Blueprint Research & Design

**UPDATE: BLUEPRINT IS NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THIS POSITION. IF YOU APPLIED FOR THIS JOB, WE SHALL RESPOND SHORTLY.**

We at Blueprint are looking to hire another research associate to conduct basic data analysis, secondary research, and writing for client projects. The primary responsibilities involve assisting analysts with quantitative and qualitative research in various areas of foundation practices and social policies. This is an excellent opportunity for someone in-between college and graduate school. The position will be located at our office in San Francisco, CA and the salary range is in the low $40,000s (depending upon experience) with medical, dental, vacation, and 401k benefits. For more information, please download the full description here.

If you’re interested, please submit a resume and cover letter via email to jobs [at] blueprintrd [dot] com on or before May 15, 2009 (type “Research Associate” in the subject line). Also, please paste your cover letter and resume directly into the text of a single email – attachments will not be opened.

In this Wall Street Journal article, Lucy Bernholz offers the following quote about nonprofits looking to reach out to businesses for help in the form of goods and services:

Nonprofits looking to employ this strategy “need to be as specific as possible about what they need” from both the companies and the volunteers to “make sure you are getting something you can actually use,” says Lucy Bernholz, founder and president of philanthropy consulting firm Blueprint Research & Design Inc. of San Francisco.

Blueprint is providing strategic advice and research support for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media & Learning Initiative, a $50 million effort over five years to support research and innovative projects focused on the emerging field of digital media, youth and learning.  Prior to the Initiative’s launch, Blueprint conducted research on possible Initiative components and recommended strategies for their implementation.  As the Initiative unfolds over the next several years, Blueprint will continue to provide strategic advice and also document the development of the Initiative in a series of reports for public use which will help define the emerging field of digital media and learning.

With support from the Endowment, Blueprint worked with three community organizing groups in the Bay Area to help them develop and implement evaluations of their efforts to gain increased access to healthcare for uninsured adults in their counties. Blueprint facilitated a learning community, bringing all three organizations together to learn from one another, and has helped the organizations build data collection solutions that fit within their budgets and organizational cultures.

Blueprint designed and is now implementing an evaluation for the Roots of Change (ROC) initiative, a project that seeks to create a sustainable food system in California by 2030. The initiative works to change policies, economic markets, and public perception at the local, state and national levels. As part of this process, we developed a theory of change and an evaluation plan linking research questions, benchmarks of progress, and data collection tools. We are currently working with ROC staff to implement systems for tracking their progress in different areas, such as the development of relationships with key stakeholders, growth in their network of leaders, and the progress of specific policies ROC worked to pass.

Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER) is a national collaborative of local community organizers, local advocates, and local and national foundations that seeks to advance community organizing as a strategy for effective education reform.  Blueprint is working with CPER to assess progress in education reform at the collaborative’s four sites across the United States, to help grantees build their capacity to gather information to improve their efforts, and to build a better understanding within the education reform movement of the role and value of community organizing.

Blueprint is working with ZeroDivde to document the launch and implementation of Zero Divide 2.0, an effort to fund and provide technical support to community-based enterprises that use technology for economic development or civic engagement.  This work involves helping the client create a program model, creating an evaluation and monitoring plan, and producing a final report documenting the grantmaking process, which will be made available to the public.