American Economic Security Index Senior Director

Founded in 2017, Goodnation directs philanthropic resources toward projects that can transform our communities and country. We address the root causes of societal challenges by empowering changemakers and driving meaningful social impact as a trusted fiscal sponsor and innovator. More than $100M has been deployed through Goodnation to help reform systems, protect the vulnerable, and solve our world’s toughest challenges through vetted nonprofit organizations and unique initiatives.

At Goodnation, we believe ending poverty in America is possible — and the time to act is now. In 2024 we launched the National Roundtable on Ending Poverty in America (National Roundtable). In June and November 2025, we convened nearly 400 leaders from all 50 states focused on ending poverty in America, and surveyed more than 200 community funders representing over $1 billion in annual anti-poverty grantmaking.

The message was clear: ending poverty will require community funder leadership, a shared strategy, stronger collaboration, and bold federal policy adoption.

Since then, we have built the coalition that message called for: roughly 1,000 participating foundations across all 50 states, a 24-member Planning Team, and an Economic Blueprint of five federal policy priorities — wages, federal tax credits, care costs, healthcare costs, and housing costs. That structure is already producing federal results. The 2026 Housing Sprint helped carry the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act into law on July 11, 2026, the first major federal housing law in three decades.

Our focus now is local implementation and building the American Economic Security Index into national infrastructure.

Goodnation employs a structure termed a contract hybrid, consisting of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called the Goodnation Foundation, a social enterprise called Goodnation Philanthropy Advisors, and a 501(c)(4) called Goodnation Action.

The American Economic Security Index (AESI) is an intuitive 0–100 barometer of the share of workers and families who can afford to live where they live, calculated across all 3,143 U.S. counties and 384 metro areas, with roll-ups to state, congressional district, and national levels. It is being built by Goodnation Foundation in partnership with the Living Wage Institute (LWI), which brings more than two decades of living wage methodology and the Living Wage Calculator lineage.

Our ambition is that AESI becomes a standard measure of American economic life. GDP, unemployment, inflation, and the official poverty rate can all look healthy while families cannot cover rent, child care, and health care where they live. AESI answers the question people are actually asking when they ask how the economy is doing: can families afford their lives here? We intend for the Economic Security Score to be read alongside the unemployment rate — cited by mayors, governors, congressional offices, funders, employers, and reporters as the ordinary way to describe how the economy is working for families in a given place.

Closer in, AESI is the North Star metric for the National Roundtable’s federal policy agenda across taxes, wages, housing, care, and healthcare costs, and a shared language connecting local affordability conditions to philanthropic strategy, federal advocacy, and place-based action. The Senior Director’s job is to carry AESI from a credible new dataset to a measure the country relies on.

Goodnation seeks an AESI Senior Director to build, maintain, and grow the American Economic Security Index into a durable, self‑sustaining national institution.

The build is underway, financed by initial philanthropic support and executed by our partners at the Living Wage Institute (LWI). The Senior Director…