Job Position:
Chief Advancement Officer
About Adaptive Sports Connection
Adaptive Sports Connection (ASC) is a mission-driven nonprofit dedicated to advancing dignity, belonging, challenge, and safety through adaptive physical experience. ASC serves veterans, adults, and children with disabilities and their families through a growing portfolio of adaptive sports, wellness, and community pathways.
ASC is in a season of intentional growth, scaling impact across multiple pathways and geographies while enhancing the athlete experience, staff sustainability, and organizational integrity. We are building systems that allow excellence to emerge.
Position Summary
The Chief Advancement Officer (CAO) is responsible for carrying external advancement momentum so that fundraising urgency is aligned with mission delivery, operations, and leadership coherence.
This role leads all philanthropic revenue functions and donor engagement strategies, translating ASC’s mission and board-approved strategy into sustained investment. The CAO builds trust, activates partners, and stewards donor intent, ensuring that growth is resourced responsibly, not driven reactively.
The CAO is a core member of ASC’s executive leadership team and reports to the President & CEO.
Core Purpose of the Role
To ensure that external opportunity and urgency are carried outward, allowing programs, operations, and leadership to remain athlete-centered, coherent, and sustainable as ASC grows across pathways and geographies.
Primary Responsibilities
Advancement Strategy & Execution
- Lead and execute ASC’s comprehensive advancement strategy, including major gifts, annual giving, corporate partnerships, grants, and campaigns.
- Build and sustain a diversified, resilient revenue base aligned with ASC’s mission and strategic priorities.
- Translate board-approved strategy into compelling donor narratives and funding opportunities.
- Ensure advancement planning reflects ASC’s intentional growth model.
Donor & Partner Relationships
- Cultivate and steward high-trust relationships with individual donors, foundations, and corporate partners.
- Serve as a senior external representative of ASC, articulating mission, impact, and strategy with clarity and integrity.
- Ensure donor intent is honored and aligned with organizational priorities.
- Build long-term partnerships rather than transactional funding relationships.
Board Engagement & Support
- Partner with the CEO to activate board members as relational ambassadors and philanthropic partners.
- Equip board members with tools, language, and confidence to engage donors effectively.
- Support and assist board fundraising responsibilities.
Advancement Systems & Team Leadership
- Build and lead a high-performing advancement team and supporting systems.
- Establish clear processes, metrics, and rhythms that support learning, accountability, and sustainability.
- Collaborate with Operations leadership to ensure advancement systems are reliable and scalable.
- Use data as a key development and learning metric.
Executive Leadership Responsibilities
As a member of the executive team, the CAO is expected to:
- Lead from role clarity rather than compensating for gaps elsewhere in the system.
- Partner closely with Operations, Programs, and the Chief of Staff to maintain organizational coherence.
- Surface risks or tensions early when advancement momentum could unintentionally distort capacity or mission.
- Protect athlete experience and staff sustainability.
Qualifications & Experience
Required:
- Senior-level advancement leadership experience in nonprofit or mission-driven organizations.
- Demonstrated success securing major gifts and building long-term donor relationships.
- Strong strategic judgment and comfort operating within defined organizational guardrails.
- Ability to communicate mission and impact with authenticity and clarity.
- Experience partnering with executive leadership and boards.
Preferred:
- Experience fundraising in complex or growth-stage organizations.
- Familiarity with adaptive sports, disability services, veterans’ services, or related fields.
- Comfort working within systems-oriented, values-driven leadership cultures.
Leadership Attributes
The ideal CAO:
- Leads with integrity, presence, and relational depth.
- Is externally oriented without pulling urgency inward.
- Thrives in clarity of role rather than broad control.
- Understands fundraising as relationship building and stewardship, not persuasion.
- Respects systems and guardrails as enablers of sustainable excellence.
Why This Role Matters
This role exists so that:
- Programs are never asked to compensate for funding gaps.
- Operations are not distorted by urgency.
- The CEO does not become the carrier of all momentum.
- Growth remains aligned with dignity, safety, and belonging.
The CAO ensures that ASC’s impact can scale without sacrificing what makes it humane.