Job Summary

As Donor Lifecycle Marketing Manager, you'll own the donor journey after the first gift and be responsible for growing the lifetime value of charity: water's consumer donor base. You'll spend most of your time designing, launching, and optimizing multichannel lifecycle programs across email, SMS, paid media, and direct mail, including onboarding and welcome journeys, stewardship and impact touchpoints, failed-payment recovery, upgrade asks, and additional-gift campaigns. You'll treat retention as both a science and a craft: segmenting donors thoughtfully, testing relentlessly, and making sure every message feels personal and meaningful.

Responsibilities

• Owning retention, upgrade, and additional-gift strategy for charity: water's recurring (The Spring) and one-time donors, with clear accountability for retention rate, average gift, upgrade rate, and donor lifetime value.
• Building and managing automated lifecycle journeys, including welcome and onboarding series, anniversary and milestone moments, impact updates, lapse prevention, and win-back programs.
• Planning and executing multichannel campaigns across email, SMS, paid social and search retargeting, and direct mail, making sure each channel plays a distinct and coordinated role.
• Developing upgrade programs that invite recurring donors to increase their monthly gift at the right moments, and additional-gift appeals timed around key moments like year-end and World Water Day.
• Reducing involuntary churn by partnering with RevOps on failed-payment recovery, card updater tools, and payment-method outreach.
• Partnering with the paid media team and agency partners on retention and reactivation campaigns, contributing to audience strategy, creative testing, and performance insights.
• Collaborating with the direct mail team and vendors on programs for recurring and multi-year donors, providing input on audience selection, messaging, and timelines, and helping analyze results.
• Designing and running a disciplined testing roadmap across subject lines, ask amounts, timing, creative, and channel mix, and turning results into lasting improvements.
• Partnering with RevOps to build segmentation and reporting that tracks cohort retention, channel performance, and revenue attribution.
• Collaborating with Creative to develop compelling donor-facing storytelling that connects supporters to the impact of their giving.
• Identifying high-potential donors from recurring and mid-level segments and handing them off to Key Relationships Managers for personal cultivation.
• Managing agency and vendor relationships, as well as program budgets and timelines.
• Staying current on trends in lifecycle marketing, recurring giving, and nonprofit fundraising, and bringing new ideas to the team.

Requirements

• 4–6 years of experience in lifecycle, retention, CRM, or digital fundraising marketing, with a track record of measurably improving retention or donor value.
• Hands-on experience running programs across at least three of these channels: email, SMS, paid media, direct mail.
• Experience building automated journeys in an email or marketing automation platform (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Iterable, Marketo, Klaviyo, HubSpot).
• Strong analytical skills and comfort working with data to segment audiences, read test results, and make decisions.
• Excellent writing skills and a sharp instinct for what makes a message land.
• Strong project management skills and the ability to juggle multiple campaigns and deadlines.
• A passion for charity: water's mission and a genuine interest in the people who support it.

Added Plus

• Experience with recurring or subscription programs, whether in the nonprofit sector or at a subscription business.
• Channel-specific experience in direct mail fundraising (including lettershops and list vendors) or SMS platforms and compliance requirements.
• Familiarity with Salesforce NPSP, Iterable, JIRA, SQL, or data visualization tools like Looker or Tableau.

Success Factors

• You're obsessed with the donor experience.
• You're data-driven but story-led.
• You think in systems.
• You're a strong collaborator.
• You're a self-starter.

Benefits & Perks

• Unlimited PTO
• Summer Fridays
• 6-week paid sabbatical leave after 5 years of employment
• Annual bonus potential through The Pool
• 401k plan + employer match
• Medical covered at 85% + Dental/Vision contributions
• FSA + dependent day care FSA
• Employer-paid life insurance, STD, LTD
• 16-week paid maternity and paternity leave for new parents
• Stipends for Home office, Professional Development, and a You-do-You Perk
• TSA Pre-check reimbursement
• Flexible working hours; team members are expected to be online 10am - 4pm ET regardless of location, plus three hours per day asynchronously, which factors in an hour for lunch
• 2-4 annual travel requirements that foster team alignment, connection and in-person collaboration

Organizational Overview

At charity: water, we believe that water changes everything. We work with local implementing partners to fund sustainable solutions that provide clean and safe drinking water to people around the world. Since 2006, with a diverse team of world-changers and an unstoppable community of supporters, we’ve brought clean water to more than 20 million people worldwide.