Colorado Nonprofit Association

Learning and Evaluations Manager

Who We Are

Big Green, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, believes that growing food changes lives. We are on a mission to help everyone in America grow their own food. We provide vital resources to organizations and individuals working to grow food in their communities, including grants, gardening materials and supplies, training, and community.

About the Position

The Learning & Evaluation Manager will play a critical role in driving Big Green’s internal learning initiatives and assessing our external impact. Working closely with the leadership team, you will build and maintain the evaluation and learning infrastructure. Additionally, you will bring value to our grant partners and collaborators, serving as a resource and thought leader to grassroots leaders across the country.

In this role, you will

• Manage all organizational evaluation efforts, including third-party evaluation, research, and ongoing data collection.
• Design and implement a system that promotes transparent, accurate, efficient, and reliable data collection and allows for timely outcome reporting to organizational leadership, the board, funders, and other stakeholders.
• Develop annual evaluation plans, inclusive of department metrics, service targets, and data collection and beneficiary information tools.
• Use available data, staff, client, community, and stakeholder feedback to make observations and ask questions designed to identify what is and is not working in our programs, services, and initiatives.
• Support teams to ensure that learning and evaluation results are considered and integrated into all program and project design and implementation, as well as future strategy and planning.
• Design and facilitate engaging and effective meetings that support learning, reinforce organizational priorities, and drive action.
• Build capacity in staff, board members, and other key stakeholders through a range of learning approaches, including individual and group training, workshops, research summaries, and other tools to increase understanding of targeted populations, the issues they face, and innovative evaluation approaches to improve programs and processes.
• Facilitate learning for grant partners to understand and articulate their greatest impact, and support the incorporation of tools for tracking and reporting.
• Assist in the development and writing of grant proposals and reports
• Support the development of messaging that explains the organization’s impact and story to be shared in annual reports and other external communications.
• Coordinate and actively communicate organizational learnings and lessons through both long and short forms such as white papers, blogs, social posts, and other forums.
• Engage with the philanthropic sector to stay abreast of trends in the sector and ensure Big Green’s work and approach are informed by best practices among social justice funders.
• Stay abreast of research on best practices, promising programs, and theories of change that underpin the programs and services of the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Evaluation, Social Sciences, Public Policy, Nonprofit Management, Public Health, or a related field. Master’s degree preferred.
• 3-5 years of experience in program evaluation, impact measurement, or research in a nonprofit or mission-driven organization. Ideal candidates will also have experiences in Big Green’s lanes of impact.
• Demonstrated experience applying mixed methods research methods, including but not limited to survey design and analysis, designing and conducting focus groups and interviews, conducting literature reviews, data analysis, and preparing reports for diverse audiences.
• Ability to utilize storytelling, data visualization, and other tools to illustrate change, motivate, and inspire
• Capacity to effectively use research and evaluation for learning and strategy development.
• Ability to learn, navigate, and manage databases, data visualization tools, and survey tools such as Excel, Tableau, Power BI, SPSS, R, and Salesforce.
• Strong facilitation skills with the ability to move groups from talk to action.
• Ability to use protocols, visualizations, and other tools to create shared meaning across diverse stakeholders.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills and ability to distill and explain complex concepts.
• Strong project management skills that include the establishment of milestones, communication plans, and the timely delivery of final products across multiple teams or departments.
• A track record of developing and implementing processes that advance learning and improvements across an organization or team. 

Work Hours: Varies upon the needs of the department.

Travel Requirements: This position requires travel 5-10% of the time.

Mental/Physical Requirements: This position will be performed in an office setting. The position will require the incumbent to sit and stand at a desk, communicate in person and by telephone, and frequently operate standard office equipment, such as telephones and computers.

Big Green is committed to delivering services, making employment-related decisions, selecting volunteers, and selecting vendors without regard to age over 40, race, sex, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, disability, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, medical condition related to pregnancy, military status, or any other applicable status protected by law.