ABOUT THE ORGANIZATION

Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago (NHS) is a 50-year-old nonprofit, community development organization focused on creating thriving, mixed-income neighborhoods of choice through homeownership in historically underserved communities on the South and West sides of Chicago. Our mission is to create opportunities for people to live in affordable homes, improve their lives, and strengthen their neighborhoods. We do that by:

• Educating and preparing new homeowners for success
• Lending to help people buy, fix, and keep their homes
• Administering grants that give a “hand up”
• Sustaining homeownership through education and foreclosure intervention services
• Preserving, rehabbing, and investing in housing
• Building powerful and enduring community partnerships
• Crafting and advocating for policy to address current housing inequities

With its related entities, Neighborhood Lending Services (NLS), a community development financial institution and one of Illinois’ largest nonprofit lenders for single family homes, and NHS Redevelopment Corporation that stabilizes troubled buildings across Chicago, rehabs properties for sale, and builds newly constructed affordable homes in target neighborhoods, NHS strives to revive neighborhoods throughout Chicago and South Suburban Cook County.

BASIC JOB FUNCTION

The Data Analyst is a relatively new staff position within NHS. Bringing a passion for continuous learning, the Data Analyst will contribute to making sense of and developing actionable insights from the many sources of data collected by NHS as well as publicly available sources. Analyses may focus on the impact of the organization’s programs; needed changes to state, local, and federal policies; addressing the evolving needs of our clientele; identifying opportunities for strategic intervention; or exposing homeownership issues confronting the region. This work will support program development and evaluation, policy advocacy, grant applications, and fundraising efforts. In addition, the Data Analyst will carry out occasional reporting requirements, such as summarizing programmatic outcomes for grant requirements or internal monitoring. 

PRINCIPAL JOB DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Collaborate with the organization’s leaders and external stakeholders to define research questions, then design methods and gather the data to address these questions.
• Measure the impact of the organization’s ongoing and completed programs.
• Maintain up-to-date understanding of service recipients by frequently analyzing client data.
• Identify, obtain, and analyze public data sets on topics such as neighborhood demographics, property characteristics, and mortgage lending to help inform understanding of existing housing issues and opportunities for intervention.
• Develop data visualizations (including maps), reports, and presentations of your findings to be shared with organization managers and staff.
• Create data products that demystify data for general audiences and package it for public use, such as for advocacy. 
• Collect programmatic outcomes from various departments, ensure data quality, and manage established tracking procedures.
• Improve efficiencies in data processes; write code to automate data auditing and reporting.
• Complete occasional reporting for grant requirements and to satisfy regulatory compliance requirements.
• Work with IT development manager and other staff to fix problems and improve systems. 

POSITION QUALIFICATIONS 

While no one person will have all the qualities enumerated below, a successful candidate will bring many of the following qualifications and attributes:

• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field (e.g., urban planning, public policy, statistics, data sciences, economics, psychology, sociology, public health, public administration, social work) with advanced coursework in data analytics, statistics, or research methods, and 2 years’ work experience; or master’s degree in relevant field.
• Proficiency with R (or other statistical analysis software) for data cleaning, coding, analyses, and visualizations.
• Proficiency with ArcGIS (or other mapping software).
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel and the other Microsoft Office suite of tools including Power BI.
• Experience with Salesforce a plus.
• Sharp analytical skills to effectively identify key findings and draw conclusions, and the ability to see how these conclusions fit into efforts to address community needs. 
• Basic familiarity with ongoing housing issues, especially those affecting Black and Hispanic/Latino households, and a desire to deepen this understanding. 
• Commitment to Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago’s mission and goals, including a demonstrated commitment to equity and racial justice.
• Excellent organizational skills, with a strong attention to detail.
• Ability to work productively and problem-solve with minimal supervision.
• Innate curiosity, passion, and initiative. 
• Eager to assist colleagues and foster a collaborative work setting.
• Comfort in a fast-paced environment; familiarity with data and work culture in a nonprofit setting is a plus.

WORK ENVIRONMENTThe work environment described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

 Role must be able to perform in a hybrid work environment – in the central office and also remotely. The successful candidate must be available throughout the workday while remote. The candidate must also be available for in-person meetings as needed regardless of hybrid schedule.

The noise level in the work environment is moderate and is of a typical office environment. 

 PHYSICAL DEMANDS

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable 

accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is:

• regularly required to talk or hear;
• write or input information for extended periods of time;
• frequently required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to finger, handle, or feel; reach with hands and arms