Senior Director, Research & Insights

DonorsChoose; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 155,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Vacation & holidays

Health plan

401(k) matching

Professional development stipend

Casual and flexible work environment

Job summary

DonorsChoose is seeking a Senior Director of Research & Insights to lead organizational intelligence, measurement, and thought leadership across education data and strategy.

Reporting to the Chief Impact & Insights Officer, this role blends analytics, storytelling, and strategic influence to inform fundraising, partnerships, and policy. Hybrid/remote work options are available nationwide.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to translate complex findings into clear, actionable narratives.
• Experience leading research and insights across education or nonprofit sectors.
• Strong written and verbal communication with diverse audiences.
• Ability to collaborate with data scientists and cross-functional partners.

Responsibilities

• Lead intelligence capability development with Data Science.
• Translate research into fundraising and partnership narratives.
• Shape external thought leadership and educator-focused insights.
• Oversee impact measurement frameworks and organizational learning.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Communication

Influencing senior leaders

Qualitative & quantitative research

Data translation to insights

Job description

About DonorsChoose

DonorsChoose is an education nonprofit ensuring every US public school student has the classroom resources they need to learn, grow, and thrive.

DonorsChoose is an education nonprofit ensuring every US public school student has the classroom resources they need to learn, grow, and thrive.

Founded by a teacher in 2000, DonorsChoose connects educators with a nationwide community of supporters who believe investing in students today will transform tomorrow. Educators request the materials they know their students need, and donors can choose the classroom, community, or cause they want to support. Since our founding, donors have supported 90% of US public schools. Every request is vetted, resources are delivered to classrooms, and donors can see the impact of their support through transparent reporting and updates from students and teachers. Raising $1.9 billion for classrooms, DonorsChoose has earned top ratings from Charity Navigator, GuideStar, and CharityWatch for its transparency, trust, and impact. Our dedicated team works from across the United States to turn resources into opportunities for students and teachers.

About The Impact & Insights Team

The Impact & Insights team exists to help DonorsChoose become the most trusted source of insights about America's classrooms. We believe teachers are among the first to see emerging needs, changing student experiences, and new opportunities—and that those closest to classrooms should help shape the conversations happening far beyond them.

By combining educator perspectives, research, data, and organizational intelligence, we produce insights that inform strategy, strengthen fundraising, shape partnerships, and help leaders across education, philanthropy, and business better understand where opportunity exists for students.

About The Role

DonorsChoose is seeking a Senior Director of Research & Insights. Reporting to the Chief Impact & Insights Officer, this role is not a traditional research leadership role. While research rigor and methodological expertise matter, the primary value of this position is helping DonorsChoose build an organizational intelligence capability rooted in classroom resource needs that informs strategy, influences decisions, strengthens fundraising, shapes partnerships, and advances student opportunity.

This context matters for a K–12 organization like ours, as we are not seeking someone whose primary orientation is academic research, publication, or evaluation for its own sake. We are seeking a strategic thinker and translator who can identify meaningful signals, connect disparate sources of information, generate relevant intelligence, identify where classroom realities intersect with broader opportunities, and help leaders act on what we learn.

Our point of view

We believe one of DonorsChoose's greatest strategic advantages is our proximity to America's classrooms. Teachers are often the first to see emerging student needs, changing classroom experiences, and new opportunities. The successful candidate will share our belief that these perspectives are not simply stories to collect: they are strategic signals to investigate, synthesize, and translate into intelligence that helps others make better decisions.

We're looking for someone with informed perspectives and a deep curiosity about K–12 education, but also the intellectual humility to let evidence shape (and sometimes change) their thinking.

This role sits at the intersection of education, research, data, strategy, and organizational learning. The ideal candidate is a builder, combining strong analytical instincts with exceptional communication skills. This role may be for you if you’re equally comfortable discussing survey methodology, collaborating with data scientists, briefing a wide range of internal and external stakeholders on insights, shaping a funder narrative, and speaking externally about what educators are experiencing.

What You’ll Lead

Intelligence capability development

• Partner closely with Data Science to co-design and scale DonorsChoose's organizational intelligence capability. Help define the questions the organization should be answering through data, intelligence, and emerging signals
• Collaborate on initiatives that uncover patterns, trends, and opportunities within DonorsChoose's unique classroom dataset
• Partner on the continued evolution of currently in-flight organizational intelligence products
• Ensure the organization's intelligence capabilities are both analytically rigorous and, above all, highly relevant to the needs of our stakeholder audiences
  
  

Thought Leadership

• Partner closely with Strategic Communications and Marketing to translate research findings into compelling narratives that strengthen fundraising, engagement, and organizational influence
• Help shape how DonorsChoose communicates classroom needs, student opportunity, impact, and emerging education trends
• Ensure insights are accessible and relevant to a wide range of audiences, including educators, funders, policymakers, journalists, partners, and the public
• Proactively track areas of growing interest and investment across K–12 education to align external demand with strategic opportunities
• Contribute to external thought leadership through reports, presentations, media opportunities, partnerships, and convenings
  
  

Impact Measurement & Organizational Learning

• Lead the organization's approach to impact measurement and learning
• Oversee measurement frameworks focused on student outcomes, historically underfunded schools, and school engagement
• Guide impact studies and validation efforts, internally and through external partners
• Ensure research and measurement efforts generate organizational learning, strategic insight, and decision support, not simply reporting
• Help build evidence that strengthens the DonorsChoose case for support and informs organizational priorities
  
  

Success in This Role

Within The First Year, This Leader Will

• Establish a clear intelligence agenda that elevates DonorsChoose's status as a trusted source of insight about classrooms, student opportunity, and emerging education trends
• Produce highly relevant intelligence that informs fundraising, partnerships, communications, product strategy, and executive decision-making
• Strengthen collaboration across Research & Insights, Data Science, Product, Strategic Communications, Development, and Executive Leadership
  
  

Must-Have Capabilities

Who We're Looking For

• Strategic thinking and organizational judgment
• Exceptional written and verbal communication
• Ability to translate complex findings into compelling narratives for funders, executives, partners, and non-technical audiences
• Experience influencing senior leaders and organizational decision-making
• Strong understanding of both qualitative and quantitative research approaches
• Ability to distinguish signal from noise and identify emerging trends and opportunities
• Ability to identify where classroom realities intersect with donor interests, funder priorities, workforce trends, policy shifts, and emerging opportunities
• Experience turning insights into action, strategy, investment decisions, or organizational change
  
  

Nice-to-Have Capabilities

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 $140,000 - $155,000
• We have a hiring salary range of $150,000 - $170,000 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, MA, MD, MI, MN, NC, NJ, NY, OR, PA, TN, TX, VA, WA, or 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.

An important note on communications: All messages from our hiring team will come from an official @donorschoose.org email address. If you ever receive a message about a role with us from a different domain, it’s not from us, and you should not reply or click on any links. We care deeply about your time, your privacy, and your experience—thank you for your interest in joining the DonorsChoose mission!

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.

Note: The final note about communication and joining the mission has been removed to comply with the formatting and policy requirements.