Technical Project Manager - CRM

The Technical Project Manager (TPM) serves as the primary interface between JED's Salesforce delivery team and every department across the organization. This role owns intake, requirements definition, and stakeholder management for all CRM-related projects and requests, translating organizational needs into clearly scoped, ready-to-work deliverables for the Salesforce team. Working in close partnership with the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead, the TPM ensures that departments across JED, including ACE (Fundraising and School Partnerships), Marketing & Communications, School Programs, and Product, receive consistent, well-managed project support, while working with the Salesforce delivery team to plan a sustainable, predictable pace of execution. This role requires someone who understands the needs of a robust fundraising team and can hold firm boundaries around scope and readiness, and bring increased structure to a high volume, cross-functional intake process.

Key Responsibilities

Intake, Requirements & Scoping

• Serve as the first point of contact for any incoming request or project from any department (ACE, Marketing & Communications, School Programs, Product)

• Schedule, coordinate, and facilitate scoping and requirements-gathering meetings with stakeholders

• Gather requirements and translate them into clear acceptance criteria, user stories, and tasks

• Define what “done” and “ready to work” mean for each incoming request in partnership with requesting departments, before it reaches the delivery team

Stakeholder Management & Communication

• Communicate proactively and clearly with stakeholders when a request isn't yet ready or timelines need to shift, and provide a straightforward path to revisit that call if a department disagrees

• Host weekly office hours, either per department or grouped by related departments, to help teams plan upcoming work and proactively surface dependencies, deadlines, and resource conflicts

• Manage expectations proactively, ensuring stakeholders understand project status, scope, and delivery timing

• Build credibility and fluency with fundraising and development teams (ACE) to translate their needs accurately into technical requirements, and share regular, transparent visibility into intake status and prioritization so ACE can plan effectively

• Represent the IT team at the monthly Sync meeting where cross-team projects are discussed and planned.

Project & Delivery Coordination

• Participate in Salesforce Delivery Team daily standups, backlog refinement, and sprint planning

• Structure and maintain the Asana delivery board so intake, prioritization, and status are always visible and current

• Manage day-to-day project tracking, sequencing, and status once work is defined and scoped

• Coordinate handoffs between requirements definition and technical execution, looping in the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead on strategy, architecture or roadmap alignment as needed

Functional OwnershipThis role owns the intake, requirements-definition, and stakeholder-management function for JED's CRM/Salesforce environment. The TPM is accountable for the health and clarity of the project pipeline, including how requests enter the system, how they're scoped, and how stakeholders are communicated throughout delivery. This role does not own technical configuration, Salesforce administration, or platform architecture; those remain with the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead and the Salesforce Administration team.

Decision Rights & CollaborationDecides independently: whether an incoming request is sufficiently scoped and ready to enter the delivery pipeline (in consultation with the requesting department); sequencing and prioritization of intake and requirements-gathering work; day-to-day stakeholder communication and expectation-setting; structure and maintenance of the delivery board.

Requires input or approval: final architecture or platform-strategy decisions (owned by the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead); prioritization calls that affect the broader team's workload (made in partnership with the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead); scope changes that expand a project beyond CRM/Salesforce.

Collaborates closely with: the CRM Strategy & Operations Lead, to ensure scoped projects align with overall CRM roadmap and architecture; the Salesforce Administration team, to hand off clearly defined, ready-to-work tasks; department stakeholders (especially ACE), as the primary point of contact for requests, requirements, and status updates.

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Required

• Extremely well-versed in Salesforce, with strong working knowledge of the platform's capabilities, limitations, and common configurations (prior hands-on Salesforce experience strongly preferred, even if not in an administrator capacity)

• Demonstrated experience in fundraising, development, or philanthropy, with the ability to speak credibly to development staff about donor management, campaigns, and fundraising workflows

• 3-5 years of project management or business analyst experience within a Salesforce, CRM, or nonprofit fundraising/development environment (required)

• Proven experience managing technology or CRM projects from intake through delivery, including gathering requirements, defining acceptance criteria, and managing stakeholder expectations

• Experience tracking and reporting on growth metrics (e.g., donor growth, fundraising performance, or similar KPIs tied to CRM data)

• Excellent communication skills, with demonstrated ability to manage competing stakeholder priorities and resolve disagreements collaboratively

• Strong organizational skills and comfort working in project management tools (Asana or similar)

• Ability to work independently while collaborating closely with a technical delivery team

Preferred

• Project management certification (e.g., PMP, CAPM)

• Salesforce certification (e.g., Administrator, Business Analyst)

• Direct experience working in a nonprofit development or fundraising department

• Familiarity with Google Workspace, Slack, and Gearset

Success MetricsSuccess will be measured across three areas.

Intake & Delivery HealthRequests move from intake to “ready to work” status within a consistent, defined timeframe, and the delivery board reflects accurate, current status at all times.

Stakeholder Trust & Expectation ManagementDepartments report clear understanding of project status and timelines, measured through stakeholder feedback and a reduction in requests routed outside the intake process, alongside regular, two-way check-ins on how the process is working for stakeholders.

Growth ImpactCRM-driven initiatives show measurable contributions to organizational growth metrics (e.g., donor growth, campaign performance) that this role helped track and surface to stakeholders and leadership.

Originally posted on Himalayas