2021-eoy-donate

Research and Experimentation Director

Remote Position

JOB SUMMARY

The Research and Experimentation Director will work internally with staff, in collaboration with partners, and alongside vendors to design, launch and implement randomized controlled trials with the goal of increasing ACE’s efficacy across a wide variety of key impact areas, including voter registration, issue persuasion, GOTV, issue and advocacy engagement, and attitude and behavior change.

ACE is an evidence-based, nimble, and adaptive organization that routinely evaluates our programs to measure impact. Over the last decade, we have continually tested and refined our approach, and have successfully built a set of program offerings that blend cost-efficiency, rigor, scale, and measurable impact. Our climate education program has been proven to increase knowledge and shift behaviors as demonstrated through an external evaluation with researchers at Stanford, Yale, and George Mason Universities. Our Action Fellowship program has been shown to increase knowledge, confidence, and seek a path in climate-related fields among youth. 

In 2018 and 2020, we evaluated the impact of our civic engagement programs by conducting randomized controlled trials with Analyst Institute and Dr. Donald Green of Columbia University, demonstrating an increase in voter turnout via ACE’s warm SMS Get-Out-the-Vote program and via ACE’s relational voter turnout program in 12 states. We recently launched a year-long research collaboration with CIRCLE at Tufts University to conduct audience and message testing to inform our new distributed organizing model, and are currently working with One Minus Beta on an experiment to increase net registrations via a novel program that enlists social media micro-influencers. 

ACE now seeks to integrate research and experimentation even more fully into our programs by hiring a Research and Experimentation Director to conduct in-house experimentation and evaluation, including but not limited to: message-testing experiments with diverse youth audiences in rural and urban geographies, randomized control trials to increase the impact of our voter registration and GOTV programs, evaluations of programs to determine if they are ready for scale, and issue persuasion experiments to build youth voter support for a wide variety of climate and environmental issues.  

This is a full-time position based remotely anywhere in the United States. The Research and Experimentation Director will work from home, meet as required by video chat with teams and have weekly national full staff meetings and departmental meetings with colleagues online. This position reports to the Head of Campaigns and Civic Engagement. Travel will be required to departmental meetings, staff retreats, and other events when safe.

ABOUT YOU

Great candidates will have some of the skills and experience listed below, though it will be unlikely to find a candidate with all of these: 

  • You LIVE to experiment: You are an evidence-based person and the intersection of social justice, civic engagement and social statistics is deeply exciting to you. 
  • You have some background or understanding of issue advocacy, non-partisan civic engagement, and/or political campaigns: You have designed, led, and implemented randomized controlled trials to measure things like an increase in net voter registrations or net votes. You may have run issue persuasion tests to increase voter support for a wide range of issues like renewable energy. 
  • You don’t mind regularly rolling up your sleeves and digging into STATA, resolving a SQL query issue, or the like: At ACE, we have a “roll up your sleeves” mentality. You look forward to managing the overall vision and strategy of ACE’s research and experimentation work to increase our impact, but you also enjoy working in R or Python or learning about a new program or tool to resolve an issue or obtain the best experimental result.

You can communicate with technical and non-technical audiences about the work that you do: You relish getting up in front of a room (or Zoom) to present on a new and novel tactic that we tested or share the result from a successful randomized controlled trial that’s ready for scale. You feel comfortable (and excited!) translating the work you do to non-technical / non-scientific / non-data people, and also have the ability to “speak scientist” when the audience has a deeper background in stats, social science, or research.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

  • Develop a research and experimentation strategy and framework to generate evidence for the most effective ways to leverage ACE strengths to advance our mission, vision and programmatic goals.
  • Design and conduct randomized control trials to test the efficacy of ACE’s programs. These may be done in partnership with contractors, independently, or both.
  • Design and conduct message testing experiments with diverse youth audiences in rural and urban geographies online and in-person (e.g. canvassing). 
  • Design and implement persuasion experiments to build issue support among youth voters in certain key geographies for ballot initiatives or issues
  • Evaluate impact ACE programs both qualitatively and quantitatively through data analysis, surveys, focus groups and other means.
  • Analyze and share results from research and experimentation with ACE staff, partners, funders, board members, and constituents through emails, reports and presentations.
  • Establish ACE as a leader in data-driven impact in the fields of climate education, advocacy, civic engagement, and democracy. 

This description reflects ACE’s assignment of essential functions, it does not restrict the tasks that may be assigned. ACE retains the right to change or assign other duties to this position at any time.

Key Working Relationships

  • ACE staff
  • National and regional partners
  • Research and evaluation contractors
  • Youth, including Youth Advisory Board members, Action Team members and Youth Action Network members

Key Responsibilities

  • Research and experimental design: Design research projects, experiments, and evaluative tools to measure the impact and efficacy of ACE’s programs.
  • Conduct research: Carry out multiple simultaneous evaluation projects and experiments including randomized controlled trials in ACE’s key program areas of education and storytelling, distributed organizing, climate advocacy, civic engagement, and growth.
  • Dissemination of results: Analyze and synthesize results of evaluations and experiments and disseminate results through written communications and presentations for all audiences, including: funder, donors, board members, staff, and partners
  • Stay updated: Stay abreast of research findings from partners and the community, including by attending online and live events and conferences.

Increase brand recognition: Help to establish ACE as a visible leader in data-driven impact in the fields of climate education, advocacy, civic engagement, and democracy.

QUALIFICATIONS


Minimum Qualifications:

  • PhD in research, evaluation, measurement, statistics, or similar field 
  • Five or more years of experience in research, experimentation and evaluation
  • Knowledge of both qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation methods
  • Extensive experience with statistical software such as SQL, STATA, R, SAS or others
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills in English for technical and nontechnical audiences

Desired Qualifications:

  • Ability to train and coach youth 
  • Experience in designing and implementing campaigns
  • Nonprofit experience and/or an understanding of 501(c)(3) organizations 
  • Presenting to or working closely with Boards of Directors or funders 
  • Existing expertise or willingness to master trends in climate education, youth organizing, youth civic engagement, and climate justice advocacy.
  • Understanding of intersectional social justice issues that overlap with climate justice 
  • Strong computer skills (Google Suite)

Employees must be able to perform the essential functions of the position satisfactorily. Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue hardship.

POSITION DETAILS

  • Schedule: Full-time 
  • Annual salary range: $80,000-$109,000 commensurate with experience
  • Generous benefits: Medical, Dental, Vision, 403b retirement savings plan, Paid Parental Leave, Flexible Work Schedule, Vacation, 2 Floating Holidays, 2 Community Service Floating Holidays, Sick time and 13 observed holidays
  • Location: Remote

  • ACE is an equal opportunity employer that highly values staff diversity

Please apply by emailing your resume to [email protected], with “Research and Experimentation Director” in the subject line. All your information will be kept confidential according to EEOC guidelines. 

ACE is an equal opportunity employer that highly values diversity, equity and inclusion and views the climate crisis as a social justice crisis. People who identify as Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), people who experience gender oppression, people with disabilities, and people who identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community are particularly encouraged to apply.