Job Opportunity: Director of Development, Fundraising, Marketing, Communications, Corporate Sponsorship, and Government Relations

General Information

Date posted: today

Application deadline: also today

Start date: tomorrow

Salary: TBD (but approximately half of whatever you think is appropriate)

Organization Description

Canadian Shield Theatre (CST) is one of the nation’s most distinguished and underappreciated performing arts organizations, with a mandate to support the Artistic Director’s grandiose aspirations of leading a corporately funded, city-building festival in a major, metropolitan centre.

With a firm commitment to reflecting the diversity of contemporary Canadian society, CST produces vital and eclectic programming, featuring mid-century American musicals, last year’s Broadway highlights, and canonical works from the Norm Foster repertoire.

Since 1967, CST has operated the historic Granite Theatre, an asbestos-clad venue with 800 seats that are too narrow for today’s patrons, as well as the Slaughterhouse Studio, which utilizes an innovative space-sharing arrangement with a local business. Rehearsal spaces, technical shops, and administrative offices are housed in a compound of rustic outbuildings, some of which are heated.

Position Summary

The candidate is required to cultivate, incentivize, and leverage all forms of stakeholders, prospects, and protocols.

• • Fundraising: conceive and implement a capital campaign that will exceed the total monies raised over the last half-century, ideally without requiring any effort from the Board of Directors, most of whom are primarily interested in eating cupcakes (the food item) during the opening night receptions.

• • Donor recognition: pursue major philanthropic gifts by nurturing relationships with distinguished socialites, especially affluent and aging widows.

• • Government relations: advocate for increased levels of public funding by bombarding elected officials with exaggerated financial calculations, unattainable tourist projections, and glossy photographs of Richard Florida.

• • Corporate sponsorship: secure naming rights from an organization that celebrates our region’s resource-based economy yet reduces the likelihood of being targeted by trendy boycott or divestment campaigns.

Required Qualifications and Skills

• • Minimum of five years thriving in unpaid internships of progressively demeaning levels of responsibility.

• • Tact, diplomacy, and patience for dealing with our Artistic Director’s megalomania and General Manager’s micromanagement.

• • Experience with Tessitura, Raiser’s Edge, and/or other fundraising software is required, with a strong preference for candidates willing to transfer a donor database from previous employers.

• • Proficiency with Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator is a significant asset, because the candidate could assume the workload of the graphic design company that seems increasingly unable to accommodate our requests for urgent deadlines and subsidized fees.

Employment Terms

This is a full-time position, with regular commitments on evenings, weekends, and whenever the Production Manager forgets the password to the office computers.

This is a probationary appointment of three weeks; during that period, the candidate is expected to refrain from applying for similar positions at larger arts organizations and/or better-paying opportunities at hospitals, foundations, or “real” charities.

CST offers supportive and flexible employment terms; candidates are permitted to pursue external artistic projects during their two weeks of unpaid vacation.

We thank all applicants for their interest; please note that all candidates selected for in-person interviews are expected to pay for their own travel costs.