Purpose of the Role

The Fractional VP, Product & Technology is responsible for turning LVPM’s strategic vision into a unified, customer-facing digital platform that serves as the foundation of a trusted community hub—bringing together content, audience engagement, and membership into a cohesive experience. The platform will be supported by the systems needed to power content, audience data, and fundraising.

This role owns both the audience experience and the systems behind it, with a focus on creating clear pathways from first interaction to ongoing engagement and membership. In addition to leading design and implementation, this role partners closely with leadership to bring product, technology, and audience engagement together into a cohesive operating model for how LVPM creates, distributes, and grows its content and audience. This platform is not just a distribution system—it is the infrastructure through which LVPM informs, connects, and engages the community.

Engagement Team

This is a fractional role with an initial engagement period of twelve months, focused on platform design and early implementation. The role may be extended based on progress, organizational needs, and future-state roadmap priorities.

Scope of Responsibility

A. Customer-Facing Platform

Design, build, and launch a digital platform that serves multiple audience types, including casual visitors, registered users/subscribers, and contributing members, with clear pathways for engagement and conversion.

Experience audio, video, and written content
Access PBS Passport as part of a seamless membership experience
Register users (capturing first-party audience data)
Enter structured email journeys (newsletter-first model)
Donate and become contributing members
Move through clear, intuitive customer journeys
Enable community engagement and participation, creating pathways for audiences not just to consume content, but to connect, contribute, and engage with the organization

The platform should reflect LVPM’s role as a trusted community hub, balancing high-quality content with meaningful opportunities for audience interaction and connection.

Includes:

UX design
Registration and identity flows
Content display and discoverability
Integration with backend systems

Product & Marketing Partnership:

This role works closely with Marketing, Audience Engagement, and Development to align on audience journeys, email strategy, segmentation, and conversion.

Together, Product/Technology, Marketing, and Development define and continuously refine the end-to-end audience journey—ensuring the platform functions as a cohesive community hub experience, from first interaction through ongoing engagement and membership.

Product/Technology: platform, systems, data flows, and measurement infrastructure
Marketing: messaging, campaigns, and audience growth, and engagement

B. Backend Systems

Backend systems should support a seamless, integrated experience that enables LVPM to operate as a trusted community hub, with connected data, content, and engagement pathways.

Ensure that the platform is supported by integrated, scalable, and maintainable systems. Where platforms have already been identified (e.g., Ghost and Outpost), this role will focus on optimizing and integrating the current direction, while maintaining flexibility to introduce additional tools or enhancements that strengthen integration, data flow, and analytics over the long-term.

1. Donation/Commerce System

Member donations
Recurring contributions
Payment processing
CRM integration

2. CRM/First-Party Data

Audience data capture
Segmentation
Donor tracking
Email list integration

3. Email Marketing Platform

Newsletter management
Automated journeys
Registration flows
Reporting and engagement metrics

4. Content Management & Publishing Workflow

CMS selection or refinement
Content review and publishing workflows
Role-based permissions
Multimedia publishing workflows

C. Execution Responsibilities

1. Requirements & Design

Collect business requirements across teams
Translate vision into clear, practical requirements
Design a lean, scalable system approach
Avoid unnecessary complexity
Ensure all product and technology decisions support the goal of building a cohesive, user-centered community hub experience

2. Technical Delivery Plan

Create a phased implementation plan
Define MVP vs. future-state capabilities
Scope required resources
Develop cost estimates aligned with a nonprofit’s reality

3. Vendor & Tool Strategy

Recommend platforms and contractors
Prioritize off-the-shelf solutions
Build around an initial set of tools while allowing flexibility to add others as needed
Evaluate total cost of ownership

4. Build & Implementation Oversight

Lead implementation process
Coordinate vendors and contractors
Ensure integrations function correctly
Monitor timeline and budget
Manage risks

5. Internal Collaboration & Ways of Working

Partner with Content, Marketing, Development, and PMO to align priorities, workflows, and audience engagement efforts
Align systems with day-to-day workflows
Establish a regular cross-functional cadence (prioritization, updates, coordination)
Support launch communications

6. Testing & Launch

Lead user acceptance testing (UAT)
Resolve issues prior to launch
Train stakeholders
Launch on time and within budget

D. Team Structure & Role Alignment

Fractional VP, Product & Technology: Strategy, system design, and overall direction
Marketing/Audience Engagement (including fractional Marketing Lead): Campaign, messaging, and audience growth
Audience Engagement Specialist: Day-to-day execution and ongoing optimization
Technical Support (e.g., contractors): Implementation and platform support

Clear alignment across these roles is critical to ensure efficient execution and avoid overlap.

E. Operating Principles

Avoid unnecessary platform sprawl
Avoid overly complex solutions
Prioritize cost-efficient, maintainable systems
Leverage existing tools where possible
Design systems the organization can sustain long-term
Collaborate effectively across teams
Provide clear updates to leadership and board stakeholders
Design for community engagement and trust, not just content delivery

Working Approach:

Maintain a consistent on-site presence (recommended ~2 days/week during key phases) to support alignment and speed of decision-making.

Architecture should be:

Lean
Integrated
Affordable
Maintainable
Expandable over time

The goal is cohesion and sustainability - not complexity.

F. 90-Day Focus

Finalize platform requirements
Design system architecture
Recommend system stack
Define MVP scope
Establish a clear roadmap, timeline, and cost estimates
Align teams on roles and responsibilities
Establish cross-functional workflows and ways of working
Ensure coordination across Product, Content, Marketing, and PMO to support an integrated, audience-first operating model

G. Success Metrics

This role is responsible for defining and operationalizing key performance indicators (KPIs) across the full audience journey, in partnership with Marketing and Development, to ensure audience growth, engagement, and conversion can be consistently measured and improved over time.

Live, functioning customer-facing digital platform
Working registration and data capture flows
Clear and effective donation/member journeys
Integrated backend systems
Reduced system fragmentation
Delivery on time and within budget
Growth in registered users and newsletters subscribers
Increased newsletter engagement (open rates, click-through, retention)
Improved conversion from audience to members and donors
Growth in meaningful audience engagement that reflects the platform’s role as a community hub (repeat usage, cross-platform interaction, participation behaviors)

4. Decision Ownership

This role owns platform and system design decisions, working in close partnership with Content, Marketing, and leadership to ensure alignment across audience experience, content, and business goals—while reinforcing LVPM’s position as a trusted community hub.

Lehigh Valley Public Media

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