Major Gifts Officer Job Description Template

Major Gifts Officer Job Description Template

What does a major gifts officer do?

a Major Gifts Officer owns program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes in mission-led teams. This job description template helps hiring teams define responsibilities, required experience, skills, screening criteria, and interview stages before sourcing starts.

a Major Gifts Officer is responsible for program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes in mission-led teams. Strong candidates show relevant experience, program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting, clear communication, and evidence of improving program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics.

Customize templateView salary notesView interview questions
Major Gifts Officer Job Description Builder
Download

Google Docs copies the JD to your clipboard. Paste it into the new document.

Website:

Role details

Department: Work type: Location: Employment: Required experience: Salary:

About the role

Your Company is hiring for the Major Gifts Officer role to support . The role owns measurable outcomes, clear communication, documentation, quality checks, and reliable follow-through.

Role focus

Day-to-day ownership of program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes, with clear documentation, communication, and review habits.

Key responsibilities

  • Own program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes for the Major Gifts Officer function.
  • Maintain program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust through checks, documentation, and follow-up.
  • Coordinate with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams to keep work moving without unclear handoffs.
  • Track program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics and explain changes, risks, and next steps.
  • Improve recurring workflows, templates, reports, or handoff notes used by the team.

Requirements

  • 2 to 5 years of relevant experience for the Major Gifts Officer role.
  • Working knowledge of program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting.
  • Ability to document decisions, risks, follow-ups, and outcomes clearly.
  • Comfort working with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams.
  • Examples of improving program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust or reporting on program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics.

Nice to have

  • Experience with CRM or similar systems.
  • Examples of improving program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust.
  • Comfort reporting on program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics.
  • Experience working with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams.

How candidates will be assessed

  • Resume screen against must-have Major Gifts Officer skills and experience.
  • Phone screen for scope, salary range, work model, and examples of program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes.
  • Work sample for judgment, quality, and communication.
  • Final Hyring Meet interview with structured scorecard and decision notes.

What a major gifts officer actually owns

Major Gifts Officer hiring centers on the outcomes, handoffs, quality checks, and metrics behind the role.

Core role outcomes

Major Gifts Officer roles own program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes inside mission-led teams. The work is measured by clear outcomes, not a generic task list.

Quality and compliance

Major Gifts Officer work protects program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust through review habits, documentation, and escalation points.

Stakeholder handoffs

Strong candidates can work with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams. These handoffs reveal communication fit, not only task skills.

Metrics and reporting

Major Gifts Officer candidates track, improve, or explain program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics during manager reviews.

Hire a Major Gifts Officer: funnel benchmarks

To hire a Major Gifts Officer, teams usually need sourcing, resume screening, role-specific assessment, and structured interviews. These benchmarks are indicative planning ranges for roles in mission-led teams that need program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting.

Major Gifts Officer hiring metrics

Hiring metricBenchmarkRole note
Time to fill30 to 45 daysCan shorten when the JD, salary range, and work-sample task are clear before sourcing starts.
Cost per hire8 to 12% of annual compensationUse as a planning range before recruiter fees, ads, tools, and interview time are finalized.
Offer acceptance rate75 to 85%Major Gifts Officer candidates compare role clarity, work model, manager expectations, and salary range closely.
90-day retention rate85 to 95%Higher when the JD is honest about program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes, success metrics, and cross-team communication.

Typical hiring funnel

Applicants sourced

1,000

Resume screened

250

Phone screened

100

Work sample

50

Final interview

20

Offer extended

8

Hired

5

Why Hyring is different for Major Gifts Officer hiring

Hiring a Major Gifts Officer often slows down when one agency works from a limited candidate pool. Hyring pairs a 5,000+ recruiting partner network with AI screening and interview tools, so more recruiters can work on the role while the platform checks role fit before final interviews.

AreaTypical recruitment agencyHyring
Candidate sourcingUsually depends on one agency team and its own candidate database.5,000+ recruiting partners can work in parallel on Major Gifts Officer and adjacent talent pools in mission-led teams.
Screening depthOften forwards resumes first, then waits for the hiring team to find gaps.AI Resume Screener, AI Phone Screener, and AI Video Interviewer help check program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting before the final round.
Hiring costFees can be higher and may vary by role, recruiter, or country.Commission is 7% for India roles and 14% for other countries such as the US, Singapore, and the UK.
Speed to shortlistShortlists often arrive in weekly batches after manual resume review.Parallel partner sourcing plus AI screening can move qualified Major Gifts Officer candidates to interviews in days when the role brief is ready.
Role fitMay treat Major Gifts Officer as a generic category role.The workflow checks program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting, grant awareness, tool exposure, communication, and scorecard fit.

Major Gifts Officer skills to verify before shortlisting

Use this matrix to turn major gifts officer requirements into resume signals, screen prompts, and interview evidence.

SkillPriorityResume or interview signalBest assessment
Program deliveryMust-haveResume shows hands-on program delivery work tied to Major Gifts Officer outcomes.Resume screen plus structured phone screen.
Stakeholder communicationMust-haveCandidate can explain decisions, tradeoffs, and examples without vague ownership claims.Phone screen and video interview.
ReportingMust-haveWork samples or interview answers show how the candidate maintains program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust.Case exercise or work-sample review.
Grant awarenessRole-specificCandidate can connect daily work to program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics.Scorecard interview with metric-based prompts.
CRMNice-to-haveExperience with crm or similar tools used in the role.Tool walkthrough or practical scenario.

Major Gifts Officer salary benchmarks

Use these data-backed benchmarks to set an initial Major Gifts Officer pay range, then adjust for required experience, location, work model, and budget.

Salary directory

US benchmark bands

Low

$71K

Lower benchmark from published salary pages.

Mid

$90K

Midpoint benchmark from published salary pages.

High

$117K

Higher benchmark from published salary pages.

US salary benchmarks based on 192 published the wider salary directory salary pages.

Major Gifts Officer interview questions

Use the closest interview question bank, then tailor the screen to major gifts officer responsibilities, tools, and scorecard criteria.

Role interview questions

Major Gifts Officer interview checkpoints

Recent work evidence

Ask for one recent Major Gifts Officer example, the candidate's exact ownership, the constraints, and the outcome.

Walk me through a Major Gifts Officer project where your decision changed the result.

Skill judgment

Listen for practical decisions around program delivery, stakeholder communication, tradeoffs, and quality checks.

How would you handle competing speed and quality pressures in mission-led teams?

Scorecard evidence

Use the work-sample discussion to confirm ownership of program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes, stakeholder communication, and practical metric judgment.

Which program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics would you watch in the first 90 days, and why?

Related interview pages

Cloud Architect interview questionsDevOps Engineer interview questionsLinux Administrator interview questions

Hyring workflow to hire a major gifts officer

Use the final JD to align resume screening, phone screening, work sample, communication checks, video interviews, and Hyring Meet.

Stage 1

AI Resume Screener

Resume screening

Rank resumes against Major Gifts Officer must-haves, experience, tools, and category-specific signals.

Stage 2

AI Phone Screener

Phone screening

Confirm availability, work model, compensation range, and examples of program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes.

Stage 3

English Proficiency Test

Communication check

Check spoken English when the Major Gifts Officer works with customers, global teams, or documentation-heavy workflows.

Stage 4

AI Video Interviewer

Structured interview

Run consistent interview questions for Major Gifts Officer and compare candidates using a shared scorecard.

Stage 5

Hyring Meet

Final interview

Use a human-led final round with AI notes, scorecards, and interview evidence for the hiring decision.

Major Gifts Officer assessment kit

Use these prompts to test program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting, ownership, and communication before the final round.

Phone screen prompts

  • Tell me about a recent Major Gifts Officer project and what you personally owned.
  • Which program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics did you track, and what changed because of your work?
  • Describe a handoff with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams that did not go well. What did you fix?

Coding prompts

  • Solve a practical Major Gifts Officer scenario using the information provided.
  • Prioritize three competing requests from beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams.
  • Write a short decision note with risks, assumptions, and next steps.

Scorecard criteria

  • Experience with program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes.
  • Judgment around program quality, reporting accuracy, and donor trust.
  • Communication with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams.
  • Ownership of program, funding, outreach, and impact metrics.

Tools for hiring and preparing Major Gifts Officer candidates

Use these Free HR Toolkit and Jobseeker Toolkit pages when the hiring team or candidate needs the next step after this JD.

JD vs Resume MatcherCompare Major Gifts Officer resumes against the final JD.Job Description Writing ChecklistCheck clarity, salary range, responsibilities, and requirements.Candidate Screening ChecklistScreen Major Gifts Officer candidates with consistent evidence.Interview Scorecard ChecklistKeep interview feedback structured and comparable.Recruitment Funnel FrameworkImprove conversion from JD view to shortlist to offer.Resume CheckerHelp candidates check whether their resume matches the role.

Frequently  Asked  Questions

What does the Major Gifts Officer job description include?

The Major Gifts Officer job description includes role purpose, responsibilities, required experience, must-have skills, salary range, work model, screening criteria, and interview stages.

What skills are important for a Major Gifts Officer?

Important Major Gifts Officer skills include program delivery, stakeholder communication, reporting, grant awareness, communication, documentation, and the ability to work with beneficiaries, donors, partners, and program teams.

How can recruiters screen Major Gifts Officer resumes?

Recruiters can screen Major Gifts Officer resumes for relevant experience, examples of program delivery, stakeholder trust, fundraising, and community outcomes, tool exposure, measurable outcomes, and clear communication with stakeholders.

How can Hyring help hire a Major Gifts Officer?

Hyring can help with resume screening, phone screening, communication checks, structured video interviews, scorecards, and final interviews for Major Gifts Officer hiring.
Adithyan RKWritten by Adithyan RK
Surya N
Fact-checked by Surya N
Published on: 22 May 2026Last updated: 4 Jun 2026
Share: