Cause Area Lead - Global Health and Development

ABOUT US

At Founders Pledge, our mission is to empower entrepreneurs to do immense good. Since launching in 2015, we’ve raised over $10 billion for the most impactful social causes. We offer the simplest path to impact for successful entrepreneurs, providing end-to-end giving infrastructure, pioneering research, and access to a worldwide network of experts. In other words, we help tech leaders become strategic philanthropists. Our 1700+ members include the people behind industry-leading companies such as Airbnb, UiPath, Dropbox, Skype, Spotify, and Uber.

ABOUT THE ROLE

We’re looking for a Global Health and Development Lead to guide the GHD work on our Research team, which identifies and evaluates high-impact funding opportunities (HIFOs). Our member base consists of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) who use our HIFO recommendations to guide their giving. 

This is a hybrid role: to start, 70% of your time will be spent doing primary research, while 30% of your time will be devoted to management and strategy. Reporting to our Research Director, you’ll research new potential cause areas, investigate potential funding opportunities, and grow our GHD practice.

In the research component of the work, you’ll be in an unusually high-leverage position on a small but highly impactful team: in 2024 alone, we expect to have moved $80m to opportunities uncovered by our nine-person team. In 2025, we aim to recommend more than $100m in individual grants of $1m-$10m each to our UHNW donors. Your research work will generate rigorous, cost-effectiveness-focused evaluations of similar large grant opportunities.

The management and strategy elements of your role will be unique on the team. As GHD Lead, you will:

• Own our GHD evaluation standards: You’ll define, rationalize, and propagate best practices to create alignment across the research team on things like discount rates, moral weights, and standards for external and internal validity adjustments.

• Manage and grow FP’s Global Health and Development Fund: You’ll do active grantmaking in promising areas, defining a differentiating strategy for the Fund and, depending on your interest, representing the Fund to donors. Our goal is for the GHD Fund to become a major part of FP’s overall impact.

• Develop relationships with our research partners, including other grantmakers: You’ll build a pipeline of promising opportunities, as well as developing an informed and cohesive view of the overall GHD landscape.

• Manage other GHD-focused researchers: You’ll train new researchers, assign research projects, and build methods for prioritizing research according to the highest expected impact.

This is a big job for an individual able to perform highly on an unusually broad range of axes. After a year in this role, a successful candidate will be able to say that they have personally moved tens of millions of dollars to the highest-impact opportunities available, as well as having laid a foundation to scale this work rapidly in the near future.

ABOUT YOU

We’re looking for a senior researcher and/or grantmaker with excellent analytical skills, keen to both continue doing rigorous, detail-oriented, impact-maximising research as well as grow rapidly as a manager and strategist.

You’ll likely have:

• Excellent analytical skills: Comfort expressing views numerically and working with systematic quantitative frameworks; understanding of, and the ability to build, quantitative models.

• Clear writing: The ability to express nuanced evidence and complex concepts in a clear way. Bonus points if you can write quickly.

• Open-ended research skills: ability to identify potential HIFOs in a new cause area, relevant academic research, reports and experts.

• Methodological sophistication: You’re able to spot errors in technical papers, answer statistical questions, and come up with creative solutions to estimation problems.

• Leadership experience: As a manager, or independent contributor, or both, you’re able to see the forest for the trees, guide junior researchers, and offer valuable input on strategic questions.

• Good calibration: Knowledge of the extent of your own knowledge, and a good sense of how confident you should be in your beliefs.

• Intellectual curiosity and openness: A willingness to consider alternative points of view, to follow good arguments wherever they lead, and an openness to changing your mind.

• Conscientiousness and prioritisation skills: A willingness to work hard and to focus time on top priorities, while working quickly and methodically.

• Good judgment: For example, the ability to decide how long to spend on a project, or what sections to include in a report.

• The ability to work well with others, to communicate honestly and directly, and to be open to feedback.

• Willingness to work in a high-growth, dynamic start-up environment and be comfortable with ambiguity.

• The confidence and experience to lead your own research, working independently (we are open to candidates of varying seniority).

WHY WORK WITH US?

You can find more about the benefits we offer here, but what makes us truly special is both our mission and our people. We’re a diverse team, from both charitable and commercial backgrounds, who believe that amazing things can happen when we tackle problems together. We offer a flat structure and an opportunity to help shape the future of philanthropy.

There's no expectation for you to attend an office on a regular basis. At the same time, if you think you’d benefit from a desk in a co-working space close to your home, this can be arranged. Otherwise, you just need a great home wifi connection and we’ll provide you with everything else you need to be successful in your role.

We bring the global team together once per year for a global offsite. This is a week of collaborative learning, ideas generation and socialising. In addition to this, each team has the opportunity to meet together at least once per year. 

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at Founders Pledge. We seek people with different strengths, experiences and backgrounds, who share our drive to understand and solve complex social challenges. 

We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Finding solutions to the world’s most pressing problems requires different perspectives and unique ways of thinking and we are committed to building an inclusive and diverse workplace where everyone can do their best work.

Please note: When you apply to this role, you’ll be asked to complete an equal opportunities form. As this role is being advertised in multiple countries, you’ll be asked to complete a UK equal opportunities form, as this is where our HQ is based.