Vice President, Financial Planning & StrategyReports to: President & CEO
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Status: Full-time
Position SummaryWQED Multimedia is seeking a Vice President of Financial Planning and Strategy to lead financial planning, analysis, forecasting, and strategic decision support for the organization. This is not a traditional Controller role. WQED works with an outsourced accounting partner that manages day-to-day accounting, accounts payable and receivable, monthly and year-end close, audit support, and tax preparation coordination. WQED recently adopted QuickBooks and BILL for its core financial operations.
The Vice President of Financial Planning and Strategy will focus primarily on the future: helping WQED understand the financial implications of its decisions, evaluate the sustainability and diversification of its revenue, anticipate risks and opportunities, and build realistic plans for the years ahead.
As a member of WQED's executive team, the Vice President will partner closely with the President & CEO and department leaders to translate strategy into financial plans, forecasts, scenarios, and decision-useful analysis.
The successful candidate will be comfortable bringing structure to complexity, working with imperfect information, questioning assumptions constructively, and building useful tools and processes over time.
The Assignment- Help WQED see around corners financially and make better informed decisions about the future.
- Establish a forward-looking financial planning discipline that connects strategy, revenue sustainability, departmental plans, cash needs, and organizational capacity, giving leaders practical tools to test assumptions, understand tradeoffs, and plan with confidence.
What Success Looks Like- WQED can see potential financial challenges earlier and has more time to respond to them.
- Leadership understands which revenue streams are growing, declining, concentrated, vulnerable, or capable of expansion, including membership and emerging sources such as e-commerce and merchandise.
- Budgets, rolling forecasts, cash projections, and scenario models are practical and active management tools, rather than annual exercises.
- Senior leadership and the Board of Directors receive concise, decision-oriented financial information that explains what the numbers mean and what may happen next.
- Institutional grant and underwriting/sponsorship opportunities are pursued with stronger visibility into pipeline, probability, financial requirements, and long-term sustainability.
Essential ResponsibilitiesFinancial Planning & Analysis- Lead WQED's annual budgeting and rolling forecasting processes, working with department heads to develop realistic assumptions and maintain an updated view of expected financial performance and cash flow.
- Build multi-year financial models that help WQED evaluate organizational sustainability over a three- to five-year horizon and beyond.
- Develop scenario and sensitivity analyses for significant organizational decisions, including changes in revenue, staffing, programming, capital needs, real estate, asset sales, and other major investments or commitments.
- Analyze WQED's revenue portfolio for sustainability, concentration, diversification, predictability, and growth potential, including measuring and forecasting emerging sources such as e-commerce and merchandise.
- Translate financial performance, trends, risks, and assumptions into practical recommendations for leadership.
Strategic Partnership & Decision Support- Serve as a financial thought partner to the President & CEO, executive team, and department heads, connecting operational priorities and plans with their financial implications and anticipated needs over multiple years.
- Prepare financial analyses, presentations, and other materials for WQED's Board of Directors and its Finance and Audit Committees.
- Ask constructive questions, challenge assumptions when appropriate, and help leaders evaluate tradeoffs among competing priorities.
- Develop dashboards and management reporting that combine financial results, forecasts, and third-party data to surface meaningful variances, patterns, risks, and opportunities.
Finance Leadership & Oversight- Serve as the primary internal relationship owner for WQED's outsourced accounting partner, banks, auditors, and investment advisors, ensuring clear communication, alignment, and accountability.
- Maintain appropriate oversight of financial controls, policies, accounting practices, and financial reporting without duplicating functions assigned to the outsourced accounting team.
- Coordinate with external partners on annual audit, tax filings, regulatory reporting, and other financial compliance requirements.
- Evaluate WQED's financial systems, processes, data, and reporting tools and recommend improvements where they will meaningfully improve efficiency or decision-making.
Membership Revenue & Performance- Provide executive oversight of WQED's membership revenue, a $6+ million annual revenue stream supported by more than 50,000 individual contributors across direct mail, telephone, web, broadcast, and other channels.
- Identify emerging risks and opportunities early by using vendor dashboards, benchmarks, and data warehouses to identify changes in acquisition, renewal, retention, average gift, channel performance, cost, and net revenue.
- Translate membership data into actionable recommendations, helping leadership distinguish short-term campaign variation from structural changes in donor behavior or revenue performance.
- Provide leadership and direction to the Senior Manager, Member Services & Operations, connecting donor-service infrastructure, vendor performance, data quality, and processing reliability to the overall health and growth of the membership program.
Institutional Funding & Grant Revenue- Provide executive oversight of WQED's grant strategy and pipeline, leading staff and contracted resources responsible for prospecting, proposal development, reporting, and renewal, with attention to mission alignment, revenue potential, organizational capacity, and long-term sustainability.
- Partner with department leaders to develop credible project budgets and understand the full financial implications of restricted grants before commitments are made.
- Ensure appropriate financial oversight of restricted grants and contracts, including coordination with the outsourced accounting team on tracking, reporting, compliance, and recognition.
QualificationsStrong candidates will demonstrate an ability to use finance as a strategic management tool and bring:
- Significant experience in financial planning and analysis, corporate or nonprofit finance, fractional CFO work, or a comparable senior finance role.
- Experience preparing and presenting financial information to Boards, Finance Committees, Audit Committees, or comparable governance bodies.
- Demonstrated experience developing annual budgets, forecasts, multi-year financial models, cash flow projections, and scenario analyses.
- Experience advising senior executives and department leaders, translating financial analysis into strategic recommendations, budgets, forecasts, and longer-term decisions.
- Demonstrated ability to interrogate financial, operational, and revenue data - including data from outsourced providers and fundraising platforms - and turn trends or anomalies into practical recommendations.
- Demonstrated ability to reconstruct and interpret fragmented or incomplete financial information, create structure where processes are still developing, and build practical tools that improve decision-making.
- Strong communication and interpersonal skills, sound judgment, intellectual curiosity, high standards of integrity, and a willingness to ask difficult or unexpected questions in service of better decision-making.
- Experience with nonprofit organizations is strongly preferred. Familiarity with QuickBooks and modern financial reporting, forecasting, or business-intelligence tools is helpful.
LocationThis is a Pittsburgh-based role with regular on-site presence at WQED's offices in Oakland. Occasional remote work is possible as assignments permit.
Compensation & BenefitsThe salary range for this full-time position is $160,000 to $190,000, commensurate with experience. Benefits include a PPO health insurance plan; employer-paid dental, vision, disability, and life insurance; and, after 12 months, a 5% employer contribution to a 403(b) retirement plan.
