Senior Director, Research & Insights

About DonorsChoose

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

Who We're Looking For

Must-Have Capabilities

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

Deep K–12 education expertise

Survey design and educator listening experience

Impact measurement and evaluation experience

Experience managing external research partners

Experience working with large-scale datasets, data science teams, or analytical products

Experience serving as a public-facing thought leader

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 Yor