Project Dandelion
Director of Strategy & Development
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Project Dandelion Director of Strategy & Development
Project Dandelion is looking for a Director of Strategy & Development to play a senior leadership role in the next stage of our growth. This person will sit at the intersection of strategy, programme development, partnerships, fundraising, and execution. Their job is to take the strategic direction set by our Executive Director and turn it into a coherent, resourced portfolio of work: helping determine where Project Dandelion should play and how we can have the greatest influence; developing programmes and propositions; building the partnerships and funding required to make them possible; and ensuring decisions move through the organisation into execution.
This is not a traditional fundraising role. We are looking for someone who can see the whole organisation and make strong strategic judgements about where Project Dandelion should focus its limited capacity. They will be expected to develop ideas, not simply fundraise for programmes created by others; resolve routine tensions across programmes, opportunities, and capacity; represent Project Dandelion credibly with external partners and funders; and create the clarity that enables the wider team to own and deliver their work.
They will work closely with our Executive Director and senior strategic advisors. The Executive Director sets organisational direction, holds Project Dandelion's highest-level relationships, and makes consequential organisational choices. The Director of Strategy & Development turns that direction into an integrated portfolio, resources it, represents it externally, and ensures decisions move through the organisation.
A major part of this role is revenue generation. The Director of Strategy & Development will own Project Dandelion's development engine and carry a clear annual revenue target, building a strong pipeline and converting the organisation's strategy, programmes, and relationships into significant funding partnerships.
We are looking for someone with significant experience across strategy, programme or proposition development, and fundraising, ideally within climate, gender equality, philanthropy, international development, or adjacent fields. They will be commercially minded, highly autonomous, an exceptional communicator and relationship-builder, and comfortable moving between big-picture thinking and hands-on delivery.
Key Responsibilities
Strategy & Portfolio Leadership
- Translate the Executive Director's strategic direction into clear organisational priorities and an integrated portfolio of work, ensuring Project Dandelion's programmes, partnerships, and influence activity reinforce rather than compete with one another.
- Help determine where Project Dandelion should play and how we can win, identifying the opportunities where our network, convening power, narrative expertise, and women-led approach can create distinctive influence.
- Develop new programmes and strategic propositions in response to organisational priorities and emerging opportunities.
- Apply Project Dandelion's opportunity framework to determine when we should own, partner, connect, or decline, and make routine portfolio decisions without unnecessarily escalating them to the Executive Director.
- Ensure every significant initiative has a clear influence objective, accountable owner, resources, endpoint, and pathway from strategy into execution.
- Maintain an organisation-wide view of priorities and capacity, resolving routine conflicts between programmes, functions, and opportunities before they return to the Executive Director.
- Identify when new opportunities should replace, rather than simply be added to, existing priorities.
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Fundraising & Strategic Development
- Own Project Dandelion's fundraising strategy and development engine, with accountability for delivering against an agreed annual revenue target.
- Build and manage a high-quality pipeline across foundations, philanthropy, institutional funders, strategic partnerships, and other aligned sources of revenue.
- Translate Project Dandelion's priorities into compelling, fundable propositions, connecting the organisation's mission and influence model to the interests of potential partners without allowing funding to drive strategy.
- Lead the development of concept notes, proposals, pitches, funding decks, and major donor materials, coordinating input from programme and strategic leads as required.
- Proactively identify and qualify potential funders and partners, developing clear strategies for priority prospects and pathways towards significant asks.
- Work closely with the Executive Director on Project Dandelion's highest-value funder relationships, ensuring she is well prepared for the conversations and asks where her involvement adds greatest value.
- Own rigorous follow-through after funder conversations so that relationships and opportunities progress without requiring the Executive Director to drive every next action.
- Maintain clear visibility of confirmed and forecast revenue, pipeline value and probability, priority asks, funding gaps, and upcoming decisions.
- Work with finance and programme owners to ensure proposals are appropriately budgeted, deliverable, and realistic about organisational capacity before commitments are made.
- Ensure a clear handoff from development to delivery once funding is secured, so developing an opportunity does not mean indefinitely owning its execution.
Partnerships & External Representation
- Represent Project Dandelion confidently with funders, partners, institutions, and other senior external stakeholders, speaking credibly about our mission, influence model, programmes, and priorities.
- Develop strategic partnerships that can increase Project Dandelion's influence, reach, and resources.
- Understand how major moments, including climate, business, and philanthropic gatherings, can be used intentionally to move relationships, decisions, and resources rather than treated as ends in themselves.
- Bring intelligence from external relationships back into the organisation, identifying changes in the funding landscape, emerging opportunities, and implications for Project Dandelion's strategy.
- Build trusted relationships across the Project Dandelion ecosystem while exercising judgement about when our network should be activated and for what purpose.
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Organisational Leadership & Execution
- Act as the first escalation point for routine conflicts across programmes and functions, bringing the Executive Director in when a decision changes organisational strategy, commits significant money or reputation, requires one of her relationships, or forces a consequential choice between priorities.
- Ensure strategic decisions translate into clear ownership and action across the organisation, rather than remaining in meetings or with senior advisors.
- Build a culture of confident decision-making in which people understand what they can decide and proceed with, when they should consult, and what genuinely needs to be escalated.
- Maintain visibility across organisational capacity and commitments, ensuring new work is only added when there is a named owner and genuine capacity, or an explicit decision about what it will replace.
- Work closely with programme, brand, digital, narrative, finance, and operational colleagues while respecting clear ownership and avoiding unnecessary layers of coordination.
- Help create an organisational culture where work is actively stopped or declined when it lacks strategic fit, ownership, influence potential, or resources.
Revenue Accountability
This role will carry a defined annual revenue target, agreed against Project Dandelion's organisational strategy, budget, and existing pipeline. Success will not be measured by the volume of fundraising activity. We will look at revenue secured, the quality and resilience of the future pipeline, and whether funding is enabling the organisation's strategic priorities rather than determining them.
The Director will be expected to maintain clear visibility of confirmed and forecast revenue, pipeline value and probability, priority prospects and asks, upcoming funding decisions, and gaps in both programme and flexible organisational funding.
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