Giving What We Can · Remote · Full-time
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is seeking a Research Associate to strengthen the research that underpins our work as we grow towards our goal of 1 million pledgers donating $3 billion USD to high-impact charities annually.
You will join a small but growing research team responsible for helping a growing community of over 10,500 pledgers give as effectively as possible. Your work will be vital in ensuring we continue to offer high-quality giving opportunities that concretely address some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as extreme poverty, the suffering of animals in factory farms, and global catastrophic risks facing current and future generations.
Your work will help inform where a growing ~$80 million USD in annual charitable donations made by our community are directed, so that they most effectively improve the lives of others. You will add critical capacity to a small research team: stress-testing our work, deepening our evaluations, and helping ensure that our communications are held to the same standards of reliability and integrity, even as our output grows. Thousands of donors rely on GWWC for high-quality giving recommendations and effective giving guidance — your work to improve our research decisions could ultimately improve the lives of millions of sentient beings.
We expect a successful applicant to develop quickly within the role over time and take on increasing responsibility for specific work streams within the GWWC research team such as a specific cause area.
You start by catching up on overnight messages from colleagues in other timezones and flagging items that need urgent attention, then join a weekly research check-in with your manager Aidan. You discuss an open question from your current evaluator evaluation: you've been investigating whether a quantitative model an evaluator uses to assess grant applications reasonably tracks marginal cost-effectiveness, and you've found what looks like an important flaw in the calculations, which could have major implications for the quality of the evaluator’s decisions. Together you work through whether this is a genuine concern that could influence the outcome of your evaluation, agree on next steps, and book a meeting to discuss the issue with the evaluator later in the week.
Next you jump on a check-in call with another evaluator that the research team may evaluate later in the year. On this call, you learn about various changes that the evaluator made since GWWC’s last evaluation. The evaluator shares they are especially excited about an improvement you personally suggested in the last evaluation because they think it will meaningfully improve the impact of the grants they make. After the meeting you write a short internal memo summarising your updated views on whether we should prioritise evaluating this evaluator or defer this evaluation and share it with your manager.
In the afternoon, you switch context to review an early draft outline for a long-form video on vitamin A supplementation prepared by the growth team. With some digging you catch that the academic literature doesn’t support the narrative arc as currently presented in the outline. You flag your concerns and note how you think the narrative could be made more accurate, while remaining resonant.
You spend the last few hours of your day on focused analytical work. You analyse the results of a survey that you helped design to understand GWWC’s actual influence on the giving of different groups of pledgers. You notice some surprisingly large differences between different pledger groups and — realising that your findings could have significant implications for how GWWC prioritises pledge growth work — you write out your findings to share with the team.
We know that confidence can sometimes hold people back from applying. There's no such thing as a "perfect" candidate. If you're excited about this role and think you could be a great fit, we strongly encourage you to apply.
While we expect a successful candidate would have some prior research experience (e.g., academic research projects, research fellowships, policy analysis), we are open to a wide variety of profiles. We are initially thinking of this role as someone who has 1–2 years of relevant experience, but for the right candidate we would be open to a slightly more senior hire as well. What we truly care about is your ability to perform effectively in the role.
This means having the following essential skills and traits:
Beneficial skills and experience (we expect you to bring some of these, not all of them):
We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, budgets for mental health and wellbeing and professional development, flexible working arrangements, parental leave and support, and pension. There is some variation in the benefits depending on your location, to be confirmed in the offer letter.
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is working towards a world without preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish. We do this by making giving effectively and significantly a norm.
Founded in 2009, we are best known for the 🔸10% Pledge, where over 10,500 people have committed to donating at least 10% of their lifetime income to highly effective charities. Our larger community of pledgers and donors currently gives ~$80M USD annually, of which GWWC processes and grants ~$40M through our own donation platform.
We've set ourselves the audacious goal of reaching 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD annually to high-impact charities, and we’re currently growing at ~40% every year. The current ~17 FTE global team is mission-focused, with strong commitment to our team and community values.
Reporting directly to the CEO, the research team functions as Giving What We Can’s organisational ‘conscience’; ensuring we remain a high-impact organisation that makes highly cost-effective recommendations and communicates about effective giving in a high-quality and high-integrity way. The research team’s work covers:
See below for the preliminary stages and timeline of this hiring process (please note these are subject to change):
*Candidates will be compensated for time spent on work tests and trials.
For questions about the role, contact research-associate-hiring@givingwhatwecan.org
Giving What We Can is committed to building a diverse team and strongly encourages applications from people of all backgrounds. We evaluate candidates based on their potential to excel in the role, not their credentials or career stage.