Overview

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) is a community of dedicated researchers, educators, consultants, and former practitioners who drive innovation and advancement in courts and justice systems. NCSC's reputation for trusted leadership allows us to work alongside top judicial officers to examine some of the most complex and significant issues facing society. Our team of experts and court leaders is deeply committed to advancing just, free, and safe communities.

NCSC is engaged in a period of meaningful organizational transformation. As the organization advances its remote-first operating model, modernizes its classification and compensation framework post-reorganization, and strengthens its organizational culture, NCSC seeks to engage a contract consultant to serve as a trusted internal facilitator and strategic advisor across this body of work. While a separate firm will conduct the comps/class and total rewards study, the consultant's responsibilities encompass facilitating the review of salary structures and job architecture, as well as the full picture of total compensation, including benefits, leave policies, professional development, and flexible work arrangements. It also addresses compliance across NCSC's multi-state remote workforce and the modernization of benefits administration systems and vendor relationships.

This role will serve as a strategic partner to executive leadership and a diplomatic liaison to staff at all levels, ensuring that the classification and compensation study proceeds on a well-informed foundation, that policy modernization reflects where NCSC is heading as an organization, and that employees are meaningfully engaged throughout the process. The consultant will also play a hands-on role in preparing and facilitating key all-staff activities as NCSC continues to evolve as a remote-first organization with a desired high-quality, collaborative, creative, and responsive culture.

Anticipated scope of services

1. Classification & compensation study: Facilitation & coordination (primary focus)

The consultant will serve as NCSC's dedicated internal project manager and quality oversight advisor for the classification, compensation, and total rewards study. In this role, the consultant ensures that the selected firm has everything it needs to proceed effectively, that staff and senior leadership are properly prepared and engaged throughout, and that the firm's methodology, approach, and emerging outputs are sound. The analytical work (benchmarking, classification design, cost modeling, and final recommendations) is the firm's responsibility. The consultant's role is to make the engagement run well, keep it grounded in NCSC's organizational realities, and serve as an informed internal check throughout the process.

Proposal evaluation

Participate as an advisory member of NCSC's Evaluation Committee for the class/comp/rewards study RFP. In this capacity, the consultant will review submitted proposals, provide a substantive assessment of each firm's proposed methodology, classification approach, total rewards framework, and change management plan, and offer professional recommendations to the committee based on the evaluation criteria. The consultant does not hold a vote but provides expert input that informs the committee's deliberations.
Participate in proposer interviews, contributing to the structured question-and-answer process and providing the Evaluation Committee with a post-interview assessment of each firm's subject matter depth, team qualifications, and practical readiness to deliver the engagement.
Facilitate the Evaluation Committee meetings throughout the RFP process, including the initial proposal review session, reference check debrief, and post-interview scoring discussion. Prepare agendas for each session, develop or adapt the scoring tools and evaluation templates needed to support a structured and well-documented review, distribute materials to committee members in advance, and maintain a complete record of evaluation deliberations, individual scores, and the rationale for final rankings. Ensure the evaluation process is conducted consistently, documented thoroughly, and completed within the procurement timeline.

Information & documentation readiness

Ensure the firm has timely access to all materials needed, including current job descriptions, organizational charts, compensation data, HR records, and related documentation.
As needed, work with HR and executive leadership to confirm that all materials are accurate, complete, and up to date prior to submission.
Serve as NCSC's dedicated project manager and quality oversight advisor and internal project manager for the classification, compensation, and total rewards study.

Meeting facilitation & staff engagement

Facilitate meetings between the external study organization and NCSC staff, including individual contributors, supervisors, and senior leadership, ensuring participants are well-prepared and conversations are productive.
Serve as the diplomatic bridge between staff and the study process, ensuring employees at all levels feel heard, respected, and informed throughout.
In coordination with leadership, manage staff communications related to the study as needed, including preparing clear and transparent messaging to set expectations, explain the process, and share key milestones.
Support the development of an internal communications approach tied to classification and compensation outcomes, ensuring staff awareness and consistent understanding across teams.

Quality oversight & advisory support

Monitor the firm's methodology and approach throughout the engagement. Flag concerns to the VP of Finance and Administration if the firm's proposed or applied methodology appears incomplete, inconsistent with NCSC's organizational context, or insufficiently rigorous. This oversight role extends across all phases, from discovery through final deliverables, and includes review of data sources, benchmarking comparators, classification logic, and the basis for cost modeling assumptions.
Support executive leadership in understanding and acting on the firm's findings. This includes helping contextualize outputs, identifying questions leadership should be asking, and ensuring that implementation scenarios presented by the firm are understood in terms of their full cost and operational implications. Final recommendations and cost modeling are the firm's work product; the consultant ensures leadership is equipped to evaluate them critically and make informed decisions.
Review the classification guidelines and governance framework produced by the firm to confirm they are practical, clearly documented, and suited to NCSC's ongoing administrative capacity. Raise any concerns before finalization so that the deliverable is one NCSC can actually use and maintain independently going forward.
Ensure that finalized classifications provide a strong, defensible foundation for compensation benchmarking and analysis.
Verify that the firm's analysis reflects a genuinely integrated total rewards approach, in which salary, benefits, flex time, comp time, remote work, professional development, and recognition programs are evaluated together rather than in isolation. If the firm's work product reduces the study to a salary exercise, escalate that concern before deliverables are finalized.
Serve as the liaison between the firm and NCSC's Finance function to ensure that cost modeling assumptions are grounded in NCSC's actual financial parameters. The consultant does not produce the financial models but is responsible for ensuring that the firm has the information needed to do so accurately, and for flagging any outputs that appear to misrepresent NCSC's budgetary realities or operational constraints.

2. Policy modernization & alignment

Policy modernization runs alongside the study but must stay sequenced with it. The consultant manages that boundary, ensures policy decisions flow from approved study outcomes, and will develop the governance framework that keeps policies current, consistent, and accessible going forward.

Conduct a policy triage at the start of the engagement, categorizing work into Track 1 (policies that can be updated independently of the study, such as operational, technology, hoteling, and remote work setup policies) and Track 2 (policies that must await approved study outcomes, including salary administration, job descriptions, promotion practices, performance management, and career progression). Present the triage to leadership for sign-off before any drafting begins.
Advance Track 1 policies in parallel with the study. For Track 2, maintain a log of pending policies mapped to the study decisions they depend on, accounting for any phased implementation approach approved by management, so that drafting begins promptly at each approval milestone rather than waiting until the study is fully complete.
As study decisions are approved, update the relevant policies and employee handbook accordingly, aligned to each approved phase where a phased approach applies. The handbook should reflect every approved decision completely and consistently, not as piecemeal amendments. Establish a policy governance framework covering how changes are documented, versioned, communicated to staff, and maintained on an ongoing basis. This framework does not currently exist at NCSC and should be a tangible deliverable of this workstream, in partnership with HR and leadership as appropriate.
Streamline and simplify policy language to improve usability, transparency, and staff understanding.
Identify and eliminate redundancies or conflicting guidance across policy documents.
Recommend options for how updated policies are made accessible and easy to find for staff, recognizing that policies that cannot be located will not be consulted or followed.

3. Organizational culture & staff engagement

The consultant will design and facilitate the full experience and develop a structured plan for sustaining its momentum across the remote workforce long after the meeting ends.

In coordination with leadership, design the overall agenda for the all-staff meeting, including pre-meeting communications that set an honest and welcoming tone, and any pre-work that helps staff arrive prepared to engage rather than guarded. The agenda should balance structured programming with genuine open space. It should make room for cross-functional relationship-building, shared reflection on where NCSC is heading, and direct dialogue between staff and leadership, not just top-down presentations. The design should provide an open channel for honest conversations.
Design structured activities that build genuine relationships across teams and geographies, with particular attention to groups that have historically operated in silos or that staff identified as disconnected from one another in the survey. Activities should be substantive enough to create a real connection but accessible enough to work across a mixed audience that includes staff still carrying anxiety and wariness from the past year. The goal is not teambuilding for its own sake but laying a relational foundation that makes cross-functional collaboration more natural back in the remote environment.
The in-person meeting is an opportunity to continue closing that gap in a way that remote communication cannot replicate, and the session design should make that intention explicit rather than leaving it to chance.
Design a structured closing session for the all-staff meeting that equips staff with clear guidance on how to carry the momentum, relationships, and commitments from the in-person gathering back into their day-to-day remote work. The session design should be presented to NCSC leadership for review and approval prior to the meeting, ensuring that the approach to sustaining gains is both intentional and realistic. Design and facilitate a structured series of sessions for people managers focused on the culture dimensions most critical to NCSC's current moment: psychological safety, building and sustaining trust with direct reports, cross-functional leadership and collaboration, and consistent and equitable management practices. This is not a one-time training but an ongoing cohort process that builds a shared management culture across a distributed workforce and gives supervisors practical tools and peer learning and accountability structures they can use between sessions.

4. Assumptions & constraints

The consultant will have full access to current compensation data, HR records, and approved organizational charts, as well as any additional documentation needed to support the class/comp/rewards study and policy review.
The consultant acts as an advisor and internal facilitator; final authority on budgetary commitments and organizational changes rests with executive leadership.
Primary point of contact is Amanda Rodriguez, VP of Finance and Administration
The consultant is expected to communicate regularly with HR and relevant department leaders, and to keep executive leadership informed of progress, and emerging issues.
All staff communications drafted by the consultant will be reviewed and approved by executive leadership before distribution.

5. Benefits administration & vendor optimization review (separate deliverable)

In addition to the work described above, the consultant will conduct a focused review of how NCSC currently manages its benefits administration and vendor relationships. NCSC has an opportunity to reduce administrative burden and cost by consolidating and modernizing this ecosystem, and this review will surface concrete options for doing so. Findings will be delivered as a standalone report separate from the class/comp and policy workstreams.

Assess NCSC's current benefits administration setup, including the pension plan administrator, insurance broker, COBRA administrator, and existing ADP agreement, documenting how each function is currently managed and where administrative burden is highest.
Evaluate whether expanding capabilities under the current ADP agreement is the optimal path forward, or whether a different mid-tier HRIS or consolidated vendor solution would better serve NCSC's size, structure, and remote-first model. The goal is not the most comprehensive platform available, but the right fit for an organization of NCSC's profile.
Identify specific opportunities to consolidate HR vendors, streamline administrative processes, including leveraging existing tools (ADP/Deltek), and improve the quality and consistency of benefits management across the organization.
Deliver a standalone report presenting options with estimated administrative cost savings and implementation considerations, enabling leadership to make an informed decision on next steps.

Consultant requirements

NCSC seeks a consultant who brings demonstrated expertise across the full range of services described in this scope. The following requirements and preferences will guide the selection process.

Required qualifications

Minimum of 10 years of experience in human resources consulting or organizational advisory work, with a demonstrated track record of managing engagements of comparable scope and complexity.
Demonstrated experience designing and facilitating classification and compensation studies for nonprofit organizations with a United States-wide or multi-state workforce. Candidates without direct nonprofit sector experience will not be considered.
Proven experience supporting organizational change management, including guiding staff and leadership through periods of structural transition, role redesign, or cultural shift.
Experience providing organizational culture and transformation support, including assessment of current culture, facilitation of staff engagement processes, and development of strategies to build cohesion and alignment across teams.
Provision of at least three professional references from nonprofit or quasi-governmental client organizations with 100 or more employees, for whom the consultant performed work of similar scope within the past five years.

Preferred qualifications

Experience advising organizations on the management of fully remote or distributed workforces, including policy development, compliance, and culture-building in remote-first environments.
Familiarity with HRIS platforms and experience supporting or advising on seamless HRIS or ERP implementations, including vendor evaluation, change management, and staff transition support.

To apply

Please send your cover letter and resume to: ncschr@ncsc.org.