About Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy is a grantmaker; our mission is to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. We stress openness to many possibilities and have chosen our focus areas based on importance, neglectedness and tractability. We’re particularly interested in high-risk, high-reward giving that may be too unconventional for other funders. Our current giving areas include global health and development, scientific research, South Asian air quality, farm animal welfare, biosecurity and pandemic preparedness, and potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence.
About the Grants Team
Open Philanthropy’s grantmaking has been growing rapidly (in 2022, OP committed more than $700 million in total funding across more than 800 distinct grants.) Disbursing all of these grants is a significant undertaking, and the Grants team’s expertise makes it happen as smoothly and efficiently as possible, even in complex grantmaking situations. For every grant we make, a Grants Associate on our team is responsible for:
- Determining how to structure the grant (in consultation with our legal team if necessary)
- Doing due diligence on the grantee, and collecting any information we’re missing
- Tracking relevant details in our grants database (we use Salesforce)
- Keeping program staff and grantees in the loop throughout the diligence and payment process, and answering their questions
- Tracking grant payment dates and follow ups (we also run a grantee satisfaction survey)
When we encounter grantmaking roadblocks we’ve never dealt with before, we strive to break them down as quickly as possible — our aim is for bureaucracy to never get in the way of funding a grantee doing impactful work. When a challenge comes up repeatedly, we look for structural solutions (e.g. in the past we designed an Individual Grants Program to more easily fund individuals). We’re always looking for ways to improve our systems, remove administrative hassle and grow our own expertise in grantmaking law, so we can solve more problems faster going forward.
In addition to expert grant processing, our team also owns related projects and tasks, such as: support setting up new legal entities or complicated program logistics like large RFP’s (example); distributing and analyzing the results of our bi-annual grantee feedback survey; tracking and reconciling program budget records; and coming up with new policies or processes that improve clarity or efficiency, to name a few.
Who we’re looking for
We’d ideally like applicants to have at least 2 years of operations-relevant experience. We don’t expect you to have any familiarity with grantmaking yet (we have lots of training and resources available), but past experience related to legal compliance (e.g. as a paralegal), finance or consulting is a bonus. You might be a great fit if you are:
- A transparent, professional and empathetic communicator; you can break down complex information for grantees in an accessible, non-intimidating way (while conveying you understand their challenges and concerns).
- Unintimidated by complexity; you can work without a clear playbook, break novel challenges down into manageable steps and come up with creative solutions. You approach problems with empirical and logical reasoning.
- Unusually organized and conscientious. You’re motivated by the idea of keeping systems clean, accurate and up-to-date — it’ll bother you if the details of the grants you’re working on aren’t properly accounted for.
- Highly receptive and adaptable to feedback; not only are you proactive in seeking and thoughtfully incorporating feedback from stakeholders to fine-tune processes and strategies, but you also excel in crafting and delivering constructive feedback to stakeholders as needed.
- Excited to become an expert in all aspects of US and international grantmaking law. We manage one of the most complex portfolios of grants in all of philanthropy, and members of our grants team develop a uniquely wide breadth of knowledge for the field.
We expect all our staff to:
- Put our mission first, and act with urgency to help us realize our ambitious goals for impact.
- Work to model our operating values of ownership, openness, calibration and inclusiveness.
Role details & benefits
- Compensation: The baseline compensation for this role is $108,359.20, which (for US hires) would be distributed as a base salary of $94,225.39 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $14,133.81.
- These compensation figures assume a remote location; there would be geographic adjustments upwards for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Washington, D.C.
- All compensation will be distributed in the form of take-home salary for internationally based hires.
- Time zones and location: You can work from anywhere. While we are not able to sponsor visas for this role, we are open to hires outside the US willing to consistently overlap with US business hours for 5-6 hours of the day.
- Benefits: Our benefits package includes:
- Excellent health insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
- Dental, vision and life insurance for you and your family
- Four weeks of PTO recommended per year
- Four months of fully paid family leave
- A generous and flexible expense policy — we encourage staff to expense the ergonomic equipment, software and other services that they need to stay healthy and productive
- A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development, with related expenses covered.
- Support for remote work — we’ll cover a remote workspace outside your home if you need one, or connect you with an Open Phil coworking hub in your city
- We can’t always provide every benefit we offer US staff to international hires, but we’re working on it (and will usually provide cash equivalents of any benefits we can’t offer in your country)
- Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer — and ideally no later than January, though ideally sooner.
Please apply by December 1st, 2023 at 11:59 Pacific Time to be considered.
We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@openphilanthropy.org.