Jeff Cain

Jeffrey served honorably in the United States Marine Corps as a combat motorcycle operator in the Second Marine Division from 1984-1988.

He worked in various executive leadership roles at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, DE, from 2001-2008, including Executive Vice President and Vice President for Institutional Advancement.

He co-founded American Philanthropic, LLC, with Jeremy Beer in 2009 and sold his interest in the company in 2017. In 2016 Jeff was recruited by CrossFit, Inc.’s founder and owner to manage the global fitness enterprise as its Chief Executive Officer. He served in that role for three years prior to the company’s sale in 2020.

From 2009-2014 Jeffrey served as president, director, and member of the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation based in Santa Barbara, California. He was director and secretary of the Lillian S. Wells Foundation in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, from 2010-2013 and a director of the CrossFit Foundation from 2016-2019.

He authored with Jeremy Beer The Forgotten Foundations of Fundraising: Practical Advice and Contrarian Wisdom for Nonprofit Leaders (Wiley, 2019)He is also author of Protecting Donor Intent: How to Define and Safeguard Your Philanthropic Intentions (Philanthropy Roundtable, 2012). He has published numerous popular and scholarly articles and reviews on philanthropy, English literature, urban planning, public policy, and fundraising.

Jeffrey taught rhetoric & composition, Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century literature, and Greek and Roman literature in the English department at Washington State University (where he received an M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature). He founded a public policy nonprofit (the Columbia Public Interest Policy Institute) in his native Washington State, where he resides today.




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