Customer Service Manager

Are you looking for a mission-driven non-profit where your skills can help people in need around the world? At the Jewish United Fund (JUF), we take pride in our mission and in having a work culture that fosters a sense of belonging and feels rewarding, supportive, and inclusive. We have a hybrid schedule and offer generous benefits including a 401(k) match, 22 days of paid time off, 11 sick days, and up to 21 paid holidays. The salary range for this role is $60,000-$67,000.

What you’ll be responsible for:

The Customer Service Manager is responsible for leading the team responsible for answering phone calls, managing voicemail and email queues, and other donor-facing operations within Donor Services, ensuring a high-quality, responsive, and consistent experience for donors and internal partners. This role oversees customer service workflows and queues, supports issue escalation and problem resolution, supervises staff handling frontline donor interactions (e.g., incoming phone calls), and maintains documentation and training resources that support service excellence. In collaboration with the Daily Operations Manager, this role is cross-trained across functional areas to support operational continuity and departmental needs.

What you’ll be doing:

Department Leadership & Collaboration

• Provide day-to-day supervision, training, and performance support of the team.


• Contribute to daily team meetings and planning sessions to align workload, staffing coverage, and department priorities.


• Maintain strong working relationships with Accounting, Technology, and Campaign departments, and other internal teams.


• Identify opportunities for improving workflows, enhancing documentation, and increasing departmental efficiency.


• Support JUF Campaign and mandatory campaign-related activities on an ongoing basis.


• Maintain and enhance reference guides, workflows, and training materials used by the department.


• Cross‑trained to support Donor Services finance and daily operations, including oversight of finance queues and pledge and payment processing, escalation of complex donor issues, coaching of frontline staff, and providing backup coverage to ensure accuracy and timeliness.

Customer Service & Donor Support Responsibilities

• Oversee the Donor Services phone queues and general finance queue, ensuring donors and internal staff receive timely, accurate, and professional support.


• Monitor trends in call volume, service requests, and case data to identify opportunities for improving the donor experience.


• Serve as a point of escalation for complex customer service issues, using sound judgment and strong communication to resolve concerns.


• Provide coaching and guidance to staff handling frontline donor interactions, reinforcing consistency and service standards.


• Collaborate with Technology to update and maintain phone system messaging for holidays and office closures.


• Review and monitor donor-facing cases to uphold quality, accuracy, and completeness.


• Support donor collections efforts and ensure accurate documentation of follow-up.

What you need to succeed:

Required Qualifications

• 4+ years of relevant professional experience in a customer service environment.


• 1+ years of experience supervising or managing at least 2 staff members.


• Strong organizational, analytical, and problem‑solving skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities.


• Proficiency in Microsoft Suite (Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint).


• Ability to learn and use Adobe Pro, Converge, and other financial/data platforms.


• Adaptable to a fast‑paced, ever‑changing environment.


• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and sound professional judgment.


• Physical requirement: sitting for long periods.

Preferred Qualifications

• Salesforce experience or knowledge of CRM/database systems.


• Experience in bookkeeping, accounting, cash office operations, donor/gift processing, project management, managing a call center, or customer service.


• Advanced Excel skills (pivot tables, comparing data sets, building formulas).


• Familiarity with nonprofit fundraising operations.

Our Schedule:

We have a hybrid work policy to allow staff the flexibility to work from home / remotely on Mondays and Fridays. Tuesdays-Thursdays, the standard work location is 30 South Wells Street in Chicago, and staff are expected to work in person. We have a 36.5 hour work week, not a 40 hour work week. Our work hours are 8:30am-5pm Monday-Thursday and 8:30am-4pm Friday with a daily 1 hour lunch break.

What you’ll love about us:

At JUF, you can be part of one of the largest non-profit social welfare institutions in Illinois. We provide food, refuge, healthcare, education, emergency assistance, and essential services to 500,000 Chicagoans of all faiths and millions of Jews around the world. We offer medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) with base contribution and match, additional health and wellness benefits, financial benefits, professional training, tuition reimbursement, paid family leave, and much more.