Senior Program Officer

Summary

Join Open Philanthropy as a Senior Program Officer to lead the Abundance and Growth Fund, a $120 million initiative over three years. You will shape the program's strategy, identify high-impact grants, and cultivate relationships with stakeholders. This role involves overseeing grantmaking efforts, tracking impact, and managing a team. The ideal candidate possesses strong analytical and communication skills, an entrepreneurial mindset, and 5+ years of experience in relevant fields. Open Philanthropy offers a competitive salary, excellent benefits, and a remote work option.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in growth-focused areas, such as progress studies, innovation policy, land use reform, metascience, or related fields
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills. Able to rigorously assess the cost-effectiveness of potential grant opportunities and critically evaluate assessments by others. You should possess a willingness to acknowledge tradeoffs and use evidence about impact and cost-effectiveness to update your views
• Good written and interpersonal communication skills, especially the ability to articulate your views clearly and with strong reasoning transparency, to specialists and generalists. You must be able to represent Open Philanthropy effectively to external audiences and communicate effectively with grantees, funders, and other stakeholders
• An entrepreneurial mindset, capable of thinking outside the box and helping to launch or support new initiatives and organizations
• Open-mindedness to many possibilities and willingness to engage with other people at Open Philanthropy who may approach problems in different ways

Responsibilities

• Set program strategy: Define the program’s strategic priorities based on independent research, stakeholder input, and real-time policy opportunities. This will include identifying new sub-areas, evaluating existing ideas for funding, and assessing their expected impact, potentially in collaboration with our research team
• Lead grantmaking efforts: Identify and investigate high-impact grants that can help build the Abundance and Growth field, with a focus on removing barriers to economic progress and driving down costs in areas such as land use reform and innovation policy, among others. This will likely require a high level of comfort with quantifying concepts and theories of change and grounding quantitative estimates in the best evidence available, even if imperfect
• Track impact: Assess and evaluate the effectiveness of our grants, and make strategic adjustments when needed
• Evaluate grantee progress: Engage with grantees to assess their progress, provide support, and refine our funding approach based on outcomes and learnings
• Develop relationships: Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, including policymakers, funders, and organizations working on abundance and growth initiatives
• Act as a representative for Open Philanthropy and the abundance and growth movement at conferences and related events, helping to support its intellectual and policy landscape
• Explore and develop promising partnership and fundraising opportunities with the support of our Partnerships team
• Grow the field: Help shape the broader abundance and growth ecosystem by funding promising new organizations, supporting talent discovery, and engaging with other funders to increase the pool of resources dedicated to this cause
• Manage a team: Oversee and support the Innovation Policy team and potentially hire and manage additional team members within the Abundance and Growth Program (e.g., for expertise on Land Use Reform or other new areas)

Preferred Qualifications

• Engaging with policymakers
• Working on policy analysis, policy reform, or advocacy efforts
• Managing a small team, or working in leadership roles at relevant organizations

Benefits

• Excellent health insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the U.S. for you and any eligible dependents) and an employer-funded Health Reimbursement Arrangement for certain other personal health expenses
• Dental, vision, and life insurance for you and your family
• Four weeks of PTO recommended per year
• Four months of fully paid family leave
• A generous and flexible expense policy — we encourage staff to expense the ergonomic equipment, software, and other services that they need to stay healthy and productive
• A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development with related expenses covered
• Support for remote work — we’ll cover a remote workspace outside your home if you need one, or connect you with an Open Phil coworking hub in your city
• Compensation: The baseline compensation for this role is $274,438.46, which would be distributed as a base salary of $251,438.46 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $23,000.00 for U.S. hires. All compensation will be distributed in the form of take-home salary for internationally-based hires
• Time zones and location: This is a remote position, and while we welcome applications from candidates based outside the U.S., we require that they be in a time zone that allows for at least four hours of daily overlap with Central Time business hours