About DIG
The Digital Inquiry Group (DIG) spun out of Stanford in 2023 as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to preparing individuals to make sense of the past and navigate our digital present. DIG is the nation's largest provider of free, open-source social studies curriculum. Our Reading Like a Historian lessons and Beyond the Bubble assessments have been downloaded more than 17 million times. More than half of America's social studies teachers use our materials, and over 450,000 educators are registered on our site. Our Civic Online Reasoning curriculum teaches students to do what professional fact-checkers do: find out who is behind a claim, trace it to its source, and check it against other evidence. Research by DIG and scholars around the world has consistently shown that these materials lead to significant improvements in students’ ability to discern the credibility of online information. In a moment of political polarization, our resources appear on the recommended lists of 42 state departments of education, in red, blue, and purple states alike. Our ideas have traveled far beyond K-12 classrooms, shaping a 46-nation Council of Europe digital literacy initiative, a YouTube series with John Green viewed more than 5.5 million times, and digital literacy content in Minecraft, the world's best-selling video game.
Our work builds on more than 20 years as the Stanford History Education Group. While no longer based at Stanford, we’ve retained the research-to-practice model that set us apart. We study how young people actually make sense of information, design and test strategies in real classrooms, publish in peer-reviewed research, and then share what works for free on our website. Our research has appeared in leading academic journals, and our findings have been featured in a wide range of outlets, including The New York Times, the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal. We also offer a range of professional development opportunities to support educators to implement our resources. We have provided professional development to more than 120 school districts, educational organizations, and universities, including partnerships with some of the nation’s largest districts.
About the Role
DIG has a staff of seven. More than half of the country's social studies teachers use the resources these seven staff produce. We have never had an operations and operations leader. You would be the first, and you would help strengthen an organization that supports hundreds of thousands of educators and millions of students.
This position is equivalent to a chief operating officer. You will work hand in hand with our executive director. You will lead our financial management, internal operations, staff management, organizational culture, and external partnerships.
In our early years, talented operations consultants carried us through. We are now at a point where we need a seasoned leader who can assume full financial leadership of the organization and build partnerships with states, districts, schools, and partner organizations. You will have a budget to hire employees and contractors as you build the operations function.
Qualifications
What you’ve accomplished (required)
- 10+ years of post-college experience, including 3+ years with leadership responsibilities.
- Experience with organizations creating and providing curricula, products, or services to schools is beneficial but not required.
- Experience in leading operations within scaling environments (building processes, leading organizational planning, managing progress and execution) in a fully remote context.
- Demonstrated ability in financial planning, budgeting, and managing financial operations, in a mix of funding environments (e.g., public, private, or philanthropic).
- Proven capacity to identify and solve problems to advance the organization's goals.
- Proficient in operating independently, with a keen sense of how and when to bring the team together to build collaboratively.
Responsibilities
Financial Management (25%)
- Lead budget planning, tracking, and analysis for the organization as a whole and for individual grants, including reporting to funders.
- Own and improve the financial processes and systems for expense management, payroll, and allocating costs to grants.
- Manage the relationship with DIG's outsourced accounting firm.
- Oversee the annual audit with DIG’s external auditors and see it through to a successful close.
Organizational Management & Culture (35%)
- Lead DIG's yearly strategic planning cycle.
- Build and maintain the systems DIG uses to plan and track its work, so that priorities, owners, and progress are clear across the organization.
- Track progress on grant outcomes and deliverables, making sure DIG meets its commitments to funders.
- Set the meeting schedule and team routines that keep a remote team connected and aligned and make the work enjoyable.
- Support the Board of Directors, including planning meetings, recruiting new members, and onboarding them.
- Hire, train, and manage administrative and operational support across the organization.
Partnerships (30%)
- Develop a strategy for partnering with states, districts, and schools that meets two goals:
- Growing earned revenue from fee-based professional development.
- Expanding adoption and use of DIG's free curriculum.
- Lead and manage the team that carries out this strategy.
- Build the systems for ongoing engagement with the teachers who use DIG's curriculum.
- Work with the program team to find out what they need to learn from educators and partners, and build the processes and infrastructure to gather and organize that information.
Human Resources, Technology & Legal (10%)
- Manage DIG's relationship with its professional employer organization (PEO), which handles HR, benefits, and payroll administration.
- Oversee the organization's hardware and software.
- Manage legal matters, working with outside counsel as needed.
Compensation & Benefits
The salary range for this position is $130,000–$170,000 (candidates will learn where they fall in the band early in our process). The Director of Operations & Partnerships should expect to travel 2–3 times per quarter as a baseline. DIG offers generous benefits:
- Paid time off (20 days of vacation and 15 company holidays per year)
- Sick time (12 days per year)
- 401(k) with company matching
- Health insurance (no cost for employee)
- Life, vision, dental, and disability insurance
- Employee assistance program
To Apply
Please use this link to submit your application. Please direct all concerns or questions about the application process to palmer@inquirygroup.org.
The Digital Inquiry Group embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of the students and communities with whom we work and the world that's around them. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.