• Job Tag: #LI-KT1
• Posted: May 09,2025
• Salary: $225,000

Overview

We are proud to partner with American Public Media & Minnesota Public Radio to identify their Vice President of Friends & Membership. MPR engages an audience of millions and is stewarded by hundreds of thousands of members and friends. This role offers the opportunity to build on a world-class foundation with a mandate to pioneer the next generation of loyalty revenue. Success has the potential to change an entire industry and help define the future of local media.

The Vice President of Friends & Membership will drive the development and implementation of the “Friends of MPR” initiative which seeks to build a movement around audience-supported, hyper-local media. The role requires a visionary, creative, and entrepreneurial leader who can engage internal resources, external partners, and the broader community to achieve scale.

The Role
Rooted in the organization’s mission and core values, the Vice President of Friends & Membership will be responsible for growing membership and loyalty revenue in collaboration with content leaders and operational teams. The successful candidate will be an agile leader with a deep understanding of engaging a diverse set of community stakeholders at scale. They will possess extensive experience in managing multi-channel marketing strategies and leveraging bold experimentation to scale quickly and widely. The VP Friends & Membership reports to our General Counsel, an entrepreneur, and this effort will be run like a startup.

In particular, this leader will:

• Own MPR’s most meaningful revenue line, focusing on member acquisition, retention, and growth in financial support.
• Define and pioneer an innovative “Friends” strategy to attract and engage new audiences across Minnesota and to build a movement around community supported local media.
• Establish partnerships and digital campaigns to enhance visibility, nurture prospects, and funnel audience members into a membership pipeline.
• Partner with content teams, philanthropic development, audience development & marketing, and digital product teams to create compelling member experiences.
• Build multi-channel strategies that leverage the organization’s content, brand and multichannel audience development teams to attract new Friends. Tailor communications and engagement to foster long-term loyalty and delight.
• Strengthen a culture of audience-centricity and philanthropy across the enterprise.
• Lead a motivated, collaborative, and high-performing team committed to achieving ambitious shared goals. Cultivate future leaders through coaching, mentoring, and thoughtful professional development plans.
• Define and monitor key performance indicators, including growth, retention, and satisfaction, and combine data-driven insights with deep community listening to refine strategies.

Success Characteristics

The successful candidate will be described as a:

• Visionary Innovator: Entrepreneurial leader with a track record of driving bold, creative initiatives that align with and advance the organization’s mission and values.
• Data-Driven Strategist: Skilled in leveraging analytics to inform strategy, optimize decision-making, and measure impact.
• Collaborative Leader: Strong leadership experience fostering cross-functional teamwork; exceptional communicator and storyteller, capable of rallying internal teams and external supporters around the mission and the movement.

This role requires demonstrated success or high potential in the following areas:

• Driving fundraising and/or consumer-based revenue growth.
• Leveraging existing owned and third-party networks to scale user acquisition.
• Converting new audience and consumer segments, with a focus on expanding reach beyond core customers to drive growth and diversification.
• Deploying loyalty and lifecycle marketing strategies to enhance retention, engagement, and lifetime value.
• Achieving measurable results in digital revenue growth through strategic planning and execution.
• Guiding multi-channel marketing strategies, including digital, email, events, and direct mail.
• Building and managing complex plans across stakeholder groups, creating and monitoring budgets, and overseeing data-driven reporting and metrics.
• Leading teams through rapid cycle testing to take informed risks, refine strategies, and scale successful initiatives.
• Overseeing audience-centric campaigns to drive acquisition, conversion and retention.
• Galvanizing populations to identify with a sense of community and shared purpose.

For most candidates, this role is hybrid requiring 3-4 days/week onsite in St. Paul, MN with relatively frequent travel (several days a month) across Greater Minnesota. Creative movement-builders located in the Greater Minnesota region with the ability to travel around the state are encouraged to apply as well. The target annual base salary for this position is $210,000-$240,000, depending on experience and qualifications.