Position: Operations Specialist

Salary: Our salaries are competitive with peer organizations like private foundations, academic institutions/think tanks, and the World Bank. We adjust the salaries of remote employees using a tier system. Our pay for this role:

• Tier 1 (San Francisco Bay Area or New York City): $98,000
• Tier 2 (all other US locations): $90,600

Benefits: GiveWell provides health, vision, and dental insurance for staff and their families. Read more about the benefits we offer here (https://www.givewell.org/about/jobs#benefits).

Location: You will be joining a hybrid team that works remotely throughout the US. GiveWell has an office in Oakland, California that we welcome, but do not require, you to work from. Part of our staff also works from a coworking space in New York City. As a general rule, we request that employees work in locations that are within three hours of the Pacific Time Zone.

Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.

Visa: Please note that for this position, we're currently not accepting applications from candidates who need authorization to work in the U.S.

Timeline: We're reviewing applications on a rolling basis.

The role

Our Operations Specialist will be a pivotal addition enhancing the growth and capacity of the Operations team. GiveWell is growing quickly, and we need a master organizer to keep our administrative operations in tiptop shape. You will be joining a collaborative team of fellow operators all pulling together to ensure that the Operations team is a force maximizer for the organization, accelerating GiveWell’s overall growth and impact. You will be responsible for a wide range of administrative activities supporting GiveWell’s operational domains. You will report to the Head of HR and Business Operations and support her directly, in addition to owning a core administrative portfolio. The responsibilities of this role will require you to prioritize amongst competing requests for attention, set and meet clear deadlines, and self-enforce high quality work. These skills will be applied at minimum to the following types of activities.

• HR & benefits coordination: You will be the primary liaison between GiveWell and our external HR partners, benefits brokers, and plan carriers and coordinate with those parties on behalf of staff to ensure they provide appropriate customer service. You will help analyze our major benefit offerings and administer open enrollment. You will support new international hires through the visa process and participate in staff onboarding and offboarding processes.
• Legal support: You will be the primary point of contact for our external legal advisors on various legal matters, including contract reviews; trademark registration, maintenance, and enforcement; and guiding GiveWell management on questions of general non-profit administration and governance.
• Information management: You will coordinate the effective management of information for the Operations team including information organization and naming conventions.
• Governance: You will support the governing bodies of GiveWell and GiveWell UK by scheduling meetings and shepherding the production of meeting materials, drafting communications to the Boards, maintaining organized records of Board decisions, and ensuring that follow-on actions triggered by Board decisions are implemented. You will be responsible for ensuring GiveWell’s federal, state, and other filings and registrations are kept up to date.
• Special projects: You will coordinate individual projects such as administering our annual staff engagement survey and preparing post-survey analysis, planning and executing bespoke training programs (e.g. for anti-harassment), researching and onboarding contract management tools, and designing and rolling out protocols for adhering to our information retention and destruction policy.
• General administration: You will collaborate with the Head of HR and Business Operations to identify and resolve problems that are administrative in nature and establish priorities. You will be accountable for recurring (e.g. monthly, quarterly) administrative tasks and will develop or improve upon administrative processes and task-management systems. Other responsibilities may include assembling and analyzing information, and creating reports and spreadsheets; preparing guidance documents, instruction manuals, and other professional communications; identifying, investigating, and resolving administrative discrepancies; assisting in meeting planning, preparation, and follow-up; reviewing, editing, and fact checking reports and documents or preparing finalized materials from rough drafts.

We expect high performers may grow to supervise the day-to-day work of other administrative staff or specialize in particular operations domains.

About you

Note: Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. Here’s a secret: there's no such thing as a "perfect" candidate. GiveWell is looking for exceptional people who want to make a positive impact through their work and help create an organization where everyone can thrive. So whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day.

We expect you possess the below skills and characteristics and are eager to continue honing your abilities across these areas. We encourage you to apply if you would use the majority of these characteristics to describe yourself:

• Mission-motivated and flexible. You want to contribute to GiveWell’s most pressing needs and are oriented around getting things done, even when it’s not glamorous. Any job is your job if it helps the team succeed. You enjoy having many and varied tasks rather than a few heavily concentrated tasks. You derive satisfaction from helping others and will dig in to get things done with a positive attitude.
• Organized and productive. You keep your work organized in ways that allow you and your supervisor to easily see what’s on your plate, and you are extremely efficient in moving through your assignments.
• Conscientious & attentive to details. You are thoughtful about your approach and perform high quality work, with or without supervision. Not much escapes your attention, including the fine print, and you don’t cut corners. (This doesn’t mean you never make mistakes, but you learn from them and rarely repeat one). When you receive a request, you are responsive in acknowledging receipt and consistently keep people updated on progress.
• A strong communicator. You communicate proactively and clearly in both written and verbal forms. You contextualize your communications with the audience in mind and can convey detailed information simply to various audiences that may be unfamiliar with the subject matter. You are receptive to feedback and willing to provide feedback to others.
• Project management & initiative. You can complete projects with many steps while keeping overall timelines in mind. You see yourself as responsible for results and approach projects with common sense, rather than simply executing a checklist, and you identify opportunities for improvements where you can. You can identify higher priority tasks when you need to triage.
• Logical. You present any analysis and recommendations with transparency about your reasoning and your remaining uncertainties. Your conclusions stand up to scrutiny based on the available information.

To apply

Apply here: https://www.tfaforms.com/5064806.

We plan to respond to all submissions. Please contact jobs@givewell.org with any questions.

About GiveWell
GiveWell is motivated by the simple question: how can we do as much good as possible?

In our efforts to answer this question, we search for and recommend outstanding philanthropic giving opportunities. We currently focus on global health and poverty alleviation programs in the lowest-income parts of the world because that is where we've found we can have the greatest impact, according to our criteria.

Our primary impact is achieved by directing funding to our recommended charities. We rigorously vet and recommend a short list of top charities that meet our criteria of being evidence-backed, cost-effective, transparent, and in need of more funding. Our four current top charities work on life-saving programs, including malaria chemoprevention, antimalarial nets, vaccine incentivization, and vitamin A supplementation.

We also direct funding to high impact opportunities outside of our top charities that are consistent with our mission to maximize global well-being.

Based on our recommendations, donors have given more than $1 billion to our recommended programs since our founding in 2007. In 2021 alone, we directed more than $525 million.

Our Operations team supports critical organizational functions and is integral to the success of our mission to direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the best giving opportunities we can find.

Additional information

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at jobs@givewell.org.

As part of our dedication to the diversity of our staff, GiveWell is committed to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity and to making employment decisions based on merit and value. We are committed to complying with all federal, state, and local laws providing Equal Employment Opportunities, as well as all laws related to terms and conditions of employment. We desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination due to sex, race, religion, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, citizenship, physical or mental disability, marital status, familial status, ethnicity, ancestry, status as a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault, age, or any other status protected by federal, state, or local laws.

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.