RESEARCH ANALYST
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Deadline: Ongoing
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Expected hours: Full-time
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Location: London (preferred) or remote
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Fill out this form to apply
Charity Entrepreneurship is a growing research and training program that launches multiple high-impact charities every year in a number of cause areas. We are looking for a research analyst to join our research team to conduct both shallow and in-depth research into promising ideas to find the very best charity interventions for charity entrepreneurs to found.
We recently asked our colleagues what it’s like to be part of the CE mission. Check out our team’s video responses here:
ABOUT THIS ROLE
How this role is causing impact
As we scale up, one of our biggest bottlenecks to launching more high-impact charities is our capacity to conduct high-quality, shallow and in-depth research to vet hundreds of charity ideas across a number of cause areas. The research analyst will join our four people research team to find the top most impactful, cost-effective, evidence-based interventions that will then be launched through our Incubation Program.
The research team starts off with hundreds of charity ideas and then progresses through increasingly deep rounds of research into the best ideas that survive each previous stage. The research process of each research cycle culminates in published implementation reports on the top ideas. These are then used mere months later during our charity incubation program to create fantastic new charities - your impact will be fast, tangible, and lasting.
Our key priorities are finding ideas with exceptional levels of expected impact on humans and animals, outstanding cost-effectiveness, and promising impartial evidence. The current bar for charity ideas is for them to be substantially better than current top global health charities, e.g. potential to be 5x better than the top-rated Against Malaria Foundation.
By the end of your first year as a Research Analyst, you will have:
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Identified the best five charity interventions out of hundreds of ideas
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(Co-)authored and published ~5 in-depth research reports on our website and the EA Forum (95% Confidence interval: 3-10 research reports)
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Seen 1-3 of your ideas launched as new charities
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Developed a deep understanding of our iterative research process and how to utilize dozens of research methods and decision-making tools
Our research
Our research process currently consists of seven stages. Throughout the inquiry, we use a multitude of steps and tools such as quantitative modeling, expert interviews, evidence assessment, stakeholder mapping, geographic assessments with weighted factor models, mapping causal chains and theories of change, assessing neglectedness, limiting factors, ease of implementability, scalability, and finding crucial considerations.
Each research cycle is dedicated to a number of rotating cause areas and our Research Analysts all learn to work across a number of different cause areas. In the past, we have researched and launched charities in the areas of global health and development, animal welfare, mental health, family planning, policy advocacy, and effective altruism meta. In the near future, we are also planning to research health policy, biorisk, meta-science, and highly scalable global poverty interventions.
Find out more about our research process in general here and about our current cycle in particular.
Responsibilities include:
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Performing both shallow and in-depth research reporting to the Director of Research
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Generating, analyzing, and comparing charity ideas across 5+ different cause areas
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Conducting literature reviews, meta-analyses, and assessing the strength of evidence for a given charity idea
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Building cost-effectiveness models
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Preparing and executing interviews with experts
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Coming up with proxies and creative ways to find and model unavailable pieces of information
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Synthesizing findings and publishing them as research reports on our website and on the EA Forum
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Contributing to the final decision about which charities to launch through CE’s annual Incubation Program
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(In some cases) Managing a team of research interns/volunteers
What we offer
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Most of all: A job that has a huge tangible impact on the world - the ideas you identify will be launched as new charities
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High levels of intellectual challenges and learning on the job in a widely useful set of skills including research across cause areas, comparative evaluation, and decision-making under uncertainty
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True start-up culture, including flat hierarchies and low bureaucracy
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An informal, fun, and supportive work environment
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Become a part of a diverse, dedicated, close-knit team of 12 EAs
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Plenty of opportunities for learning, growth, and connection across departments
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Build your network among CE’s vibrant community of highly talented and singularly dedicated EAs, including the 16 charities we have launched so far
Perks and benefits
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Flexible working schedule and 30 paid days off per year
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5-10% of work time and dedicated budget of £500 for personal development and learning (plus lots of learning on the job)
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50% reimbursement of IT and costs of strategies you find useful for increasing your productivity up to £500 a year
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Salary and moving costs are flexible depending on employee needs and fall between $40-60k USD
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For an outstanding candidate, more perks and benefits could be included
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. We are looking for high research ability, strong proven potential to grow, and value/methods-aligned mindset more than very specific backgrounds. Previous research experience in some capacity is a big plus.
What we are looking for:
We’re looking for someone who is:
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Able to work both autonomously and in a small team
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Excited to move through a structured research process on limited timeframes to deliver decision-relevant research reports
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Willing and able to work across a wide range of neartermist cause areas
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Some prior research experience with empirical methods
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Basic understanding of quantitative and qualitative methods
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Comfortable moving fast and leaving everything else unfinished and undone (80/20ing)
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Passionate about quickly learning new skills
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Strong reasoning ability, written communication skills, and a high degree of reasoning transparency
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Highly impact-driven and results-oriented with a very strong work ethic
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Able to work in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment
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Knowledgeable about effective altruism
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Friendly, humble personality, and excited about the job
Bonus points for:
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Experience working in effective altruism (volunteering, independent projects, internships, and jobs all count)
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Highly relevant research experience and proven ability to interpret and critically evaluate studies and statistical analysis
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Familiarity with informal Bayesian reasoning
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Experience creating and evaluating cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs)
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An interest in charity entrepreneurship as a career path
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Specific experience in any of the cause areas we have covered in the past or will cover in the near future (global health and development, animal welfare, mental health, family planning, policy advocacy, and effective altruism meta; health policy, biorisk, meta-science, and highly scalable global poverty interventions)
ABOUT CHARITY ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Our track record
Charity Entrepreneurship is on a mission to cause more effective charities to exist in the world.
Since our first research cycle and incubation program in 2019, we have
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Launched 18 new charities across six cause areas
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Published 30+ research reports
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Grown to a close-knit team of 12
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Released our Handbook How to Launch a High-Impact Nonprofit
To date, our launched charities have
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Fundraised over $5.5M USD, including from Mulago, GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, EA Funds, Founders Pledge, Animal Charity Evaluators, Schmidt Futures, and D-Prize
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Effected policy changes that may decrease lead poisoning in ~322,000 children in Malawi (averting 87,000 DALY-equivalents, or saving 2,900 lives)
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Changed farm conditions for ~420,000 farmed fish and ~1,200,000,000 shrimp,
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Reached 5,000,000 listeners with family planning content in Nigeria, on track to potentially averting ~600 maternal deaths by 2025
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Launched a digital program to prevent postnatal depression in the U.S. that has proven to decrease depressive symptoms in 62% of participants
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Sent SMS reminders about vaccinations to 350,000 caregivers in India
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… and so much more. Read more about our charities here.
Our plans
We have big, ambitious plans. After our successful first three years, we are now scaling up across all departments with the ultimate goals of
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Launching 5-10 new charities per year
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Running two incubation programs per year, plus one grantmaking foundation incubation program
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Investigating charity ideas from four cause areas per year
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Increasing our team to 15 by the end of 2022
… all coming together to achieve 8x the impact of our previous years.
Will you join us?
Our culture
CE is an intense, informal, and flexible working environment. We believe that friendliness and teamwork, a focus on impact and evidence, critical thinking, and warm connections are key workplace values. The 12 of us stay in touch through weekly all-hands team meetings and socials as well as 1:1s during work hours and have built an active and connected community of charity entrepreneurs and EAs. Our office in London is a lively and vibrant hub where recent developments in EA and updates from our charities are as likely to be discussed over lunch as what the 80/20 of dental hygiene looks like, or what the effects of different sleep habits on productivity are. We are united by our relentless pursuit of counterfactual impact and a perhaps slightly excessive love of spreadsheets.
APPLY NOW
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Expected hours: Full-time
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Location: London (preferred) or remote
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Fill out this form to apply
Our goal is to make our application process both time-effective and interesting for you. The application process involves four stages:
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submitting our general application form (1 hour),
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an initial screening interview (15-20 minutes),
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a test task simulating the work you would do in your role (3 hours),
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a second, more technical test task (~5 hours), and
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a final, in-depth interview (60 minutes).
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(sometimes: a reference check)
Each stage typically takes between 1-2 weeks from the end of the application deadline. Ideally, the candidate will begin onboarding as soon after receiving an offer as possible. On request, we offer feedback to candidates who make it far into our process.
Commitment to diversity and equal employment opportunities
We are committed to fostering a culture of inclusion and encourage individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply. We especially encourage applications from women and people of color who are excited about contributing to our mission. Charity Entrepreneurship is an equal opportunity employer. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other related questions about applying, please contact judith@charityentrepreneurship.com
If you are excited about working with Charity Entrepreneurship but are uncertain whether you are qualified enough for this role, please do apply nonetheless: we care deeply about mindset and value-alignment with our approach and are skilled at finding people with high potential whose growth we are happy to facilitate. Don’t hesitate to make the content of your CV for CE a little unconventional (e.g. mention personal projects, courses, experiences that are not strictly professional) if that better demonstrates that you can do what we need and are aligned with our values and approach.