Foundation Program Lead

ABOUT THIS ROLE

How this role is causing impact

Philanthropic Foundations are incredibly important because they fund the work of high-impact projects and charities, but few high-involvement resources are available to the initial founders and advisors of these vital grantmaking organizations. Recently, the training content of our Charity Incubation Program and our handbook How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit have been used by a number of foundations and grantmakers to improve their impact, particularly in the early stages of their set-up. Overall, these impacts have been large enough to convince us to pilot a training/incubation program specifically for the founders of philanthropic foundations in 2022.

The Foundation Program Lead will be a fairly senior role involving considerable ownership over the Foundation Incubation Program, and wearing lots of hats to ensure maximum success. We think that a well-done training program to help the set-up and initial direction of new foundations, running alongside our existing Incubation Program, will fill a crucial gap in the philanthropic ecosystem. This will enable incredible amounts of impact through influencing the direction of large amounts of charitable funds.

Our Incubation Programs

The Foundation Incubation Program will build on the existing materials for our Charity Incubation Program, as many of them are cross-applicable for young foundations. These include texts, video lectures, and project assignments for two months of full-time training; as well as our handbook How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit. Our materials teach a wide range of skills, including, but not limited to; cause prioritization, strategic decision-making, cost-effectiveness analysis, monitoring & evaluation, operations, and management. These have to be improved, adapted to the context of grantmaking foundations, and supplemented by new materials addressing challenges specific to young foundations such as proposal vetting, counterfactual donations, and coordination among funders.

Key Responsibilities:

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• Project managing the creation and implementation of the program

• Managing and creating program content, including:

• Planning out tailored learning materials that will help new foundations achieve maximum impact; leveraging CE’s current methods, experience, and knowledge pool in cooperation with the Director of Strategy and with advice from multiple experts in a variety of established foundations and past incubatees from our Incubation Program

• Creating written content for both the training program and our new Foundation Handbook

• Creating video content for the training program

• Identifying gaps, learning about grantmaker-specific challenges, and turning them into interesting and instructive program content

• Helping to run the program (most likely over summer 2022) for the first time, including consulting calls with participating foundations

• Building models and character profiles of ideal foundations and their expected impact

• Researching cross-cause area funding gaps 

• Designing high-level measurement and evaluation systems for evaluating grants

What we offer

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• Most of all: A job that has a huge tangible impact on the world - the program you create will help foundations have maximum impact with their grants

• High levels of intellectual challenges and learning on the job in a widely useful set of skills, including grantmaking and cross-applicable communication skills 

• True start-up culture, including flat hierarchies and low bureaucracy

• An informal, fun, and supportive work environment

• Become a part of a diverse, dedicated, close-knit team of 12 EAs

• Plenty of opportunities for learning, growth, and connection across departments

• Build your network among CE’s vibrant community of highly talented and singularly dedicated EAs, including the 16 charities we have launched so far

• Co-authorship of the Foundation Handbook you will be contributing content to

• Experience working with a number of new and established foundations

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Perks and benefits
 

• Flexible working schedule and 30 paid days off per year

• 5-10% of work time and dedicated budget of £500 for personal development and learning (plus lots of learning on the job)

• 50% reimbursement of IT and costs of strategies you find useful for increasing your productivity up to £500 a year

• Salary and moving costs are flexible depending on employee needs and fall between $40-60k USD 

• For an outstanding candidate, more perks and benefits could be included

• Title can be adapted depending on experience and concrete responsibilities

ABOUT YOU

We expect excellent candidates will meet many (but not all) of the criteria below. We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet all of the listed characteristics. In the past, we have offered positions to applicants who had strong overall potential and trained them up in the needed skills. We are looking for high general ability and value/methods-aligned mindset more than specific backgrounds.

What we are looking for:
 

We’re looking for a talented generalist who is:

• Able to work both autonomously, and in a small team

• Highly impact-driven and results-oriented with a very strong work ethic

• Able to work in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment

• Strong written and verbal communications skills, and confident interacting with a wide range of stakeholders (foundation founders, grantmakers, charity founders, experts…)

• Organized, conscientious, and reliable

• Passionate about quickly learning new skills and passing them on

• Loves high levels of intellectual challenge

• Comfortable with numerical quantification and simple spreadsheet calculations

• Well-versed in the effective altruism community

• Friendly, humble personality, and excited about the job

• Excited to work across cause areas (especially animal advocacy, global health, effective altruism, mental health, and family planning)

Bonus points for:

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• Experience working for a foundation or other grantmaking body

• Experience working in effective altruism (volunteering, independent projects, internships, and jobs all count)

• Experience creating training content

• Experience with video creation or video editing