Open Philanthropy is looking to hire a new In-House Counsel to contribute to the legal team’s mission of providing well-calibrated legal advice and engaging in collaborative and creative problem-solving. The In-House Counsel would manage legal issues related to grantmaking, contracts, and various aspects of operations for causes ranging from South Asian air quality to farm animal welfare to potential risks from advanced AI.
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 Role
You would join the team as our fourth or fifth legal hire, and report to our Legal Operations Manager Molly Kovite to help our growing team navigate legal questions and collaborate with staff to generate solutions.
Your immediate responsibilities will include the following:
- Providing legal advice to Open Phil’s programmatic teams and developing creative solutions to legal issues they face
- Resolving a wide range of complex legal questions from grantmaking staff and/or grantees, as well as handling compliance, structural, and contractual issues related to grantmaking (examples could include: conducting due diligence on international grants, offering advice to the grants team on choosing the optimal vehicle for routing a given grant, drafting grant agreements and leading term negotiations or discussions with grantees, investigating whether to add access provisions to grants, and training staff on legal issues related to grantmaking)
- Providing training to internal stakeholders on topics of interest such as legal limits on lobbying, or conflicts of interest when holding a board position at a grantee organization
- Expanding legal services available to our grantees, such as legal entity creation guidance, consultation programs, or information sessions
- Driving internal legal projects such as spinning up new entities, drafting internal policies and guidance documents
- Supporting corporate compliance tasks such as recurring board meetings, state-mandated harassment trainings, or wage and hour postings
- Updating our contractor, employee, grant, scholarship, and other legal agreements
- Answering internal HR questions related to hiring processes, offer letters, NDAs, contracts, terminations, and other employee relations issues
- Developing an understanding of OP’s broader priorities and proactively seeking out ways to help us achieve our goals
To ensure we are able to carry out our program staff’s recommendations for giving, Open Philanthropy is made up of several affiliated organizations and we work with entities including a 501(c)(3) private foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, and a donor-advised fund at an outside charitable organization. We make general support and project grants to U.S. nonprofits, international grants requiring additional diligence and reporting, scholarships and research grants, investments in for-profit companies, and contributions to support lobbying and political work. We don’t expect you to be familiar with all these areas of grantmaking yet — but developing an understanding of the trade-offs between different giving vehicles and helping us come up with creative solutions for routing grants would be a key component of the role.
About You
You might be a good fit if you:
- Communicate clearly about legal considerations to non-legal audiences. You are impatient with unnecessary legalese, delays, and over-complications, and are comfortable seeking creative or unconventional solutions to help us achieve our programmatic goals. Our priority is generally to get resources to grantees as simply and efficiently as possible while still protecting the organization’s interests.
- Are practical about risk and don’t default to “worst case scenario” assessments; are comfortable comparing and communicating different risks in terms of how likely they are. We’re looking for someone who will flag and quantify risks, rather than prohibit them, and who communicates clearly about the degree of uncertainty in a situation, and where that uncertainty stems from.
- Are comfortable quickly getting up to speed in unfamiliar areas of law. No prior knowledge or experience with nonprofit law, LLCs, non-traditional philanthropic funding models, grants management and/or international grantmaking is required, but you should be excited to learn new areas of law while on the job.
- Are flexible about the work you do and ready to help in many different capacities. We’re a small organization, and your day-to-day responsibilities would run the gamut from reviewing basic contracts to advising on complex legal matters to managing operational projects.
- Are engaged with and passionate about effective altruist cause areas and issues. You don’t need to be a subject matter expert in any of these fields in particular; we’re looking for someone who’s interested in supporting this work and able to talk about it at a high level.
We’d prefer candidates to have 5+ years of experience practicing in the legal field. We’d also be willing to consider individuals with significantly more experience and would be open to customizing and expanding the job duties based on skills, experience, and fit with Open Phil’s needs.
If this sounds like you, and you are interested in using your legal expertise to help us achieve our mission of improving the world as much as possible, we hope you’ll apply. If you are excited about this work and on the fence about applying because you are unsure whether you are qualified, we would strongly encourage you to err on the side of applying.
Role details & benefits
- Compensation: The baseline compensation for this role is $240,574, which (for US hires) would be distributed as a base salary of $220,574 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $20,000.
- 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.
- This salary may also be adjusted upwards for more senior candidates.
- Time zones and location: you can live and work from anywhere so long as there is sufficient overlap with U.S. time zones for you to collaborate with the rest of the legal team at Open Phil.
- 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
- 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: Ideally a candidate could start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we prioritize getting the right person in the role and are willing to wait to make that happen.
We’re considering applicants on a rolling basis. Please apply as soon as you’re able — we may give priority to candidates who are able to move through the process sooner.
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.