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