Director, Research & Evaluation
Location: US, NJ, Newark
Department: Research & Evaluation
Employment type: Full-time
Required experience: Mid-Senior level
Required education: Bachelor's Degree
Industry: Nonprofit Organization Management
Function: Research
Salary range: 65000-85000
Company profile: The Intersect Fund is a nonprofit organization that empowers entrepreneurs to build strong businesses so they can generate income, build assets, and spark dramatic social change in their communities.We have offices in Newark, NJ, New Brunswick, NJ, and San Francisco, CA.
Description: The Intersect Fund, a Newark, N.J.-based nonprofit that invests in people who need help so they can build strong businesses and create jobs, is looking for a visionary data nerd to head and grow our Research & Evaluation department. This is our skunkworks internal research arm with a meta-mission of solving problems through data to make The Intersect Fund smarter, more efficient, and more effective. You’ll lead a department of two (including you), and come up with a plan to grow your team to 4-5 people in the next 3 years.This position has three main areas of responsibility:Data Collection and Analysis. You will be the go-to person on the team for questions about our data and how we can improve our products, processes, and performance. You will be served up broad questions ranging from:“What changes should we consider making to our underwriting criteria to reduce losses?”“How much time should we be spending with loan applicants we decline?”“What kinds of advice would be most helpful for our clients?“How much should we charge a new city to bring in IF and what results can we promise?”“How big is the unmet demand for microcredit in New York City?”Do you get pumped just reading the above questions and immediately think of dozens of ways to answer them off the top of your head? Then we’re looking for you. You must be able to design analyses and research experiments to answer these questions in a timely manner, with imperfect data and limited resources. You are in charge of all aspects of what, where, and how we collect data. This includes both our main business investing in entrepreneurs in New Jersey and our side business, Lend for America, which seeds and supports campus-based microfinance programs across the country. You’ll also design, write and execute evaluation plans for every grant that we have. Even though you won’t be working with clients directly, you are responsible for each piece of data collected and making sure it is accurate and timely. You must have an encyclopedic knowledge of our operation and in order to design data collection tools and processes that get what we need without creating an undue burden on staff. You must also build credibility among the staff by regularly delivering real value to them, so they will do what’s needed for you to succeed.There are industry standards and best practices used by our peers to evaluate their performance, and we’ll expect you to know these backwards and forwards. In order to be successful, you’ll have to take this to the next level. You must be able to invent new measures, collection protocols and techniques, and analyses that allow us to get higher quality, more detailed, and more frequent data on our performance.Research and Dissemination. The Intersect Fund aims to be a thought leader in the areas of credit building, financial capability, microfinance, and microbusiness development. We think there are a number of areas where the existing research is either nonexistent or insufficient, and we are in a unique position to conduct research as a direct-service organization rather than an intermediary, which is one more level removed from customers.You’ll position the Intersect Fund as an authority on these topics by authoring case studies and white papers, conducting webinars, and speaking on conference panels.MIS. You will be responsible for implementation of the product strategy set by the CEO for the Intersect Fund’s proprietary management information system, which we have made a commitment to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in annually. Our MIS is an ongoing project with year-round development for constant features This includes working with our awesome offshore development team in India, prioritizing features on the road map, and making day-to-day decisions on interface, user experience, data visualization, and business logic and rules. Our major priorities for our system are to:ruthlessly automate repetitive tasks that a human currently must do manuallymake feedback as real-time as possible, rather than waiting for batchesallow processes to move asynchronously and in paralleloptimize for mobile use, rather than on a computerOur goal is to build a system that is five years ahead of anything our peer are using and is a major competitive advantage for us in the market. You will work with our development team to seamlessly integrate your data systems into our business workflows, enabling us to collect data that would not be possible on another platform.
Requirements: Fluency in Spanish desiredExpert in Microsoft ExcelYou are a prolific writer, and can communicate complex concepts clearly and conciselyYou know enough statistics to do rigorous analysis when needed, but also know how to design a research project that understands the realities of being in a growing, busy organization (i.e. you are not going to try and solve every problem with a randomized control trial)You have a working knowledge of financial statementsOn most anything, you have a point of view. On what a dashboard should look like, whether a data field should be a text entry or mult-select, and whether to push a feature to the next version of our software or not. You can make these decisions instinctually and you are usually right.You have an undergrad-level knowledge of statistics. You know your t-values from your R-squareds.You can develop data visualizations that make it easy to communicate complex conceptsYou know how to manage a software development project
Benefits: Base salary plus annual performance-based bonusHealth insurance (we pay 100% of employee premium)403(b) retirement savings plan with generous employer matchFlexible spending accountWe don't count vacation daysA kick-ass tech setup of your choice for slinging spreadsheets (think fast Retina MacBook Pro with dual 27" monitors)
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