Development Coordinator

Bagaduce Music; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 12,000 - 24,000; Part time

Job summary

Bagaduce Music, based in Maine, seeks a part-time Development Coordinator to grow our donor community and manage fundraising activities.

You will partner with the Executive Director and Board to translate our music into stories that inspire support, while keeping donor relationships warm and current. The role blends hands-on fundraising with grant writing and event coordination.

Qualifications

• Experience in fundraising, sales, or another relationship-driven role.
• Strong writing; able to craft thank-you notes, appeals, and grant proposals.
• Comfort with donor databases and communication systems; willingness to learn new tools.

Responsibilities

• Own our membership program: renewals, upgrades, and communications.
• Coordinate annual appeal and year-end campaign; manage follow-up.
• Support Executive Director in cultivating major donors: research, prep, scheduling, follow-through.
• Manage tribute, memorial gifts and planned giving inquiries.
• Build and maintain a grants calendar; draft proposals and reports.
• Track deliverables and outcomes for grants.
• Coordinate logistics for the summer benefit and other events.
• Administer donor database (Little Green Light); maintain records and histories.
• Prepare development reports for the Director, Board, and funders.
• Own the 'Support Us' section of the website.
• Write thank-you letters and donor communications in our voice.
• Coordinate development-focused storytelling for social media, email, and website with marketing.
• Participate in Development working group for six-year strategic priorities.
• Lead day-to-day development execution; collaborate with Executive Director and Board.

Skills

Fundraising

Donor relations

Grant writing

Event coordination

Communications

Database management

Storytelling

Tools

Little Green Light

DonorPerfect

WordPress

Google Workspace

Job description

Bagaduce Music | Blue Hill and Surrounding Coastal Maine
Hours: 15-25 hours per week to start
Reports to: Executive Director
Start date: Fall 2026, or as soon as filled
Application deadline: Applications reviewed as received; position open until filled

About Bagaduce Music

Bagaduce Music has been building a musical community on the coast of Maine since 1983. It started as a lending library that has grown to 240,000 titles which circulate around the world, and is now growing into a home for classes, ensembles, jams, and concerts. Our mission, at its simplest, involves helping people make, share, and enjoy music in Maine and around the world. We are growing the organization program by program, without a giant endowment, rooted in the musical communities of central and coastal Maine. We look for capable, cheerful, hardworking teammates who care about their neighbors, work well without a manager over their shoulder, and treat this with the care of a fine craft. If you like being trusted to figure things out and get after it, you will feel at home here.

In our programs we teach fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, ukulele, songcrafting, and other group instrumental courses. The Belfast Community Chorus, the Trad Song Ensemble, the Belfast Spelmanslag, the Northern New England Ensemble and several other ensembles are our initiatives and a key part of our educational model. We run jam sessions, a concert series, workshops connected to the concert series, and are trying a pilot project called Music in the Schools.

We are a small staff with a helpful volunteer corps, and we’re in the middle of a strategic planning process that runs to our 50th anniversary in 2033.

The Role

This position exists to grow and steward the community of people who make Bagaduce Music possible: members, donors, sponsors, and grantmakers. You will partner with the Executive Director and Board to build a fundraising rhythm that fits the pace of our year, translate the music we make into stories that inspire support, and keep the relationships that fuel the whole operation warm and current.

This is a hands-on job at a small organization. You will manage our donor database, run our annual appeals, coordinate logistics for our fundraising events (including our summer benefit), write grants and grant reports, and make sure every gift is thanked promptly and personally. It is also a creative role: our story is not fully told yet, and you will help shape how we tell it to the people whose support keeps this work alive.

What You Will Do

Individual giving and membership

Own our membership program: renewals, upgrades, and welcome and thank-you communications.

Coordinate our annual appeal and year-end campaign, from list to letter to follow-up.

Support the Executive Director in cultivating major donors: research, prep, meeting scheduling, follow-through.

Manage tribute gifts, memorial gifts, and planned giving inquiries.

Grants

Build and maintain a grants calendar covering foundation, state, and government sources. Our grant program is small today and part of your job is to grow it.

Draft grant proposals and reports in partnership with the Executive Director.

Track deliverables, deadlines, and outcomes so we do what we said we would do.

Events

Coordinate logistics for our summer benefit and other fundraising events.

Partner with the board’s development committee on event planning and stewardship.

Support sponsorship outreach and follow-through.

Systems and records

Administer our donor database in Little Green Light: gift entry, coding, list segmentation, and reporting.

Maintain accurate donor records and giving histories.

Prepare development reports for the Executive Director, the board, and our funders.

Own the support us section of our website.

Development storytelling

Write thank-you letters, appeal letters, and donor communications in our voice.

Support annual reporting to donors, including an end-of-year impact summary.

Coordinate development-focused stories for social media, email, and website with our marketing coordinator. Organization-wide marketing sits elsewhere on the team, but the development perspective on our storytelling lives with you.

Planning

Participate in the Development working group of our strategic planning process, which establishes six-year priorities.

The Development Coordinator partners closely with the Executive Director and Board, who set overall fundraising strategy and direction. You will lead day-to-day execution, bring ideas to the table, and help shape how the vision translates into practice.

This role does not book the concert series, run education programs, or lead organization-wide marketing. Other staff hold those.

What You Bring

Required

Experience in fundraising, sales, or another relationship-driven role. You know how to cultivate people, follow through, and close a loop.

Strong writing. You can move cleanly between a warm thank-you, a persuasive appeal, and a precise grant proposal.

Comfort with database and communication systems. You do not need to know our specific stack from day one (donor CRM, Constant Contact, WordPress, Google Workspace), but you should be the kind of person who is ready to learn a system and keep it clean, updated, and constantly improved.

Attention to detail. Gift entry, donor coding, and grant deadlines reward the meticulous.

Discretion. You will handle giving histories and personal information.

Warmth with people. Donors give to humans, not organizations.

Capable, cheerful, and hardworking, with a team-player instinct. You will be the voice of Bagaduce for many of our most important supporters.

Valid driver’s license and reliable transportation.

Helpful

Grant writing experience.

Event coordination background.

Experience with donor CRMs (we use Little Green Light; DonorPerfect, Bloomerang, or similar all translate).

Musicianship of any kind. If you play, there is room to sit in.

Experience at a small nonprofit where everyone does several jobs.

We care more about follow-through, warmth, and the ability to tell our story than about a specific credential. If you are close on paper and confident in practice, apply.

How We Work

Bagaduce Music is a small, capable team. We hire smart people, trust them, and expect them to take the ball and run: bring us questions, bring us ideas, tell us what you need, and get after it. There is not a task list waiting in your inbox each morning, and there is not a manager over your shoulder. If that sounds refreshing, welcome. If it sounds daunting, this may not be the right fit for you.

What we value in a teammate:

Comfortable with autonomy, and comfortable asking for help when you need it.

A team player who cares about the people you work with and the community we serve.

Willingness to use the technology we already have (Google Workspace, Little Green Light, Constant Contact, WordPress) and to help us pick better tools when the existing ones stop serving us.

We hold regular staff meetings and stay in touch between them by email and occasional text. We are actively figuring out how the team communicates best, and you would be part of that conversation.

Schedule and Location

Based on our Blue Hill campus. Much of the development work is remote-friendly, but you will need reliable on-site presence for events, board meetings, donor visits, and the busiest stretches of our calendar. Our summer benefit and year-end appeal are the two most demanding seasons. Our departing coordinator worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, which is one workable rhythm; we are open to others.

Compensation and Benefits

Bagaduce Music is working toward positions with more hours and stronger benefits as part of our current planning process, and this role reflects that direction. As our programming and support base grow, there is a realistic path for this position to expand toward full time, at which point it would carry health insurance. We are also curious about wellness benefits down the road, such as massage or sauna access, but nothing along those lines is on the table yet.

Other benefits at any hours level: meaningful location flexibility for work that does not require on-site presence, a small and supportive team, and a job where music and community are at its core.

Training and Transition

Our departing coordinator built the development systems you will inherit and has offered to train her successor, if the transition time works for everyone.

Bagaduce Music is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, and we encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every listed qualification.