Fundraising Systems & Research Associate

The Associate, Fundraising Systems and Research plays a vital role in strengthening World Central Kitchen’s (WCK) fundraising data infrastructure and ensuring the accuracy, accessibility, and usability of information that drives donor engagement and organizational growth. As part of the Development Operations team, this position focuses on proactive data hygiene, process streamlining, basic Salesforce NPSP administrative, and quality assurance of reports and dashboards, ensuring the data powering fundraising decisions is reliable and well maintained.

Functioning at the intersection of fundraising and systems work, the Associate contributes to WCK’s prospect research efforts by conducting targeted research, maintaining donor profiles, and enhancing data needed for strategic engagement and portfolio development. This role serves as a touchpoint between Donor Relations and Development Operations, and helps translate fundraising needs into data systems and tasks, identifies process bottlenecks, and supports alignment across teams to improve data quality and operational efficiency.

Ideal candidates are detail-oriented, tech-curious, and energized by opportunities to improve data quality, streamline workflows, support prospecting, and contribute to WCK’s scalable fundraising infrastructure.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Serve as touchpoint between fundraising teams and Development Operations, helping translate team needs into data or systems tasks, and communicating progress on shared workflows.
• Conduct targeted prospect research to support donor relations, stewardship strategies, and emerging major gift opportunities.
• Partner with Donor Relations to assess information needs and ensure research findings are accurately reflected in CRM data to support segmentation and pipeline projects.
• Assist in developing tools that support prospect identification and portfolio-building activities.
• Provide support, CRM best practices guidance, and troubleshooting assistance to donor-facing teams.
• Maintain strong data quality and integrity in Salesforce CRM through regular audits, deduplication, and correcting inconsistencies.
• Support data enrichment efforts including standardization of naming conventions, address hygiene, and field completeness across Salesforce CRM.
• Audit and maintain actionable reports, visual dashboards, and data visualization tools in Salesforce to translate business questions, support strategic fundraising decisions, segmentation, stewardship, portfolio management and prospect identification.
• Build ad-hoc reports or list views as needed to support data validation, hygiene tracking, or operational troubleshooting.
• Execute accurate and timely list pulls for fundraising activities ( campaigns, events,). This involves troubleshooting segmentation logic, documenting list-pull criteria, and building repeatable, scalable list processes in partnership with CRM/Email Marketing.
• Act as backup for stewardship-related list pulls, ensuring continuity of donor outreach when needed.
• Perform basic Salesforce administration tasks including user setup and deactivation, permission set assignments, profit management, and user access troubleshooting.
• Identify patterns in data challenges and workflow bottlenecks, and recommend process improvements to support scalable fundraising operations.
• Recommend improvements to data capture, process flow, and system configuration to support scalable fundraising operations and collaborate on system enhancements with the Manager, Fundraising Systems.
• Draft and maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) related to data management, list pulls, reporting, and system workflows.
• Contribute to internal knowledge-base content to support team onboarding and cross-training.
• Create and configure online donation campaign pages for disaster activations, as needed.

Requirements

• Minimum 2-4 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising operations, data management, and prospect research
• 2+ years CRM experience with a fundraising lens, Salesforce NPSP preferred
• Experience conducting prospect research using CRM data, public sources, and research tools (e.g., Kindsight, WealthScreening tools is a plus).
• Strong analytical and reporting skills with experience pulling lists and building dashboards.
• Demonstrated commitment to accuracy, data integrity, and process improvement.
• Ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Proficiency with Excel and/or Google Sheets; comfort working with large datasets.
• Excellent written communication skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to prioritize tasks, work independently, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
• Curiosity and willingness to learn new systems, tools, and technologies.

Benefits

ZERO Premiums: WCK covers 100% of insurance premiums for employees and their dependents, including medical, dental, vision, and group life coverage. Benefits begin on your date of hire.

• Voluntary Benefits:
• Additional Life Insurance
• Pet Insurance
• Supplemental AD&D
• Flexible Spending Accounts (Dependent Care and Health Care)
• 403(b) Retirement Plan:
• WCK offers a 50% match up to 8% of employee salary deferrals, beginning within 30 days of hire.
• Life & Disability Insurance: 100% employer-sponsored group life and disability insurance provided within 30 days.
• Paid Time Off (PTO): Responsible PTO, including vacation, sick, and personal leave, plus paid holidays.
• Growth Opportunities: Learning and development support to grow your career.
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP): Free and confidential support for life’s challenges.
• Annual Salary Reviews and additional benefits outlined in the Personnel Manual.