About the Role
INN’s Research Director is responsible for overseeing and coordinating INN’s comprehensive studies of the nonprofit news sector. This includes overseeing the design, execution, and dissemination of the annual INN Index, supervising Research team staff and contractors, ensuring the quality of the Research team’s data and methodology, compiling data and analysis for both internal and external stakeholders, and assisting organizational leadership and programmatic teams in utilizing research data to inform INN’s work and strategic goals. The ideal candidate for this role is a systems-thinker who is great at managing and synthesizing data, finding the story in a dataset, and who is passionate about translating data and trends into usable knowledge for the industry.

In 2025, the Research team will focus on maintaining and expanding keystone research and data services INN audiences have come to love and expect, while also focusing on increasing engagement around INN’s research and knowledge.

About INN
The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) strengthens and supports more than 475 independent news organizations in a new kind of news network: nonprofit, nonpartisan, and dedicated to public service. From local news to in-depth reporting on pressing global issues, INN’s members tell stories that otherwise would go untold — connecting communities, holding the powerful accountable, and strengthening democracy.

At INN, the Research team leverages quantitative and qualitative revenue, staffing and audience data on our 475+ member outlets in order to produce knowledge, publications and tools to advance the nonprofit news sector. The INN Index, launched in 2018, is the most comprehensive dataset on nonprofit news in North America, and grounds the field with a consistent, repeatable field survey that can measure the growth of independent nonprofit newsrooms, identify trends and benchmark performance. The Index provides data to researchers, foundations and other stakeholders as well as participating members. 

Key Responsibilities

This role’s responsibilities span four areas of work:

Managing and overseeing the production of the INN Index survey. This includes working with INN staff to determine the subject area focus of the year’s survey, developing survey language, building and maintaining the consent acquisition process for INN members opting into the Index, working with the Research team and external stakeholders on the data collection itself, ensuring INN Index data is secure and maintained with appropriate data architecture, and overseeing data analysis and findings from the survey data. 

• Producing the annual Index Report. This role will oversee the production of an annual Index Report, which highlights key findings and identifies new or shifting trends in the field of nonprofit news for an audience of member newsrooms, funders, and policymakers. The Research Director will be INN’s senior writer and editor covering the growth and challenges of nonprofit newsrooms. They will work with external Index consulting partners on annual planning and production and with the INN Comms team to develop an audience strategy for INN’s research publication. As a writer/editor, this person will recruit and work with freelancers; find and leverage subject matter experts as sources, writers or even editors; and directly produce occasional case studies.
• Managing and overseeing the Research team which includes a full-time Researcher and two senior Index consulting partners. The director will also oversee other external consultants as needed and be responsible for onboarding outside contractors into various INN systems, ensuring and enforcing the security of INN data. The Director will oversee and support INN’s Researcher in managing the Pods program, that segments INN member newsrooms to facilitate peer connection and learning, as well as manage any external partnerships relating to INN Index data.
• Overseeing the Ask the Index program and executing requests. The Research Director will oversee Ask the Index, the service model arm of the INN Index, that helps academics, media reporters and funders leverage our high-quality data for their research, impact assessments and stories about nonprofit news. This will include engaging with external stakeholders that are interested in INN’s Index data, fielding (or helping to shape) requests, assessing the scale and resource-intensiveness of the request to determine pricing, and delegating or overseeing the data analysis and final results.

The Research Director also works with other INN staff and partners to develop research and funding proposals for studies that merit a deeper dive; present findings and trends; field media interviews; and help interpret findings for a variety of communications, such as newsletters, annual reports, blogs and social media posts. The Research Director occasionally organizes and hosts events and webinars sharing key research findings with a variety of audiences. This is a hands-on, full-time position that can expect to regularly work with large data sets, write case studies, assign and edit work, and interface with external partners and INN members. This Director will work closely with the Communications Director and all INN staff.

Qualifications:

• At least 5 years’ experience managing, organizing, interpreting and working with large datasets in research and analysis contexts.
• Proficiency in statistical techniques and tools for quantitative research and data analysis.
• Ability to structure and manage datasets to find usable information; 
• Familiarity with online survey platforms like Qualtrics, and project management tools like Asana.
• Ability to identify trends in data, test and explore hypotheses with the help of a research analyst and editors.
• Organized, self-motivated project leader with the ability to track tasks for the research team across multiple, ongoing projects with shifting priorities as well as track progress towards key goals. 

Exceptional editing, writing and verbal communication skills; the ability to craft a presentation outline, email or blog post with a particular audience in mind. Keen sense for how to use data to tell a story and the ability to write for both a more formal research report or a more informal Medium blog post. Acute attention to accuracy, and the storytelling ability to make complex material accessible for multiple audiences.

Business, trade or academic publishing experience including production of accessible writing based on data and use cases.

Strong interest in journalism and reporting for the public. Experience with digital media and the business of media are pluses.

Familiarity with nonprofit business models and organizational culture, especially as it pertains to journalism and/or the nonprofit arena

At least five years’ experience managing teams

Experience managing and working within a remote, distributed organization

About Institute for Nonprofit News

The Institute for Nonprofit News strengthens and supports more than 425 independent news organizations in a new kind of news network: nonprofit, nonpartisan and dedicated to public service. From local news to in-depth reporting on pressing global issues, members of the INN Network tell stories that otherwise would go untold – connecting communities, holding the powerful accountable and strengthening democracy. INN programs help these news organizations develop revenue and business models to support strong reporting, collaborate on editorial and business innovation, share services and advance the diverse leaders who are forging a new future for news.

Connections working at Institute for Nonprofit News