Director of Research

About the job

Position Summary

The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy seeks an ambitious, collaborative, and externally oriented leader to serve as Director of Research. The Director will hold a Research Scientist/Research Professor appointment with open rank, commensurate with qualifications and experience, and will serve as a member of the School’s senior leadership team.

The Director will lead the School’s research enterprise and help shape its next era of intellectual leadership, strategic growth, partnership, and impact. Working with an accomplished research team, faculty, School institutes and programs, Indiana University colleagues, and partners around the world, the Director will strengthen the School’s position as a global leader in research on philanthropy and generosity.

The School has an exceptional foundation on which to build, including signature research endeavors such as Giving USA research, the Philanthropy Panel Study, and the Global Philanthropy Indices, along with a broad portfolio examining giving, volunteering, fundraising, philanthropic behavior, institutions, and civil society.

The next Director will strengthen these assets while identifying important new questions, partnerships, resources, and opportunities for growth. Central to the role will be deepening existing relationships and developing new local, national, and global partnerships; connecting the School’s research with faculty and expertise across the field; and ensuring that research is not only rigorous and respected, but used and useful.

Key Priorities

Lead an Exceptional Research Enterprise

Provide strategic and intellectual leadership for the School’s research portfolio and professional research team, fostering a culture of rigor, collaboration, innovation, and impact.

Steward and strengthen signature research endeavors, including Giving USA research, the Philanthropy Panel Study, and the Global Philanthropy Indices, while identifying emerging questions and opportunities where the School can provide distinctive leadership.

Encourage innovation in research methods, data, technology, and partnerships while maintaining the highest standards of research integrity and independence.

As a member of the School’s senior leadership team, contribute to broader strategy, priority-setting, resource development, and institutional leadership.

Build Partnerships and Drive Growth

Make external partnership development a central component of the School’s research strategy.

Deepen relationships with existing funders and research partners while developing new relationships with foundations, nonprofits, corporations, associations, government entities, universities, research institutions, and other partners locally, nationally, and globally.

Build a strong pipeline of collaborative and externally supported research opportunities, including ambitious multi-year and multi-partner initiatives.

Work closely with the School’s Advancement and Professional Development teams to cultivate funders and partners and create connections among research, philanthropic leadership, professional learning, and practice.

Leverage all the School’s Talent and Resources

Build strong partnerships with faculty and create opportunities for faculty expertise and the School’s professional research capabilities to reinforce one another.

Collaborate with the Lake Institute on Faith & Giving, Women’s Philanthropy Institute, and Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy to advance complementary research, partnerships, dissemination, and engagement.

Connect the School with expertise across field, creating and joining strategically beneficial interdisciplinary initiatives that draw upon the school’s distinctive strengths.

Represent the School on campus and system wide research committees, liaison between university and faculty to promote and advance LFSOP faculty research.

Illuminate Policy and a Changing Philanthropic Environment

Advance the School’s emerging interest in research that illuminates policy possibilities and examines the consequences of policy change for philanthropy, nonprofits, donors, communities, and civil society.

Use the School’s data, research capabilities, and interdisciplinary expertise to provide timely, credible, and nonpartisan evidence that informs public understanding and decision-making.

More broadly, anticipate important changes affecting philanthropy and civil society and position the School to provide research leadership on the questions that will shape the field.

Make Research Used and Useful

Develop innovative approaches to translating and disseminating research so that it reaches and engages practitioners, donors, nonprofit leaders, policymakers, scholars, journalists, and communities.

Experiment with new forms of engagement—including digital and interactive tools, convenings, executive briefings, visualization, media partnerships, AI-enabled approaches, and other emerging models.

Create stronger pathways from research to insight to engagement to action, while developing ways to understand the reach and influence of the School’s research.

Basic Qualifications

Leadership Profile and Qualifications

The successful Director will combine the strengths of a research leader, relationship builder, strategist, entrepreneur, and translator. They will bring intellectual curiosity and commitment to rigorous research together with an instinct for building relationships, developing people, mobilizing resources, and creating opportunities.

The Director must be comfortable engaging researchers and faculty as well as philanthropic and nonprofit leaders, funders, university leadership, policymakers, and international partners. They will lead through collaboration and help connect people and ideas across institutional and disciplinary boundaries.

The successful candidate is expected to hold an earned doctorate in a social science field or closely related discipline. An equivalent combination of distinguished professional experience, research leadership, and relevant academic or applied expertise may also be considered, consistent with Indiana University requirements for appointment to an open rank.

Competitive candidates will bring:

• Significant leadership experience in research, philanthropy, higher education, public policy, nonprofits, a research institute, foundation, think tank, or related environment.

• Experience leading and developing a high-performing research team.

• A record of building substantial external partnerships and securing resources for research or strategic initiatives.

• Deep respect for methodological rigor, research integrity, and scholarly independence.

• Exceptional ability to build trust and collaborate with faculty, funders, practitioners, donors, institutional leaders, and partners across sectors.

• Superb communication skills and the ability to make sophisticated research relevant and accessible.

• An entrepreneurial and innovative orientation, combined with the judgment necessary to serve as a senior leader within a complex academic institution.

• A record of accomplishment appropriate for appointment as a Research Scientist/Research Professorat Indiana University.

Department Contact for Questions

Sara Konrath Search Committee Chair Associate Professor of Philanthropic Studies skonrath@iu.edu

Additional Qualifications

The Opportunity

The Lilly Family School of Philanthropy offers a combination of assets found nowhere else: a school devoted exclusively to philanthropy; distinguished faculty and research professionals; signature research programs and distinctive data assets; respected institutes; deep relationships throughout the field; and the intellectual resources of Indiana University.

The aspiration is not simply to produce more research. It is to identify the questions that matter, build the partnerships and resources needed to answer them, produce knowledge people trust, and ensure that research reaches and influences the people who can put it to use.

As both the leader of the School’s research enterprise and a member of its senior leadership team, the Director will have an unusual opportunity to help shape the School’s broader future while extending its local, national, and global leadership in understanding philanthropy and generosity.