Director of Development

Seashore Trolley Museum seeks a self-motivated and reliable individual with nonprofit fundraising and capital campaign experience to serve as our Director of Development; a full-time, year-round position. This salaried position begins at $75,000/year, with a $100/week health insurance stipend and the opportunity to join the museum’s health insurance and retirement plans. This position will remain open until the best candidate for the position is hired.

In 2025, the museum embarked on a new 5-year Strategic Plan, Protecting our Future, to preserve, safeguard, and invest in our resources, people, and artifacts so that future generations can enjoy a robust and sustainable museum. The Director of Development is a new professional role added to the museum’s staff team with the primary objective of helping the museum fundraise the necessary revenue needed to accomplish all goals listed within this plan, including a capital campaign.

This position will spearhead all development and fundraising efforts, ensuring the organization has the necessary resources to achieve its mission. The Director of Development is a strategic and hands-on leader responsible for cultivating major gifts, managing annual funds, supporting and overseeing grant writing, planning special events, and fostering long-term donor engagement.

Position duties include:

Fundraising Strategy & Execution: Develop and implement a comprehensive annual fundraising plan to meet or exceed financial goals. This position will have the support of and work directly with a capital campaign consultancy.

Donor Relations: Identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward strong relationships with individual donors, corporate partners, and foundations.

Major Gifts & Campaigns: Lead major gift programs, direct capital campaigns, and explore planned giving opportunities.

Grant Management: Oversee the entire grant process, including research, proposal writing, submission, and reporting requirements.

Events Management: Plan and execute fundraising and donor stewardship events, coordinating with staff and volunteers.

Leadership & Management: Manage and mentor the development team of volunteers, and collaborate effectively with the Executive Director and Board of Trustees on fundraising initiatives. While this position has no professional staff direct reports, many volunteers support this work, including the Trustees, a grant writer, volunteers serving on Fund Development and Capital Campaign Committees.

Marketing & Communications: Work with the communications team to create compelling fundraising materials and ensure consistent messaging across newsletters, social media, and the annual report.

Data & Reporting: Manage the donor database (PastPerfect) to track progress, analyze fundraising outcomes, and provide regular reports to senior leadership and the board.

Budget Oversight: Develop and manage the development budget, ensuring efficient use of resources and compliance with all regulations and ethical standards.

The ideal candidate possesses the following qualifications and skills:

Experience: A minimum of 5-7 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising or a related field, with a proven track record of meeting or exceeding fundraising goals.

Education: A Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (Business, Communications, Marketing, Nonprofit Management).

Communication: Exceptional written, verbal, and public speaking skills, with the ability to articulate the organization’s mission and vision compellingly.

Strategic Alignment: Able to align own work objectives with the Museum’s strategic plan and objectives; take organizational priorities into consideration when making choices and trade-offs in own work; maintain perspective between the overall picture and tactical details.

Interpersonal Skills: Strong ability to build and maintain relationships with diverse stakeholders, fostering a culture of philanthropy.

Technical Proficiency: Experience with donor management software and digital fundraising platforms. General computer literacy, including strong skills in Microsoft Excel for data manipulation and analysis, is necessary, as well as a general understanding of how various online fundraising platforms and tools might integrate with the main donor database.

Leadership: Strong project management skills, an entrepreneurial spirit, and the ability to lead and motivate a team of volunteers.

Attributes: A self-starter attitude, highly organized, goal-driven, and a passion for the organization’s mission.

Decisiveness & Judgment: Able to demonstrate good and ethical judgment in routine, day-to-day decisions; independently make decisions and take action, even in non-routine situations; consider impact of various options when making decisions; use good judgment in deciding whether to make a decision or escalate it to a supervisor for additional consultation; use an awareness of formal and informal decision-making channels to achieve desired results.

Results-Oriented: Able to demonstrate high personal work standards, balancing quality and quantity with a sense of urgency about results; do everything possible to meet goals and deadlines; persist in the face of repeated challenges; accept responsibility for improving the quality, efficiency and outcomes of own work.

Resilience & Flexibility: Able to interpret situations and information objectively; maintain high productivity in stressful situations; work to clarify situations where information or objectives are ambiguous.

Problem Solving & Analysis: Able to gather appropriate data and diagnose a situation before taking action; separate causes from symptoms; apply lessons learned from others who encountered similar problems or challenges; anticipate problems and develop contingency plans to deal with them; develop and evaluate alternative courses of action.

The Director of Development reports to our Executive Director.  Occasional evenings and weekends are required. The Director of Development has a year-round workspace in the Museum’s administrative office, but hybrid work is available once benchmarks are achieved and/or maintained.

Applicants must be able to submit three (3) professional references.

To apply, please email cover letter, resume and three professional references to Seashore’s Executive Director, Katie Orlando, at director@trolleymuseum.org.  No phone calls or in-person drop-ins please.

New England Electric Railway Historical Society’s Seashore Trolley Museum, located in Kennebunkport, Maine, pioneered the field of volunteer-sponsored rail preservation worldwide when it was founded in 1939. Guests are treated to rides on our heritage electric railway, aboard trolleys our talented volunteers and staff have restored to their original glory. Hundreds of transit artifacts are on display around our 350-acre campus.

Over 500 volunteers and 15 professional staff keep our campus running, year-round. Dozens of volunteers are on campus part-time or full-time themselves each day working in our Restoration Shop, on our Railway Operations Crew operating the trolleys for our guests, our grounds and maintenance team, crews maintaining our track, signals, and overhead infrastructure. Seashore Trolley Museum is an inspiring place to work, and we hope you consider applying to be part of our team.