Senior Director, Renewals and Retention

Senior Director, Renewals and Retention 

Role overview 

The Senior Director, Renewals and Retention is a strategic leadership role responsible for defining and leading Blackbaud’s next-generation renewals motion across a large, multi-product installed base. This leader will own retention as a business outcome and reimagine the customer renewal experience, moving from a fragmented set of contracts, dates, and conversations toward a simple, unified, and predictable renewal relationship. 

This role moves beyond traditional renewal management. The Senior Director, Renewals and Retention will design and operationalize a scalable, data-driven renewals model aligned to customer segmentation, product strategy, and long-term revenue growth. They will also build and evolve the capabilities, strategy, standards, systems, and team required to support a modern renewals organization. This role has a direct impact on recurring revenue, retention, and expansion outcomes. 

We are looking for a transformational leader who will set the strategy, build and develop the renewals motion, and lead the organization through change while driving towards required business outcomes. 

What you’ll bring   

Transformation, strategy & execution 

• Move quickly to assess the current renewals motion and develop a new transformation strategy — then own its implementation and execution end to end. 

• Rebuild the renewals motion, team, and processes for scale and predictability, retaining revenue for customers while improving churn. 

• Establish scalable processes, governance, and the standards that keep simplification disciplined. 

• Tackle partial churn directly, including changing how the organization negotiates with customers at renewal to reduce downsell and contract erosion.  

• Operationalize the strategy: translate it into implemented changes to team structure, tools, workflows, and customer-facing motions, and sustain the change through execution. 

• Lead organizational change with clarity and pace, evolving the motion in step with product and go-to-market shifts. 

• Build the measurement and instrumentation that show whether the transformation is working. 

Strategic leadership and renewals strategy 

• Define and lead the end-to-end renewals and retention strategy across the installed base. 

• Reimagine the customer’s renewal experience and lead the commercial simplification required to get there. 

• Shape offering, bundling, and packaging strategy as a driver of retention, expansion, and customer value. 

AI, data, and innovation 

• Design a next-generation motion that pairs named coverage with scaled, automated coverage for the broader base. 

• Apply AI and data science to the transformation — using them to redesign workflows, segment the base, and scale coverage, not just as reporting tools. 

• Leverage AI, predictive analytics, and data science to segment customers, anticipate churn risk, and surface expansion opportunities. 

• Champion automation and intelligent tooling to improve scalability, efficiency, and customer experience. 

• Continuously evaluate emerging technology to keep the motion ahead of the market. 

Revenue ownership and performance 

• Own performance against gross retention, net revenue retention, renewal rates, and expansion. 

• Deliver expansion as a single, relevant offer at renewal rather than several uncoordinated ones. 

• Personally engage on high-value, complex renewals and bring executive presence to close. 

• Partner with Finance to forecast recurring revenue and inform long-range planning. 

• Protect margin and commercial value while driving performance. 

Cross-functional influence and matrixed leadership 

• Build alignment and accountability across Product, Finance, Legal, Sales, and Customer Success without relying on direct authority. 

• Coordinate the motions that reach the same customer, so teams reinforce one another rather than compete for attention. 

• Lead cross-functional initiatives tied to retention and lifecycle optimization. 

Customer strategy and engagement 

• Engage senior customer executives on complex renewals and expansion. 

• Shape tailored renewal strategies based on customer health and strategic value. 

• Recognize when an opportunity is really an unrealized-value problem, and route it to onboarding and enablement rather than to a seller. 

Team leadership and development 

• Restructure the team and organizational model to match the new motion, including roles, coverage models, and reporting lines.  

• Recruit, develop, and retain a strong team and leadership bench through a period of change. 

• Set clear priorities, expectations, and accountability. 

• Build a culture of high performance, agility, and continuous improvement, and a team people want to work for. 

What you’ll bring 

• 12+ years of experience in renewals, customer success, revenue operations, commercial operations, account management, or related leadership roles, including ownership of recurring revenue performance, customer retention, and large-scale business transformation initiatives. 

• Transformational leadership experience in renewals or commercial organizations at scale, including oversight of thousands of customer accounts and significant recurring revenue across both named and scaled customer engagement models. 

• Proven experience rebuilding and transforming a renewals organization, operating model, or motion, with measurable improvements in GRR, NRR, retention, and churn. 

• Demonstrated success owning and improving gross retention performance, with a deep understanding of the drivers behind retention outcomes. 

• Experience leveraging automation, AI, and data-driven insights to segment customers, identify risk, and optimize engagement strategies at scale. 

• Strong understanding of pricing, packaging, and bundling strategies, including their impact on ARR, customer cohorts, retention, and growth. 

• Experience working with enterprise customers and leading complex renewal, expansion, or commercial discussions. 

• Proven ability to lead organizational change, evolve team structures, and maintain high levels of engagement and performance through transformation. 

• Demonstrated ability to drive alignment and results across a matrixed organization where ownership is shared across multiple teams. 

• Strong commercial acumen combined with a customer-centric approach, balancing revenue performance, customer value, and long-term retention.