Equity & Impact Researcher

DonorsChoose makes it easy for anyone to help a teacher in need, moving us closer to a nation where students in every community have the tools and experiences they need for a great education.

Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1 billion to support 2 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. Projects range from art supplies to build the set for a school musical, to books and puzzles that affirm students’ identities, to bird seed for an at-home science project. We proudly serve all US public schools, public charter schools, and Head Start centers, and we combat systemic inequity by driving a majority of donations to schools that have been historically underfunded due to economic and racial inequity.

DonorsChoose has been recognized as a best place to work by GOOD Magazine and the Nonprofit Times, while Fast Company named DonorsChoose one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World—the first time a charity has made this list. Our dedicated team works from across the United States to bring classroom dreams to life.

About the Equity & Impact Team

The Equity & Impact team is the hub of innovation and education equity expertise within DonorsChoose with a topline goal of making a measurably bigger impact on the outcomes of students. As the organization enters a new chapter, living into its identity as an education equity organization, the E&I team charts the course for how we define equity impact, how we go about achieving it, how we drive alignment across teams to advance it, and how we measure it. This team also builds new programmatic initiatives and strategic partnerships to advance the work, while leveraging organizational knowledge in support of achieving our mission. 

While DonorsChoose was created more than 20 years ago to address inequity in access to education, we’re newly committed to combating racial inequity in education; and we’re just at the tip of the iceberg in exploring additional dimensions of equity and how we make an impact that advances the field. We take a nuanced approach to these efforts, layering an equity lens across our strategy for every external org stakeholder (donors, teachers, partners, vendors, etc.) in order to achieve our mission. 

In each case, our work points back to making a bigger equity impact that advances outcomes for students

Research & Insights at DonorsChoose

We believe that harnessing teacher frontline wisdom is key to making education more equitable. Teachers’ proximity to their students and their students’ needs gives them - and those who will listen - valuable intel on what the most pressing classroom needs are and how we might address them. The newly formed Research & Insights function at DonorsChoose leverages decades of teachers’ most urgent needs to shed light on the state of K-12 education. This role is one of two positions in the Research & Insights sub-function on the Equity & Impact team.

What we aim to do through the Research & Insights function

Through the lens of teacher voice, our Research & Insights team aims to better understand and then address disparities in under-resourced school environments, where the most underserved students across the country experience schooling. By sharing classroom insights with district leaders, philanthropists, state and local governments, education equity organizations, and corporate and foundation partners, we rally a community around classroom needs toward a shared goal of building solutions that are teacher-informed, relevant, and timely.

When we generate more actionable, timely, and relevant research and insights, we make it possible for DonorsChoose and the broader education sector to create solutions and innovations that meet the pressing and evolving needs of students and teachers in today’s K-12 classrooms.

What success looks like

We will measure success by the extent to which we share DonorsChoose research with our audiences; a proxy measure for elevating teacher voice, student experience, and rallying a community around it.

About the Role

This new team member will join the organization’s growing Equity & Impact team, reporting to the Senior Vice President of Equity & Impact. This role is a full-time, one-year opportunity, with a potential for renewal at the end of the year. In this role, you will support two functions: conducting research studies and generating new K-12 education equity insights leveraging DonorsChoose data; in each case for a broad swath of stakeholders, including:

• DonorsChoose funders, which includes corporations, foundations, individual philanthropists, and state and government officials 
• Internal stakeholders, including our CEO, Executive Team, and colleagues who take the stage in conferences and select speaking engagements
• Peer organizations, most frequently education equity peer organizations 

In this role you will:

Conduct research studies by surveying DonorsChoose teachers

• Formulate and answer research questions.
• Administer surveys to our extensive teacher database and analyze the data. 
• Manage a queue of research requests from internal stakeholders, scheduling meetings to discover the research needs and building plans to address the needs. 
• Respond to external research requests from corporate, foundation, government, and major gift supporters - in collaboration with our partnerships teams.
• Identify and work with external data sets as needed. 
• Write reports, one-pagers/fact sheets, blogs, and other knowledge resources to share learnings. Here’s an example of the landing page and report created for our male teacher of color initiative. 
• Interpret and explain complex data in a way that is accessible and actionable to a broad and varied audience.
• Collaborate with our Marketing and StrategicCommunications teams to develop content related to research projects, including social media, talking points, and press releases.
• Occasionally, present research findings to internal or external audiences via webinars, internal all-hands meetings, funder meetings, and at conferences.
• Periodically liaise with our community of external researchers, growing our network of thought leaders in the space.

Generate education equity insights with DonorsChoose data

• Mine DonorsChoose classroom project data to identify key trends, issues, and disparities impacting public school teachers and students, with a focus on communities most impacted by systemic inequities. 
• Generate data briefing decks - which are presentations with visualizations of key insights for our diverse community of donors, teachers, partners, and peer organizations. 
• Collaborate with Marketing & Strategic Communications team members to amplify equity insights on media platforms, including social media and press releases. 
• Participate in thought leadership through the publication of research findings and articles, with the support of the Strategic Communications team. 
• Support leaders across the organization by offering insights to equity-related questions.

Lead and implement an orgwide research study (~9 months of your engagement)

At DonorsChoose, we produce a research initiative roughly every other year, which advances our organization’s equity impact and rallies resources around public school classrooms in need. For example, in 2021 we built and launched the largest ever survey centering male teachers of color (linked above). In this role, you will lead all aspects of the study, ranging from:

• Unearthing internal priorities, and through the lens of equity metrics, deciding on the next initiative 
• Conducting external, secondary research of content area landscape (e.g., literature on male teachers of color)
• Interviewing colleagues on additional content areas to explore
• Collaborating with external stakeholders / peer reviewers as needed 
• Developing research questions 
• Designing survey, survey questions, and survey plan
• Sending survey 
• Closing survey, coordinating incentives to respondents 
• Analyzing results 
• Producing report
• Collaborating with Marketing & Strategic Communications teams to package up insights in a digestible way.

Qualifications

• B.A./B.S. in a related field (e.g., economics, statistics, data science, public policy, philanthropy, nonprofit leadership) with minimum three years professional research experience. Advanced degree a plus. Equivalent experience will also be considered.
• Preference for working well independently and collaboratively in a strongly collaborative, multi-disciplinary environment.
• Experience with survey methodology and knowledge of principles of statistics.
• Experience with data visualization (Looker, Tableau, PowerBI, statistical software - we use Looker). 
• Aptitude and willingness to learn new applications as opportunity and need develops.
• Preference for and experience with conducting swift, practice-oriented research under varied time constraints.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Ability to explain research methods and results to a non-specialist audience.
• Exceptional attention to detail, strong problem-solving ability and logical reasoning skills, and the ability to detect anomalies in data.
• Strong organizational and planning skills, with ability to juggle multiple projects with competing deadlines from multiple stakeholders - internal and external.
• Willingness to perform other duties and special projects as needed/requested.
• Champions and represents DonorsChoose core values. 

Who you are

• You are knowledgeable of the systemic forces that shape a student’s experience in public education, especially those that impact the experiences of students from marginalized communities. 
• You are a self-professed and peer-acknowledged data person. You are skilled at data analysis, problem-solving, and uncovering insights across quantitative and qualitative sources. 
• You are both curious and inquisitive. You are known for your ability to ask great questions, as well as your ability to dive deep into a topic in search of answers. 
• You are able to work independently and collaboratively. You enter a flow state as you tackle research questions and eagerly exit it to share your insights with colleagues. 
• You are all in on our organization's equity focus, and you’re deeply passionate about combating inequity (including socioeconomic equity, racial equity, and beyond). You want to make a difference in US public school education.
• You’re entrepreneurial. The idea of building a team of research & insights excites you; and you’re willing to roll up your sleeves to get the job done – building the ship while we sail.

Compensation & Benefits

Our compensation philosophy ensures that we are both externally competitive with tech-forward nonprofits of a similar size and internally fair in our pay practices. The following ranges represent the target offer range given the scope and experience expectations for this role.

• The hiring salary range for this role is $68,000-$80,000
• We have a hiring salary range of $75,200-$87,550 for specific higher cost of labor locations, which include New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, and Washington, D.C.

Once employees are hired, everyone at DonorsChoose is eligible to receive annual performance-based raises as they grow in their role. We are open to a variety of experiences, and recognize that the person we hire may be less experienced or more senior than this job description as posted. If you don’t check every box listed here, or you know you’d bring additional experience to the table, we hope you’ll submit your application. 

In addition, we offer full-time staff 25 paid vacation days per year and 11 paid holidays, a rich employer-paid individual and family health plan, a matching 401(k) plan (up to 5% of base salary), annual professional development stipend, and casual and flexible work environment. To learn more about what it is like to work for DonorsChoose, visit our careers page.

Hybrid Workplace and Other Details

In this role, you’ll have the option to work a flexible hybrid schedule in our NYC office, or to work fully remotely from CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, GA, IL, IN, ME, MA, MD, MI, NJ, NY, OR, PA, RI, TX, VA, WA, WI.

Candidates who are not in the NYC area should expect to travel to our NYC office on an as-needed basis, about 4-6 times per year. All work-related travel expenses will be covered by the organization.

DonorsChoose participates in E-Verify. We will provide the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) and, if necessary, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information from each new employee’s Form I-9 to confirm work authorization. 

DonorsChoose Core Values

EQUITY

Combating systemic inequity is crucial to a brighter future for all. This reality fuels our ambitions and drives us to persevere.

INGENUITY

Complex problems require innovative solutions. We dream big, get creative, roll up our sleeves, and take action. We believe the best products can change the world.

HUMANITY 

People are the heart of our team and the communities we serve. Our compassion informs our goals and how we work together to achieve them. 

INTEGRITY

We strive to do right. We’re up-front about the facts. We boldly learn and grow from mistakes.

LEARNING

Education is the beating heart of our organization, inside and out. We’re curious. We listen. We know we don’t know everything. 

GRATITUDE

We begin and end with thanks. We take joy in our mission, our communities, and each other.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and answer the application questions online. Since we’re trying to get to know you through our hiring process, we ask that you please refrain from using AI writing tools to craft your response to our application questions. A cover letter is optional and may be addressed to Kristina ("Steen") Joye Lyles, Senior Vice President of Equity & Impact

A Final Note

The DonorsChoose team works toward a nation where students in every community have the resources needed for an excellent education. To do this we hire and support a diverse team of the best and the brightest talent available.

We are an organization increasingly representative of the varied races and ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations, religious and political beliefs, and abilities that comprise our nation. DonorsChoose focuses on attracting, retaining, and advancing diverse talent because it makes us more effective, high-performing, creative, and resilient.  

If you are passionate about our mission, highly skilled in your field, and looking for a place where you can bring all of yourself to work, we want you.