Job Description

About Open Lunar Foundation

Open Lunar Foundation is a US 501(c)3 nonprofit stewarding humanitys return to the Moon with transparency, cooperation, and shared benefit at its core. We develop practical governance frameworks and shared infrastructure including the Lunar Ledger that enable peaceful, equitable, and collaborative lunar activity from the start.

As lunar activity accelerates and coordination challenges grow, Open Lunar plays a unique role at the intersection of governance, policy, and technology translating shared values into systems that shape how the Moon is explored and used.

Open Lunar has long term donor relationships and a significant network. Our fundraising goals are to steadily increase the resilience and abundance of our programs.

Role Overview

Open Lunar is seeking an experienced, entrepreneurial Development Director to lead all fundraising strategy and execution for the organization. This role will be driving the action, owning the processes, and managing up.

The Development Director is the point person for fundraising, responsible for facilitating our approach, identifying and pursuing funding pathways, crafting and pitching compelling opportunities, and closing significant gifts and partnerships.

You will work in close partnership with the Executive Director and Board mobilizing senior leadership and translating Open Lunars governance, policy, and technical work into fundable, high-impact opportunities. As our inaugural Development Director, you will also be creating the foundation for our development operations and strategy as you go.

This role is ideal for someone with proven fundraising or sales experience who is excited to operate in an emerging field and comfortable opening new markets that may not yet be thinking about lunar activity.

While this position is in a department of one, we envision support for this role can be built up in time. Additionally, our team is highly collaborative, and you will work closely with and receive support on key tasks from our programs, operations, and communications teams.

What You'll Step Into

• An established portfolio of major donors with documented giving histories
• A well-connected board committed to opening doors and making introductions
• Dedicated budget for development tools, software subscriptions, and travel
• Collaborative colleagues across programs, communications, and operations ready to amplify your work
• A handson Executive Director invested in your success

If this role intrigues you, but your background doesn't align perfectly, we still encourage you to apply. Open Lunar is a multidisciplinary team, and we recognize that impactful fundraising and partnership leadership can come from a variety of professional paths. We are open to discussing scope and title with exceptional candidates whose experience strongly aligns with Open Lunars needs.

Core Responsibilities

Leadership & Strategy

• Own Open Lunars fundraising strategy, targets, and pipelines across individual, institutional, and partnership funding.
• Manage annual and multiyear fundraising plans, forecasts, and progress reporting.
• Proactively guide and support staff and board members to be effective fundraising champions.
• Design and execute special campaigns such as yearend giving, planned giving, and anniversary year fundraising pushes.
• Work closely with the communications team to ensure organizational outputs are aligned with our audience and fundraising strategy.

Fundraising and Donor Engagement

• Identify, pursue, and close major gifts, multiyear commitments, sponsorships, and strategic partnerships.
• Identify new funder communities and markets not traditionally engaged in lunar or space work.
• Serve as the lead on all grant writing, pulling in other team members as needed.
• Strategically deploy the Executive Director and Board into fundraising conversations where their involvement is most impactful.
• Maintain key funder relationships including stewarding future renewals.
• Develop compelling funding narratives for Open Lunars core initiatives, including the Lunar Ledger, Fellowship programs, and governance frameworks.
• Equip leadership with pitches, decks, talking points, and followup strategies while retaining ownership of overall fundraising direction.
• Play a leadership and managing role in donorfacing events, including the annual Board & Donor Retreat in 2026.

Partnerships

• Build partnerships across space, technology, governance, climate, security, infrastructure, and adjacent sectors.
• Expand upon an existing corporate sponsorship strategy, evaluate partner benefits, and recruit new partners.
• Travel for fundraising meetings or events and have a presence at programfocused virtual and inperson events when needed.
• Collaborate with program and technical leads to shape fundable initiatives and scopes of work.
• Steward institutional relationships postaward in coordination with the Executive Director and Operations team.

Data, Systems, and Operations

• Maintain clear ownership of pipeline health, donor movement, and closing timelines.
• Establish and manage a donor database and ensure accurate records, acknowledgements, and data segmentation for targeted outreach.
• Build and manage a tracking system for a pipeline of foundation and institutional funding opportunities.
• Create and maintain dashboards and onepagers for presenting fundraising progress to the board and key funders.
• Lead and submit concept notes, proposals, and grant reports aligned with Open Lunars broader fundraising strategy.
• Create onepagers, pitch decks, and other communications collateral to support fundraising activities.
• Implement clear policies, timelines, and qualitycontrol systems that promote efficiency, accountability, and compliance across all fundraising functions.

Required Experience & Skills

• 5+ years of experience in fundraising, development, sales, partnerships, or capital raising.
• Proven track record closing significant gifts or deals, including sixfigure and multiyear commitments.
• Experience leading fundraising strategy not just executing against a plan set by others.
• Strong pitch development, storytelling, and negotiation skills.
• Comfort working peertopeer with senior leadership and boards.
• Excellent relationship management and followthrough.
• Alignment with Open Lunars mission and values around cooperation, transparency, and peaceful futures.
• Ability to travel 23 times/year.
• Experience working in a remote environment, including excellent communication skills and fluency with digital communication tools such as Slack, Asana, and Google Workspace.
• Experience with both inperson and virtual relationship building and fund solicitation.

Strong Plus / Nice to Have

• Background in sales, venture fundraising, or business development, particularly in complex or emerging sectors.
• Experience fundraising for governance, policy, infrastructure, science, or technology initiatives.
• Familiarity with space, aerospace, climate, or global governance ecosystems.
• U.S. and international fundraising experience.
• Comfort building systems and markets that do not yet have established playbooks.

Who You Are

• You are a strategist, closer, and relationshipbuilder who is comfortable taking ownership, setting direction, and being accountable for results.
• You enjoy operating in complex, highcontext environments and know how to translate ambitious ideas into fundable action.

What This Role Is and Is Not

• This is a builder role, not a maintenance role.
• You will help shape fundraising systems and markets that are still emerging.
• This is not a grantonly or inbound fundraising environment.
• You do not need to be a technical expert, but you must be comfortable learning about our work and engaging with technical teams.

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