Director of Growth & Acquisition

Chicago Sun-Times; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 118,000 - 147,000; Full time

Job summary

Chicago Public Media is seeking a Director of Growth & Acquisition to lead audience growth and member acquisition across WBEZ, Sun-Times, and Vocalo. You will oversee paid and organic channels, optimize conversion pathways, and partner with product, marketing, insights, and editorial teams to build scalable audience journeys.

The role focuses on sustainable growth, engagement, and long-term value, balancing scale with retention and quality. Strong cross-functional leadership is essential.

Qualifications

• Experience leading multi-channel audience or membership acquisition strategies.
• Strong understanding of CPA, LTV, conversion optimization, and revenue modeling.
• Ability to build scalable growth systems and testing frameworks.
• Proven cross-functional collaboration across product, marketing, insights and editorial.

Responsibilities

• Develop acquisition strategies aligned with long-term audience and revenue goals.
• Forecast performance, establish CPA/LTV frameworks, and guide growth decisions.
• Lead experimentation and optimization across channels and audiences.
• Partner with product, lifecycle, and marketing to strengthen registration and conversion.

Skills

Multi-channel growth

Membership acquisition

CPA & LTV modeling

Cross-functional leadership

Job description

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
• Expand the pool of high-potential future members
• Improve conversion rates across engagement and donation pathways
• Strengthen registration and known-user growth
• Maintain disciplined CPA guardrails
• Support 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. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographical location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Working at Chicago Public Media

At Chicago Public Media, we care deeply about our employees as we know attracting, developing, and growing talent is key to our success and enhancing our impact.

Our culture is one where collaboration, diversity of ideas, and innovation are encouraged. We value colleagues who will enhance our culture by bringing new ideas, divergent experiences, and talents to our dynamic workplace.

At Chicago Public Media we believe dedication to a great workplace includes supporting our employees and their families. As a result, we provide a broad and generous benefits package for employees at hire and in the years to come.

Our benefits include a competitive salary and benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, vacation, holidays, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement savings, and a commuter benefits plan.

Chicago Public Media is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we actively seek and welcome people from all backgrounds, orientations, and life experiences to join our team.

The essential functions described above are not all-inclusive and are not intended to create any contractual or other legal commitment. Chicago Public Media may change the content or format of this job at any time in its sole and exclusive discretion without notice.