Chief Advancement Officer

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville is currently seeking a full-time Chief Advancement Officer.

The CAO is a member of the Habitat executive leadership team and head of Habitat’s fundraising and marketing activities. The CAO works with the President/CEO, peers in the C-suite, Advancement staff, Board Members and other key stakeholders to create and execute an advancement strategy enabling Habitat to build a minimum of 45 new homes per year while raising capital to facilitate major development and redevelopment activities.

The CAO directly oversees all government grants and non-government source fundraising activities including donor stewardship, annual appeals, sponsorships, foundation grants, communications, capital campaigns and select special events.  In addition, the CAO ensures excellence in prospecting, writing, compliance, reporting and invoicing requirements for all grants.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned and dynamic professional, an ambitious self-starter with a record of achievement in leadership and fundraising. The CAO must be an innovator who can confidently engage prospects and leverage the community's passion for Habitat's mission into the resources necessary to achieve its ambitious goals.

Habitat:

Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville (Habitat) is a cutting edge, national-leader non-profit housing and community development organization creating simple, decent, affordable homes in partnership with low-income families, volunteers and the communities of the Greater Charlottesville region. Home construction capacity is multiplied by a volunteer labor force including homeowner families, corporate, civic, and church groups. Habitat is an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), a global ministry working to end housing poverty world-wide.

In 2013 Habitat completed construction at Sunrise, the first trailer park transformation in the nation without resident displacement. Currently, Habitat owns and operates the Southwood Mobile Home Park and is redeveloping it responsibly and compassionately as a mixed-income, mixed-use, sustainable community for current and future residents. Southwood is the area’s largest single concentration of affordable housing and one of the nation’s most ambitious redevelopment opportunities. When complete, the redeveloped Southwood will be a roughly 1,200 unit mixed-income community with a neighborhood commercial center of resident-owned businesses. Critically, Habitat has worked with the community for years to prepare residents to take the lead in all elements of planning for redevelopment. For this work, the neighborhood was selected as the first pilot initiative for Habitat International’s holistic strategy for community development.

In addition to its precedent-setting work in mobile home redevelopment, Habitat is a national pioneer in mixed-income community development. To date, Habitat has built or built in nine mixed income neighborhoods and built and sold roughly 300 homes.

Habitat’s current five-year strategic plan concentrates activities into three areas: Building, Rebuilding, and Housing System Development. To support this ambitious plan to create thousands of local housing opportunities while developing partnerships, policy and programs to advance the housing sector locally and nationally, Habitat is in the final stages of completing a $15M capital campaign.

Building. Habitat’s primary goal in the first realm has been to build and/or renovate and sell 20+ homes each year in the Greater Charlottesville region. In this area, much of the focus is on increasing the capacity of long-time low-income residents to stand on their own. In exchange for Partner Families’ “sweat equity,” Habitat sells homes at no profit and originates 0% loans so that families earning between 25% and 60% of area median income can become homeowners. Already the leading Habitat homebuilder for a service area of its size, Habitat Charlottesville is building capacity to increase production to 45 homes/year.

Rebuilding. In this realm, Habitat is focusing on the holistic transformation of the Southwood Mobile Home Park into a sustainable 1,200+/- unit mixed income, mixed use community, anchored by a core, commercial downtown of resident-incubated and owned businesses. Habitat is also strategically investing in affordable homeownership in other key neighborhoods in the region and utilizing home repair as a force multiplier for community improvement.

Housing System Development. In this realm, Habitat seeks to change the conditions that contribute to housing poverty by working strategically and in coalitions to catalyze greater sector coordination, advocacy, and marketplace innovation so that everyone in the region can find a pathway to safe, decent, affordable housing.

Scope of Responsibilities:

The CAO is a member of the Executive Leadership Team and works with the President/CEO, peers in the C-suite, Advancement staff, Board Members and other key stakeholders to create and execute an advancement strategy enabling Habitat to build a minimum of 45 new homes per year while raising capital to facilitate the redevelopment of Southwood.

The CAO directly oversees all government grants and non-government source fundraising activities including donor stewardship, annual appeals, sponsorships, foundation grants, communications, capital campaigns and select special events. In addition, the CAO oversees the compliance, reporting and invoicing requirements for all grants.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned and dynamic professional, an ambitious self-starter with a record of achievement in leadership and fundraising. The CAO must be an innovator who can confidently engage prospects and leverage the community's passion for Habitat's mission into the resources necessary to achieve its ambitious goals.

Prerequisite Requirements:

• Positive, "can do" personality

• Commitment to Habitat for Humanity's mission of service to others

• Natural preference for working in a team environment

• Significant experience in both public and private non-profit fundraising preferred

• Excellence in communications and marketing

• Proven strategic thinking capability

• Confidence in soliciting money from donors of all levels

• Ability to skillfully interact with a diverse set of stakeholders from high level donors to Partner Families

• Familiarity with/connections to local community preferred

• Ability to effectively represent Habitat in front of large corporate, civic, and church groups

• Demonstrated ability to manage staff and to grow functional capability through staff development

• Strong research knowledge of key foundation and government funding sources

• Demonstrated ability to multi-task, plan, organize, and implement multiple projects and meet deadlines

• Ability to identify, recruit, train and work with advancement volunteers

Responsibilities:

• Leads Habitat's fundraising efforts by developing and implementing a comprehensive development program that generates sufficient capital to execute goals of the Board of Directors

• Oversees day-to-day operations of the Advancement Team, including direct supervision of employees. The Advancement staff currently consists of five FTEs.

• Drafts and presents annual and long-term advancement budgets, goals and strategies to President/CEO

• Personally solicits gifts and cultivates asks by other members of the Habitat team such as President/CEO, Board Chair, etc.

• Inspires culture of philanthropy in the organization

• Reports monthly to Habitat Board and maintains communication with key volunteers and the Habitat Advisory Committee

• Directs variety of fundraising initiatives including, but not limited to, annual campaigns, major gifts, planned giving, foundation grant writing, government grant writing, corporate giving, direct mail/direct response fundraising, publications, media strategy, events and donor communication

• Ensures excellence in prospecting, writing, compliance, invoicing and reporting for all grants.

• Formulates strategies for prospect cultivation, solicitation and stewardship and balances solicitation type to insure healthy, sustainable portfolio of unrestricted and restricted funds

• Maintains knowledge of fundraising regulations, fundraising database software and trends in fundraising strategy

• Oversees communications and publications including annual report, biannual newsletter, website and media relations, etc.

• Oversees maintenance of clear and up-to-date donor relations records

• Interacts with contracted government grants program

• Serves as a key advisor to President/CEO and a strategic think partner with other members of the C-suite

• Performs other duties as assigned by President/CEO