Personal Information

Professional Profile

David Manchester is Associate Director of Impact Assessment & Learning at The Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Greater Boston's Jewish Federation. He is working to build a culture of data informed decision making by supporting program staff to think through strategy and document desired outcomes and to expand internal evaluation capacity.

Prior to joining CJP, David worked at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies on community studies, program evaluations and assessments, and other quantitative research projects. He envisioned and oversaw the development of the American Jewish Population Project’s interactive map as a tool to share findings in an engaging and interactive way.

A Ph.D. candidate at Brandeis’ Heller School for Social Policy, David’s research interest lay at the intersection of Jewish sociological, demographic, and programmatic trends. His dissertation is focusing on loneliness and social isolation in Jewish young adults and exploring how engagement and social programs can reduce such feelings and experiences. David is a Wexner Graduate Fellow/Davidson Scholar (class 29) and a Berman Fellow in Jewish Socio-Demographic Studies.

David completed his Masters’ degrees in Public Policy and Jewish Professional Leadership as part of the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University and received his BA in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service. David previously lived in Washington, DC where he began his career as a legislative assistant for Hadassah’s Washington Action Office and then became an operations analyst at Blackboard, Inc., where he honed his skills in quantitative metrics and evaluation. An active Hillel community member in college, David recently left the Board of Directors of American University Hillel following 12 years of service. Over the course of that time, he served as President, Vice President, and Treasurer of the Board, as well as the chair of the student life and personnel committees. In this role, he has been instrumental in reinvigorating the organization.

Work Experience

2017-Present

Associate Director, Impact Assessment & Learning

Combined Jewish Philanthropies

At CJP David has been working to incorporate measurement and evaluation into program planning and strategic thinking with a primary focus on projects such as:

Projects:

  • Support in program strategy discussions
  • Developed data collection plans
  • Support of external evaluations to ensure rigger and serve as a translator
  • Promote internal learning by facilitating sessions and welcoming experts
  • Consult with local organizations on surveys and data collection
  • Collaborate on donor reporting to include more data
  • Work with other Jewish Federations and partners to help develop the field and promote collaboration

2013 - 2017

Graduate Research Associate

Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies

The Cohen Center is the leading social science research institute focused on the American Jewish community. At the Center, he worked on various teams to shed light on trends nationally, locally, and within organizations or fields. This includes work on the American Jewish Population Project, a project that estimates the US Jewish population at the lowest geographic level ever. He also supported various projects merging lists and other data to support research, as well as developed customized databases for the collection and analysis of data collected. For the American Jewish Population Project, David project managed the development of the first interactive map. His projects included:

Projects:

  • Community Studies of Boston, Nashville, Seattle, and Buffalo
  • Thriving Synagogues
  • American Jewish Population Project
  • Israel Studies Course Directory

2014-2015

Measurement and Reporting Consultant

The Combined Jewish Philanthropies

Supported CJPs measurement project to improve the process to request and collect annual reports from recipient agencies prior to centralizing the process in a database. Provided guidance and planning around the implementation of a grants management system to consider the reporting potential it would offer. Supported planning for a community study they launched in 2015.

2015 - 2017

Teaching Experience

The Heller School, Brandeis University

Teaching is an important element of PhD work. Teaching and supporting students as they learn is not only a way to give back to peers but also a way to hone ones own abilities to explain complex analysis and methodology techniques to individuals who are not as familiar with them.

  • Teaching Fellow - Applied Regression
  • Teaching Fellow - Econometrics
  • Teaching Fellow - Geographic Information Systems

Education

2015 - Present

Ph.D. Student in Social Policy

The Heller School, Brandeis University

Heller offers an interdisciplinary program enabling students to pull frameworks and methodologies from various fields to best address research interests. Much of David's work falls within the fields of program evaluation, sociology, social psychology, and digital humanities. Significant focus has been spent on various specialized analyses including coursework in big data analysis, social network analysis, and cost benefit analysis.

  • Wexner Fellow/Davidson Scholar, Cohort 29
  • Berman Fellow in Jewish Socio-Demographic Studies
  • Gorbach Family Endowed Fellow

2013 - 2015

Masters in Public Policy &

Masters in Jewish Professional Leadership

Brandeis University

The Hornstein-Heller dual degree program offers training on various aspects of Jewish communal life along with the tactical skills of an applied degree. The MPP track offered training in statistics and policy analysis, important skills for increasing the rate of data informed decision making.

  • Nathan Perlmutter Fellow in Public Policy
  • Awarded Best Capstone in MPP graduating class

2003 - 2006

BA in International Studies

The American University

At American University, much of David’s coursework focused on US foreign policy in the Middle East and the various conflicts in the region. An active member of the Jewish community, he helped lead AU’s pro-Israel organization serving as a relationship manager with other clubs, groups, and organizations, both within and outside the university.


Research Areas

Program Evaluation 8 years
Demographic Research 6 years
Geo-Spatial Analysis 5 years
Network Analysis 4 years


Public Portfolio

  • American Jewish Population Project

    Managed the development of an interactive web based map which provided easy access to local population estimates for Jewish communal organizations.

  • Parental Choice of Early Childhood Centers

    Conducted the analysis on a project to understand factors that impact a family's choice of child care centrers to identify ways the Jewish community can address reasons people choose secular options and better support families.

  • The Future of the Jews

    Participated on a panel with other Brandeis scholars including Jonathan Sarna to reflect on the findings of the 2013 Pew study of the American Jewish community.

  • Department Capacity Matrix

    Automatically displayed the department’s capacity to complete additional work taking into account the available time of different consultants and their specific skills. The report improved accuracy of project timelines provided to clients from sales representatives and project managers..

  • Analysing Decisions by Location

    Proximity impacts most decisions. This map visualized the impact a families proximity to a Jewish ECE has on their consideration and choice of such educational options.

  • Exploring Social Networks at a Conference

    The following are the results of an analysis seeking to explore relationships that existed before and during an international conference. The analysis consists of social network analysis as well as statistical modelling.


Technical Skills

%

Microsoft Excel

Advanced

David has designed a variety of business intelligence dashboards that pull data from databases to support data informed decision making.

%

Microsoft Access

Intermediate

Has developed a variety of Access databases to track complex projects as well as collect data with hierarchical structures.

%

Stata

Intermediate

Utilizes Stata for nearly all statistical analysis and modelling. Comfortable learning new packages developed for Stata.

%

SPSS

Beginner

Has utilized SPSS for some data cleaning and basic analysis of data.

%

ArcGIS

Intermediate

Geographic proximity impacts all of our decisions, and ArcGIS is the leading platform for geographic analysis and visualization.

%

UCINET

Beginner

UCINET is developed to run the statistical analytics for networks.

%

Gephi

Beginner

Another network analysis tool, Gephi is often used to create cleaner visualizations of network data.

%

Wordpress

Beginner

Manage a Wordpress blog for writing about evaluation in the non-profit community, especially in relation to Jewish communal organizations.