The posting
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
As our Revenue Operations Lead, you will manage the operational systems, governance, and performance infrastructure that support Chicago Public Media’s membership revenue engine across all brands, platforms, and audience touchpoints. This role designs and governs the operational systems that support scalable membership growth and lifecycle operations, including audience governance, attribution standards, reporting integrity, operational readiness, and revenue infrastructure management.
Our Revenue Operations Lead will serve as the operational coordination layer across both the Growth & Acquisition and Lifecycle & Retention engines, ensuring audience data, supporter communications, and revenue reporting remain accurate, coordinated, and trusted across teams and systems. The role partners closely with Enterprise Systems, Insights, Product, Marketing, Development, and Membership leadership to support scalable execution and long-term operational infrastructure across WBEZ, Sun-Times, Vocalo, and future platforms.
General Responsibilities
Audience & CRM Governance (Business Rules)
Own the governance of audience data, segmentation structures, and CRM business rules across Membership.
- Define and maintain audience segments, lifecycle stages, donor classifications, and revenue categories
- Establish standards for audience targeting, suppression logic, segmentation accuracy, and operational consistency
- Maintain documentation and policies that guide CRM and audience usage across teams
- Conduct operational audits across audience setup, targeting logic, and lifecycle configuration
- Coordinate audience governance standards across Membership and Development workflows
- Partner with Enterprise Systems to ensure CRM structures align with organizational governance standards and infrastructure requirements
Operational Readiness & Execution Governance
Establish standards that support accurate and scalable acquisition and lifecycle execution across Membership.
- Validating audience setup, suppression logic, tracking configuration, and operational readiness prior to launch
- Maintaining governance protocols, operational standards, and execution frameworks across membership activities
- Ensuring acquisition and lifecycle initiatives follow established segmentation, attribution, and communication policies
- Identifying operational risks, inconsistencies, and workflow gaps before audience-facing deployment
- Support scalable execution across channels, platforms, and audience touchpoints
Reporting, Attribution & Revenue Integrity
Own the business governance layer for membership reporting, attribution methodology, and revenue validation across acquisition and lifecycle activities.
- Defining revenue classifications, attribution standards, and reporting methodologies across channels and audience programs
- Standardizing campaign naming conventions, tracking structures, and operational reporting practices
- Validating reporting accuracy and ensuring alignment between operational reporting and booked revenue
- Partnering with Insights to support dashboards, forecasting, cohort analysis, and performance reporting
- Maintain trusted reporting standards and business definitions across Membership
- Identifying reporting discrepancies, operational inconsistencies, and revenue tracking gaps
Revenue Infrastructure & Vendor Governance
Own the operational governance and business oversight of membership revenue infrastructure, payment systems, and operational vendors.
- Managing operational relationships and performance standards across payment, messaging, fulfillment, and revenue platforms
- Establishing operational standards, SLA expectations, and accountability frameworks across vendors and systems
- Defining business rules governing payment routing, retry logic, fraud prevention, and transaction governance
- Partnering with Enterprise Systems on technical implementation while retaining ownership of business requirements, operational governance, and vendor accountability
- Overseeing donation platform governance to ensure alignment with audience experience, conversion performance, and operational standards
- Supporting long-term operational scalability across membership revenue infrastructure
- Oversee donation platform and payment vendor performance to ensure reliability, scalability, and alignment with organizational goals
Operational Governance & Compliance
Revenue Operations serves as the governance authority across Membership systems, workflows, and revenue activities.
- Standardize operational frameworks across Growth & Acquisition and Lifecycle & Retention
- Enforce audience governance, attribution standards, suppression logic, and operational policies
- Maintain consistency across segmentation, reporting, and communication governance practices
- Approve operational readiness across acquisition and lifecycle initiatives
- Identify operational risks, workflow gaps, and cross-team inconsistencies
- Support scalable infrastructure capable of sustaining long-term audience and revenue growth
Revenue Operations Accountability
- Accurate and trusted revenue reporting across acquisition and retention activities
- Governance of audience segmentation, attribution, and CRM standards
- Coordination of supporter communication practices across teams
- Reduction of operational errors and workflow inconsistencies
- Documented operational standards and governance processes
- Scalable infrastructure that supports long-term audience and revenue growth
Qualifications
- Experience managing CRM governance, operational workflows, and revenue operations within membership, subscription, or audience-based organizations
- Strong understanding of audience segmentation, attribution frameworks, and revenue reporting methodologies
- Experience designing scalable operational systems and governance processes
- Strong analytical, operational, and process management capabilities
- Ability to establish and enforce operational standards across cross-functional teams
- Experience working across CRM, payment, reporting, and revenue operations systems
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to operational accuracy and data integrity
- Ability to translate operational complexity into scalable workflows and governance frameworks
Compensation
The expected pay range for this position is $69,800 - $97,000 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.
