Director of Growth & Acquisition

About Chicago Public Media

Chicago Public Media is one of the nation’s largest local nonprofit news organizations. Home to WBEZ 91.5FM, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Vocalo. Chicago Public Media reaches more than 3.3 million people weekly across broadcast, print, and digital platforms. As a mission-driven organization, we aspire to be the most trusted news source Chicagoans turn to for understanding the people, events, and ideas shaping our community.

Chicago Public Media is a 100% community-funded newsroom powered by nearly 97,000 members whose support makes our journalism possible. This sustained community investment helped drive nationally recognized work in 2025, including 29 awards from esteemed organizations, including the Public Media Journalists Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

We believe independent journalism is essential to a healthy democracy and that access to objective, fact-based news is a right for every citizen. We serve the public interest by creating diverse content that informs and enriches our community, supported by a dedicated staff of approximately 250 professionals.

For more information, please see the Chicago Public Media Annual Report .

The Opportunity

The Director of Growth & Acquisition leads Chicago Public Media’s audience growth and member acquisition engine across all brands, platforms, and channels.

This role is responsible for expanding the pool of potential members, increasing audience engagement and registration, and converting audiences into long-term financial supporters. The Director oversees acquisition strategy across digital, audio, on-air, paid media and emerging platforms, with accountability for acquisition revenue, conversion performance, CPA efficiency, and sustainable long-term growth.

The role partners closely with Product, Marketing, Insights, Development, and Editorial teams to build scalable audience pathways that strengthen engagement, registration, personalization, and membership conversion across WBEZ, Sun-Times, Vocalo, and future platforms.

General Responsibilities

Audience Journey Ownership

The Membership department operates through two interconnected engines: Growth & Acquisition and Lifecycle & Retention.

The Director of Growth & Acquisition owns the pre-conversion stages of the audience journey, including:

Audience Awareness

Audience Engagement

Registration & Identity Development

First membership transaction

The role is responsible for building scalable acquisition systems that move audiences from discovery to first-time financial support across brands, platforms, and channels.

The role oversees acquisition strategy, audience conversion pathways, registration growth, and first-gift performance while partnering closely with Lifecycle & Retention to ensure acquisition quality and long-term audience value.

Core Area of Focus - Audience Growth & Acquisition

Build and scale a sustainable audience growth and acquisition engine that:

Increase new member volume year-over-year

Expands the pool of high-potential future members

Improves conversion rates across engagement and donation pathways

Strengthens registration and known-user growth

Maintains disciplined CPA guardrails

Supports long-term lifetime value growth

Success Metrics

New member acquisition growth

Registration and known-user growth

Conversion rate improvement across channels

CPA and acquisition efficiency

First-year retention performance

Growth of high-potential audience segments

Contribution toward long-term membership revenue goals

Sustainable Growth Philosophy

This role is responsible for balancing acquisition scale with long-term member value, ensuring growth strategies prioritize sustainable retention, audience alignment, and relationship quality - not simply transaction volume.

Success in this role will be measured not only by acquisition volume, but by the organization’s ability to acquire engaged, high-quality supporters with strong long-term retention and participation potential.

Strategic Responsibilities

Growth Strategy & Modeling

Develop acquisition strategies aligned with long-term audience and revenue goals

Establish CPA and LTV frameworks to guide sustainable growth decisions

Forecast acquisition performance, conversion trends, and channel contribution

Identify scalable growth opportunities across paid media, audio, partnerships, and emerging platforms

Partner with Product and Lifecycle teams to strengthen audience registration, engagement, and conversion pathways

Experimentation & Optimization

Lead acquisition testing and optimization across channels, products, and audience segments

Establish testing standards, reporting frameworks, and optimization processes

Analyze conversion performance, audience behavior, and messaging effectiveness to improve acquisition outcomes

Translate testing insights into actionable audience, offer, and conversion strategies

Build a culture of disciplined experimentation and continuous improvement

Platform Growth & Expansion

Lead acquisition strategy for emerging products and platforms, including new product launching in FY27

Define how new platforms support audience growth, engagement, registration, and membership conversion

Partner with Product and Lifecycle teams to develop audience experiences that strengthen participation, personalization, and membership value

Channel & Performance Leadership

Oversee acquisition performance across digital, on-air, audio, and emerging channels

Lead conversion optimization across landing pages, donation flows, registration experiences, and onboarding pathways

Define channel strategy, KPI governance, and attribution standards

Maintain visibility into acquisition performance through reporting and dashboard oversight

Narrative Integration & Audience Conversion Strategy

Partner with Membership leadership to align acquisition messaging with broader audience and membership strategies

Develop audience targeting, offer positioning, and conversion messaging frameworks

Translate organizational narratives into high-performing acquisition campaigns

Lead audience and messaging tests tied to conversion performance

Cross-Functional Leadership

Partner with Product, Marketing, Insights, Editorial, and Development teams to align audience growth and conversion strategies

Support audience targeting, cohort analysis, attribution modeling, and performance forecasting

Align acquisition strategies across brands, platforms, and audience experiences

Lead recurring cross-functional growth and performance discussions

Team & Operational Leadership

Manage and mentor Growth & Acquisition team members

Establish acquisition KPIs, reporting standards, and accountability frameworks

Oversee vendor and agency relationships

Support acquisition planning, budgeting, and resource prioritization

Qualifications

Experience leading multi-channel audience or membership acquisition strategies

Strong understanding of CPA, LTV, conversion optimization, and revenue modeling

Experience managing paid digital growth channels and acquisition performance

Strong analytical, forecasting, and performance optimization capabilities

Ability to build scalable audience growth systems and testing frameworks

Experience leading cross-functional initiatives across Product, Marketing, Editorial, and Insights teams

Strong understanding of audience engagement, registration growth, and conversion strategy

Ability to translate audience insights and behavioral data into actionable growth strategies

Compensation

The expected pay range for this position is $118,000 - $147,000 per ANNUM.

Chicago Public Media provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position.