulbright award, Ms. Nelson
was the Director of LDF’s Political Participation Group where she oversaw all voting related litigation and
matters, litigated voting rights and redistricting cases, and worked on criminal justice issues on behalf of
African Americans and other under-served communities.
Ms. Nelson began practicing law as the 1998 recipient of an NAACP LDF/Fried Frank Fellowship. She
received a B.A. from New York University and a J.D. from UCLA School of Law where she served as Articles
Editor of the UCLA Law Review, Consulting Editor of the National Black Law Journal, and Associate Editor
of the UCLA Women's Law Journal. Upon graduating from law school, Ms. Nelson clerked for the
Honorable Theodore McMillian on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (1997-1998) and
the Honorable David H. Coar on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (19961997). She has been published on issues of domestic and comparative election law, democracy, race, and
criminal justice and is a contributor to Thomson Reuters and Huffington Post. Ms. Nelson has also
appeared on CNN, InsideOut, public radio and other media as an election law expert and regularly speaks at
conferences and symposia nationwide.
Kevin Keenan joined LDF as the Chief Operating Officer and General
Counsel in 2013. Mr. Keenan previously served as the executive
director of the ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties, which he
grew from seven staff members to twenty four and where he
increased the budget by 376 percent. He aligned the organization
around a vision of building power together with local San Diego
communities and strategies that integrated communications,
organizing, policy advocacy, and litigation.
He helped create the ACLU of California, an unprecedented,
comprehensive collaboration between the state’s three ACLU affiliates, as well as a statewide voting rights
project and a multi-state litigation project to combat border-related civil liberties abuses. In order to build
the power of underrepresented Latino residents, he and his team led a voter mobilization campaign in 2012
that contacted 15,000 households and mobilized seven percent of the electorate in a city of 55,000 voters.
At the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, he served as an attorney for children in Virginia’s
juvenile prisons and succeeded in pressing new laws to improve reentry services for children with mental
health and educational difficulties.
LDF: Page 9
Mr. Keenan also served in the General Counsel's office of the Vera Institute of Justice and as interim
director of the ACLU affiliates in Nevada and New Jersey. He helped human rights reform efforts in Belfast,
Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Peace Agreement and, on three missions, monitored elections in
the former Yugoslavia.
He is author of Invasion of Privacy: A Reference Handbook (ABC-CLIO 2005) and, with Samuel Walker, An
Impediment to Accountability? An Analysis of Law Enforcement Officers’ Bills of Rights (Boston University
Journal of Public Interest Law 2005). In 2010, Keenan was appointed to a five-year term on the Council on
Foreign Relations, and, in 2013, to the Yale Law School Association Executive Committee.
He is a graduate of Yale Law School and Swarthmore College.
FUNDRAISING HIGHLIGHTS
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
In the Fiscal Year ended June 30, 2014, LDF’s raised revenue included $7,202,216 in contributions,
$1,745,062 (net) from special events, $773,748 in bequests, and $237,550 from the Combined Federal
Campaign. In the same fiscal period, the end of year endowment net assets were $23,873,248, of which
$18,512,779 are permanently restricted and $5,360,469 are temporarily restricted. Please click here to view
the 2014 Audited Financial Statement. LDF’s 2015-16 budget is approximately $14 million.
LDF: Page 10