Vice President of Growth (Marketing)

Published: 6/14/2022

Job Description

About the opportunity

From January 1, 2027, donors can give up to $1,700 as an individual or $3,400 as a married couple to scholarship organizations and receive the full amount back as a federal tax credit. The American Federation for Children is building the national platform that turns this policy into scholarships for hundreds of thousands of children. We launch with an in-house buying team, a significant media investment and a modern data stack. This role serves AFC, and we are hiring the executive who leads our growth function.

The role

You own performance marketing end to end. Media buying is in-house: you and your team run paid search, paid social and connected TV with an affiliate program delivered through our agency partner, an influencer program delivered through a specialist agency, and connected TV executed through StackAdapt. You own experimentation and conversion: a structured testing program in VWO across landing pages, the website and the donor flow, in partnership with the development and web teams. You are accountable for donor volume and CAC against plan, and you support further growth fronts: partnership activation and marketing, and implementation campaigns that drive state-based parent applications. You will not be starting from zero: we have spent 2026 building the foundations, and you inherit tested channels, an active lead base in nurture, donor propensity models and a complete marketing technology stack. This is a hands-on executive role with a small but mighty team that is growing; we expect you in the numbers, in the channels and in the work.

What you'll do

• Own donor acquisition end to end. Donor volume and CAC against plan across paid search, paid social, connected TV, direct mail, affiliate and influencer, with a clear forecast and an honest read on what is and is not working.

• Run performance media in-house. Channel strategy, budget allocation, account architecture and in-platform decisions across Google, Microsoft, Meta and StackAdapt, working daily with your paid media specialists. We expect fluency at the account level, not only at the dashboard level.

• Direct the agency layer. Hold the affiliate agency and the influencer agency to performance standards: clear briefs, honest measurement and economics that pencil, with the same rigor applied to partners as to owned channels.

• Own experimentation and CRO. A disciplined testing roadmap in VWO across landing pages, the website and the donor flow. Partner with the development and web teams to improve conversion at every step from first click to completed donation.

• Obsess over the numbers in-channel. Daily performance management: CAC, conversion rates, cost curves, learning phases and signal quality, read at the campaign and ad set level, not only in aggregate.

• Know what converts. Bring strong judgment on copy and creative: which messages move donors, which hooks earn attention and which concepts deserve budget. Work with the creative and copywriting teams as a demanding, specific partner, and get creative when the data says the current approach is exhausted.

• Support partnership activation. Partner with the partnerships team on activation and marketing for employer, platform and organizational partners, bringing acquisition discipline to partner-driven donor volume.

• Support implementation marketing. Work with the implementation team on state-based campaigns that drive parent scholarship applications, so acquisition capability serves both sides of the marketplace.

• Scale the 2026 foundation. A full year of pre-launch campaigns has taught us which channels scale, which messages convert and which audiences respond, and built an engaged lead base, nurture journeys and donor propensity models. Your job from January 1 is to turn that foundation into donor volume, scaling what works against a December 31 giving deadline and finding what we have not yet found.

• Lead and level up the team. Two paid media specialists report to you; you set their priorities, standards and development, and you raise the bar for how the wider team uses data, tests and reports.

• Report clearly, think economically. Reporting is AI-assisted across our stack; you own the economic judgment on top of it. Leadership receives a clear performance narrative: spend, results, learnings and reallocation decisions.

Who you are

• Ten or more years in growth or performance marketing, including executive ownership of an acquisition number at meaningful scale.

• Hands-on: able to open the accounts, diagnose the problem and direct the fix at the campaign and ad set level.

• An economic mindset: CAC and LTV, incrementality, attribution limits, and forecasting you are willing to be held accountable to.

• A practiced experimenter: a structured testing methodology across pages, flows and channels, with results you can walk through test by test.

• A sharp eye for copy and creative: you know what converts, you can brief it, and you can tell the difference between a concept problem and a targeting problem.

• Experienced managing agencies to performance outcomes alongside owned channels.

• A clear communicator, able to present performance to a board and work the detail with a media buyer.

• Preferred but not required: fundraising or direct-response experience; connected TV or direct mail depth; marketplace or two-sided funnel experience; nonprofit or advocacy background.

Why this role

• Scale from day one: a significant, growing media investment at launch.

• A running start: 2026 was spent building the foundations, so you arrive to tested channels, documented learnings, an engaged lead base and a complete marketing technology stack rather than a blank page.

• A data advantage: a governed warehouse, a single view of the donor, and propensity models feeding your audiences.

• The work funds scholarships. Better performance means more children served.

Our technology stack

Media platforms: Meta, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, YouTube, StackAdapt (connected TV). Measurement: GA4, Google Tag Manager, Conversions API and server-side tracking. Experimentation: VWO, Unbounce. Data: Segment CDP, Snowflake, Sigma BI. Lifecycle: Iterable. Donations: Fundraise Up. SEO: Semrush. AI-assisted reporting and analysis are standard practice across the team.