Business Development Specialist

Request for Quotation

Project Overview

Both demand for services and investment in youth social-emotional development is on the rise. Urban Initiatives (UI) seeks support from an experienced business development professional starting in April 2024 for an estimated 40 hours per month for a six month period to help us in proactively seeking new funding opportunities and engagement of corporate citizens as we aim to meet the demand for our services across the City of Chicago. The Business Development Specialist will support the development team by identifying and cultivating new strategic relationships toward the development of new business opportunities. The Business Development Specialist will collaborate with various team members throughout the organization in order to maximize prospects within our existing network with support from the Chief Executive Officer and Director of Special Events. More specifically this role would have the following responsibilities:

Support event-based fundraising by setting up calls with UI leadership and 120 qualified new donor prospects (4/15/24-10/15/24). Support volunteer engagement by securing 20 corporate citizen groups to volunteer to meet specific program deliverables for our youth employment programs, our middle school leadership development programs, and our soccer-based social-emotional learning program for elementary school students. More specifically, this role would have the following responsibilities:

• Demonstrate familiarity with Urban Initiatives' mission in order to appropriately analyze prospective funders

• Perform market analysis on new funders within Urban Initiatives’ industry including analysis, identification, outreach, tracking, and proposal (if applicable)

• Develop and implement comprehensive business development plan including outbound efforts such as calling, social selling, emails, and networking with corresponding monthly progress reports due on the first of the month

• Conduct research to identify new donor prospects

• Collaborate with staff, Board Members, and partners to support outreach efforts, as needed

• Arrange weekly and monthly funder calls and schedule other outreach to prospective funders

• Schedule calls between UI leadership and qualified funder prospects

• Successfully secure corporate partners to deliver specific volunteer requests such as hosting a programming event on a specific date or bringing a volunteer group out to support a programming event

• Update donor CRM with consistent donor, outreach, and proposal information

• Positively represent the organization in donor interactions and partnership development including including both written and verbal communications

Desired Skills

• Effective time management; ability to prioritize multiple tasks

• Demonstrated professional-level communication skills

• Demonstrated comfortability with outreach

• Demonstrated self-sufficiency; able to work independently with minimal supervision

• Ability to synthesize data to build easy-to-understand reports

• Experienced in research

• Experience with Google Suite or similar software

How to Apply

All referrals and questions can be sent to Tony Colosimo at tony.colosimo@urbaninitiatives.org. This is a consulting contractor position. To apply for this opportunity, please submit a cover letter and resume that outlines relevant qualifications and experience, as well as a consulting rate to Tony by March 29th, 2024. Start date of April 15th, 2024.

Organization Overview

Urban Initiatives (UI) believes in providing high-quality sport- and play-based social-emotional learning programs to youth throughout Chicago. UI’s mission is to use the power of sport and play to empower Chicago’s youth to achieve academic success, develop social-emotional skills and build social capital. UI’s programs are unique because of our commitment to students over time, our intentional emphasis on social-emotional learning (SEL) through play and the use of our network to help students build social capital.