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 also traveled well beyond K-12 classrooms, shaping a 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.
Our work builds on more than 20 years as the Stanford History Education Group. Although we are no longer based at a university, we’ve kept 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. 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 and The Wall Street Journal. We also offer a range of professional development opportunities to support educators to implement our resources effectively. 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
The Digital Inquiry Group is seeking its first operations leader. The Director of Operations and Partnerships will lead our staff management/culture, internal operations, external partnerships, and financial management. Joining our team of seven, the Director of Operations and Partnerships will report to the Executive Director. We’ve worked with a team of strong operations consultants in our early years, but we are looking for a seasoned leader who can help us advance our operations and prepare us for programmatic growth. The Director of Operations and Partnerships must have the acumen to assume full financial leadership of the organization as well as possess experience building operations around an external sales funnel (e.g., fee-for-service sales, partnerships, and fundraising). They will have the opportunity to leverage a budget to hire employees and/or contractors to supplement their experience and capacity as needed. The Director of Operations and Partnerships is the equivalent of a COO in another organization, but the title reflects DIG’s existing title structure.
Qualifications
What you’ve accomplished (required)
- 10+ years of post-college experience, including 5+ 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, philanthropic).
- Proven capacity to identify and solve problems to advance the goals of the organization.
- Proficient in operating autonomously, with a keen sense of how to bring a 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 consistent, ongoing engagement with the teachers who use DIG's curriculum, in service of the organization's wider goals.
- 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. If you require a reasonable accommodation to submit an application, or to participate in the application or interview process, please direct all concerns or questions to palmer@inquirygroup.org.
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.