Contract Role: Lead Researcher & Playbook Developer
About The Goodness Web (TGW)
The Goodness Web (TGW) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving youth mental health by bringing together families and individuals committed to meaningful, systems-level change. TGW pools philanthropic resources to support high-impact organizations working across the mental health continuum, including early intervention, policy reform, and workforce development. Beyond funding, TGW fosters learning, connection, and collaboration among its community, empowering members to help shape a more effective and compassionate mental health system.
About the Project
Families often face mental health crises without clear guidance or support. TGW is creating a Mental Health Crisis Playbook — an online, family-centered guide designed to help caregivers navigate the complex and often overwhelming reality of mental health crises. This project will directly shape a resource designed to reduce confusion, isolation, and harm, and to help families feel less alone during some of their most difficult moments.
Key Responsibilities
1) Research & Synthesis
Desk research
- Conduct a landscape analysis of existing mental health crisis navigation models, tools, and best practices, including materials from relevant organizations
- Identify gaps, patterns, and promising approaches relevant to families in crisis
- Synthesize findings into actionable insights to inform playbook structure and content and guide family engagement
Deliverable: 1) Landscape analysis of existing tools, including descriptions and examples of most important tools, 2) Synthesis of gaps, patterns, and promising approaches, 3) Identification of most important insights to test and gaps to fill through family and stakeholder interview, and 4) Rough working draft of playbook
Family Engagement
- Design and facilitate engagement with a mix of group and 1:1 discussions with families with lived experience to:
- Understand their experience and what they would have needed from a playbook
- o Test and refine TGW’s working draft playbook
- Conduct engagements in a trauma-informed, ethical, and respectful manner. TGW will provide guidance on confidentiality practices for all family engagements
Advisor and expert engagement
- Develop interview guides and discussion frameworks for stakeholder interviews. Part of this work should be developing a draft of key elements of the playbook to test and get feedback on during interviews
- Develop proposed list of experts to be interviewed
- Together with TGW team members, conduct interviews with TGW advisors and other experts in the field
Deliverable: 1) Summary of learnings from interviews, and 2) Insights to include in playbook deliverable
2) Synthesis and content development
- Develop the structure and content of an online Mental Health Crisis Playbook
- Write compassionate, plain-language content that helps families:
- Know what to do during a crisis
- Understand what may happen next
- Find resources and support
- Learn from other families’ experiences
- Advocate effectively for care
- Revise drafts based on feedback from TGW staff and advisors
Deliverable: Mental Health Crisis Playbook for families in written form, with ideas for how to translate to interactive online format
Working with the TGW team
- Collaborate with TGW project leadership and external design partners as needed to deliver on objectives
- Deliver content on a timeline that supports publication and launch
- Contractor will determine their own working hours and methods, in coordination with TGW milestones
Qualifications
- Experience in health, mental health, social impact, or related research, with knowledge of the mental health landscape preferred
- Strong qualitative research and synthesis skills
- Excellent writing skills for non-technical, family-facing audiences
- Experience working with lived-experience communities or sensitive subject matter
- Comfort working independently within a collaborative, mission-driven team
- Experience working with families affected by mental health crises or demonstrated sensitivity to lived experience communities. Lived experience is welcomed but not required
- Action-orientation, focused on synthesizing complex ideas into usable content with attention to deadlines
Compensation
This is a paid, fixed-term contract aligned with the project budget and scope. Specific terms will be discussed with selected candidates.
Application Process
Interested candidates should submit a resume and any relevant examples of similar work to Jessie Shaw (jessie.shaw@thegoodnessweb.org). References may be requested at a later stage.
