Semilla Nueva is looking for the person who makes sure nothing falls through the cracks. Our Development team is responsible for raising the funds that put biofortified seed in the hands of Guatemalan farmers. We have strong relationships, a compelling case, and a growing pipeline.
What we need is someone who owns the machinery behind it: the systems, the cadence, the follow-up, and the accountability that turn good intentions into closed gifts and renewed commitments. This is not a role for someone who wants to be handed a process. It is for someone who builds one — and then holds the whole department to it, respectfully and relentlessly.
Summary of the Organization
New Seed develops maize seeds that are proven to decrease malnutrition, improve farmer income, and withstand climate shocks. We develop partnerships with seed companies, governments, and social enterprises that make these seeds accessible to tens of thousands of farmers who produce enough nutritious maize to improve the nutrition of millions of consumers. Our goal is to improve the nutrition of the more than one billion people who eat maize daily in some of the world’s most malnourished countries. This role sits at the heart of that ambition: growing the philanthropic partnerships that make our model’s expansion possible. Learn more at www.newseed.org.
Summary of the position
Key Responsibilities
- Pipeline management and follow-through
- Maintain a complete, current, and accurate picture of every donor and prospect in the pipeline — stage, owner, next action, next action date, expected amount, and probability.
- Run a standing follow-up discipline across the department: no donor goes untouched past an agreed interval, no commitment goes unacknowledged, no proposal deadline arrives unnoticed.
- Track every commitment made to and by Semilla Nueva — pledge schedules, reporting deadlines, grant deliverables, site visit promises — and drive the team to deliver on them on time, including our Executive Director and Development Director.
- This role carries an explicit mandate from the Executive Director to track, follow up on, and escalate commitments made by anyone in the organization — including leadership.
- Escalate stalled relationships and aging opportunities before they go cold.
- Systems and process design
- Design, document, and continuously improve the department’s core workflows: prospect qualification, cultivation, solicitation, gift acknowledgment, stewardship, and renewal.
- Own and administer our internal development tracker — data structure, fields, stage definitions, automations, permissions, data hygiene, and training the team to use it correctly.
- Build the reporting layer: dashboards and recurring reports that show leadership where the money is, what is at risk, and what needs attention this week.
- Create the templates, checklists, and standard operating procedures that let the team move faster with less improvisation and more structure.
- Metrics and accountability
- Define and maintain the department’s KPIs — pipeline value by stage, conversion rates, average gift size, cycle time, donor retention and lapse rates, touchpoints per donor, and revenue against target.
- Produce a weekly pipeline report and a monthly performance review of results against goals.
- Flag variance early and specifically: which numbers are off, why, and what the team is doing about it.
- Support annual fundraising goal-setting with clean historical data and realistic projections.
- Coordination and rhythm
- Own the department’s meeting cadence: build agendas, circulate materials in advance, capture decisions and action items, and follow up until every item is closed.
- Coordinate donor-facing logistics — meetings, calls, farm visits, briefing documents, and follow-up correspondence.
- Prepare leadership and board members for donor conversations with accurate, well-organized background material.
- Serve as the connective tissue between Development and Finance, Programs, and Communications so that reporting commitments are met with real data.
- New donor outreach support
- Build and maintain prospect research and qualification pipelines for new institutional, foundation, and major individual donors.
- Track outreach sequences and ensure new-prospect follow-up is as disciplined as existing-donor stewardship.
Qualifications
Required:
- 4+ years in development operations, fundraising, sales operations, program management, or a comparable role where you owned a pipeline and a process.
- Demonstrated experience building systems from scratch — not just operating someone else’s.
- Fluency with CRM or pipeline tracking tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Airtable, Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, Monday.com, or similar) including configuration, not just data entry.
- Strong command of spreadsheets and comfort turning messy data into clear reporting.
- Exceptional organization and attention to detail. You keep lists, you close loops, and you notice when a number does not reconcile.
- Professional working proficiency in English and Spanish, written and spoken.
Strongly Preferred
- Experience in international development, agriculture, food security, or nutrition.
- Experience with institutional funders, foundations, or bilateral and multilateral grants and their reporting requirements.
- Familiarity with grant compliance and donor reporting cycles.
- Experience training teams on new tools and getting real adoption.
How to apply:
Please send a CV and a short cover letter describing a system or process you built from scratch and describe a time you held someone senior to you accountable for a missed commitment, and what happened, to
trabajo@semillanueva.org , with “Development Operations Manager” in the subject line and indicate your salary expectations.
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
