Global Health & Development Researcher and Grantmaker

Founders Pledge; Greater London; Remote; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Founders Pledge seeks a Grantmaker to join the Research team. You will research high-impact funding opportunities and evaluate interventions to guide donors in strategic philanthropy. You’ll write up opportunities and present them to donors with clarity and candor, supporting multimillion-dollar grant recommendations monthly.

This role offers meaningful, visible impact across global health, climate, and education, with flexible location options and a dynamic startup environment.

Qualifications

• Domain expertise in development economics, public health, or cost-effectiveness analysis.

Responsibilities

• Undertaking research investigations to answer key questions and literature reviews.
• Funding opportunity investigations: individual investigations into promising funding opportunities and contributing to reports.
• Collaborating with internal and external stakeholders to get these opportunities funded and presenting findings to UHNW donors.
• Conduct rigorous evaluations and make multimillion-dollar grant recommendations on a monthly basis.
• Identify potential HIFOs in new cause areas and uncover novel interventions.

Skills

Domain expertise

Analytical skills

Clear writing

Open-ended research

Calibration

Intellectual curiosity

Prioritisation

Good judgement

Team collaboration

Independence

Ambiguity tolerance

Job description

About Us

At Founders Pledge, our mission is to empower entrepreneurs to do immense good with their charitable giving. Since launching in 2015, our community of over 2,300 members has pledged nearly $13.6B and donated $1.9B+ to the charitable sector in 45+ countries.

We provide end-to-end giving infrastructure, pioneering research, and access to a global network of experts. In other words, we help tech leaders become strategic philanthropists. Our members include founders and leaders behind companies such as Airbnb, UiPath, Dropbox, Skype, Spotify, and Uber.

We focus on deploying capital where it can achieve the greatest impact, guided by evidence, careful analysis, and long-term thinking.

Salary

We're open to candidates of varying seniority for this role. Our salary bands are as follows:

Junior level - $80k /£50k
Applied level - $95/£65-75k
Senior level - $120K/£90k

About the Role

We’re looking for a Grantmaker to work on our Research team, which identifies and evaluates high-impact funding opportunities (HIFOs) to enable our broader member base to give as effectively as possible. Our member base consists of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) who use our HIFO recommendations to guide their giving.

This is an unusually impactful role for the right person: our team has moved more than $200 million to highly cost-effective opportunities in global health, climate, and education over the past three years. Reporting to our GHD Lead, you’ll research new potential interventions and investigate potential funding opportunities. You’ll also be responsible for writing up these opportunities and presenting information about them to donors in a transparent, honest, and compelling way.

What You'll Do:

In this role, you will dedicate a large portion of your time to investigating specific funding margins: organizations and programs that can cost-effectively save and improve lives around the world but especially in the world’s poorest countries. Our grantmaking cadence is rapid: you’ll be expected to conduct rigorous evaluations and make multimillion-dollar grant recommendations on a monthly basis. At the same time, we’ll be hoping you’ll expand the set of interventions we consider and, in particular, uncover novel interventions that may require active grantmaking to launch in the world.

You’ll have the opportunity to fund not just direct interventions but also research, and you’ll be able to fund not just rigorously backed “micro-interventions” but also high-risk, high-reward “big bets.”

It’s a big job, but we believe the right candidate will thrive and have enormous impact on the world.

You’ll be responsible for:

• Undertaking research investigations to answer key questions and working on literature reviews
• Funding opportunity investigations: Individual investigations into promising funding opportunities to see if they meet our bar for recommendation, contributing to reports or other internal or external materials.
• Working with internal and external stakeholders to get these opportunities funded. Though you won’t be expected to wear a “stewardship hat,” you will need to interact with UHNW donors as the expert in the room, answering thorough and detailed questions about your research.

What We’re Looking For:

We’re looking for someone with excellent analytical skills, domain knowledge, generalist appetite, and an interest in impact maximisation.

• Relevant expertise: You have domain expertise in a topic relevant to the role, including development economics, public health, or cost-effectiveness analysis. Those with transferable skills from other fields are also strong candidates: past successful researchers have had backgrounds in medicine, finance, and the hard sciences.
• 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: The ability to identify potential HIFOs in a new cause area, relevant academic research, reports and experts..
• 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 judgement: 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).

Location and Travel Requirements

UK, USA (ideally East Coast), or Germany (flexible - remote or hybrid).

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.

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.

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, color, 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.

If you’re excited about our mission but don’t meet every requirement, we still encourage you to apply.