THE ORGANIZATION

The Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) is a leading nonprofit venture philanthropy fund dedicated to identifying the nation’s best public charter schools, investing in their expansion, and helping to increase their impact. Our “portfolio” includes 140+ charter school networks that operate 1,100+ schools and serve more than 500,000 students. We are committed to expanding the impact of schools that are closing achievement and opportunity gaps. CSGF operates with the same strategies, discipline, and focus as a venture capital firm by awarding multi-year grants and loans to talented education entrepreneurs building networks of high-quality charter schools that enroll traditionally underserved students. Ultimately, we think the portfolio can grow to serve ~1,000,000 students within a decade.

This is an exciting time to join the Charter School Growth Fund. We are launching our next philanthropic fund in 2022, building on our 15-year track record of success. CSGF’s new five-year “Fund IV” will be larger in size and scope than previous funds, with a goal to continue to fuel charter sector growth, accelerate innovation, and strengthen long-term outcomes for students, particularly students of color and those from low-income backgrounds. Our new fund will continue to prioritize investments in leaders of color as our current portfolio is led by more than 50% leaders of color and more than 50% female leaders. We believe it is vital for the networks we support to be proximate to the lived experiences of the students and communities they serve.

THE OPPORTUNITY

About Our Team

With the launch of the next philanthropic fund, the Analytics team is expanding and evolving to meet the growing needs of an ever increasingly data driven organization. The Analytics team sits at the intersection of our investment, impact, innovation, policy, finance, and talent teams which all have data needs to drive their goals. The Analytics team also serves the need to progress monitor CSGF’s key performance indicators that measure our impact across the network. These insights are shared internally as well as with our many funders. In addition, we seek to expand the role of analytics to provide direct analysis support to our growing portfolio of charter school networks. To accomplish this, we leverage nationally collected data sets from a variety of sources and provide flexible and timely analysis to our many stakeholders and partners. 

The team is made up of three core functions: engineering, data products, and insights research. The full-time permanent role will develop data products, particularly dashboards, for technical and non-technical audiences. This role reports to the Director of Data Products. 

Our Analytics Stack

• Google Cloud (backbone architecture)
• Airflow (data ingestion and orchestration)
• BigQuery (data warehouse)
• dbt Cloud (data modeling/monitoring)
• Tableau (data visualization)

About This Role

As a Data Analyst you will deliver on customer-centered data and analytical products that enhance efficiency, support data-driven decision-making, and enable our organization to scale. Specifically, you will support the growth and maintenance of our current dashboard portfolio in Tableau. In addition, you will have direct involvement in the reporting and analysis of key performance indicators, including student outcomes and school performance metrics. 

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Below is a general outline of responsibilities. CSGF is a fast-moving organization, roles and responsibilities may change to meet the needs of the organization and the charter networks we support.

It is not expected that every candidate will meet all of the desired qualifications; above all else, we are seeking candidates with an eagerness and ability to learn new skills and solve interesting problems in an environment that encourages creative thinking, quick feedback loops, and opportunities for professional development.

Data Visualization

• Build and maintain interactive Tableau dashboards and infographics that enable actionable insights, tailoring visualizations to meet the needs of users while adhering to brand standards
• Execute a variety of techniques in Tableau, including forming relationships between multiple data sources, creating field calculations and dashboard actions, and designing more advanced charts (e.g., hex-tile maps, lollipop charts, donut charts, etc.
• Synthesize qualitative data, communicating key themes and messages through visualizations
• Develop dashboard mock-ups to help elicit and define requirements of data requests
• Actively searches for opportunities to experiment with different design approaches and formats, contributing to the team’s ongoing efforts to innovate and improve its product line

Data Collection & Validation

• Participate in smaller-scale collection cycles throughout the year, including designing surveys, compiling survey results, and reporting outcomes
• Perform quality audits of collected data and providing assistance to resolve issues
• Support the development and execution of data workflows that ingest, validate, test and model data for analytics needs

Data Modeling and Reporting

• Partner with the Analytics Engineer  to develop a metrics layer in SQL to centralize organizational key performance measures
• Support the Analytics Engineer in transforming datasets for end products, modeling data in a way that empowers end users to answer their own questions
• Query from the data warehouse in SQL, calculating and aggregating data when necessary, to respond to data requests.
• Support due diligence on high-performing charter school operators by conducting analysis and developing products to display achievement and enrollment data

You’re a good fit if you are:

• A design-savvy analyst or data-savvy designer with high interest in designing data visualizations and telling impactful stories
• Excited about leveraging the wealth of education data we currently collect to influence decision making and increase our impact
• Interest or passion in education and commitment to CSGF’s mission

You care about questions like:

• What is the most essential information to present and visualize in a dashboard?
• How can I strategically implement visual design elements (e.g., color, contrast, alignment, white space etc.)?
• What would it take for us to always collect valid and clean data for analysis?
• How can I ensure that my SQL query returns the correct output to answer the question that Team ABC asked?

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Expected Skills and Characteristics

• Exceptional quantitative skills with demonstrated ability to create data visualizations
• Intermediate to advanced knowledge of spreadsheets (e.g., Excel, Google Sheets), including lookup functions and pivot tables.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills and storytelling ability
• Strong attention to detail and focus on accuracy over urgency
• Capacity to quickly learn new skills, seek honest feedback from peers and mentors, and know when to ask for help

Nice to Haves But Not Necessary

• Experience with data visualization tools (ex: Tableau, PowerBI, Looker, etc)
• Experience with visual design tools (ex: Adobe Creative Suite, Figma, etc.)
• Experience with SQL, specifically in BigQuery

Professional Experience

• At least one year of full-time professional experience in data analytics, education, and/or similar fields

WORKING AT CSGF

We are focused on hiring and developing great people and believe that building diverse perspectives across our team makes us more effective in expanding our impact. (This is reflected in Our Commitment to Diversity Statement.) Our core values are:

• We work relentlessly to create efficient, measurable, and sustainable results. We strive for excellence and pursue our mission tenaciously. Ideally, you thrive working in a self-directed manner in a fluid environment where flexibility and tenacity are required.
• We embrace calculated risks and new approaches. We have an entrepreneurial spirit that welcomes innovation, diversity of ideas, and risk. We rely on you to question conventional wisdom and think independently.
• We are truthful, fair, and trustworthy in all aspects of our work. We hold ourselves and our partners to the highest ethical standards. We trust you will too.
• We appreciate the challenges faced by education entrepreneurs and recognize the limits of our own knowledge. We understand that our ultimate success depends on that of our partners. Your humility will be key to building trusted and authentic relationships.
• We value each of our team members as individuals but believe that we achieve the best results by working together. We willingly sacrifice individual interests and recognition for greater collective impact. We hope having fun at work is important to you and that you are a team player.

COMPENSATION

Compensation is commensurate with experience and education. The target salary range for this role is $65,000 - $85,000 annually. CSGF offers a very competitive compensation package.

START DATE

CSGF is seeking candidates who can start as soon as possible.

COVID-19 VACCINATION POLICY

Unless prohibited by state or local law, CSGF requires that all staff be fully vaccinated with an FDA or WHO authorized vaccine (or approved for an exemption as a reasonable accommodation due to a medical reason or sincerely held religious belief). CSGF abides by each state’s requirements and acknowledges those may change over time. If moved forward to the phone screen stage, you have the chance to ask the talent team any questions you may have about this requirement.

Charter School Growth Fund provides equal employment opportunity for all applicants and employees.