Senior Program Officer, Abundance and Growth Fund

We’re looking for a Senior Program Officer to lead strategy and grantmaking on our new Abundance and Growth Fund, with a commitment of at least $120 million over the next three years.

About Open Philanthropy 

Open Philanthropy is a philanthropic funder and advisor; our mission is to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. We stress openness to many possibilities and have chosen our focus areas based on importance, neglectedness, and tractability. Our current giving areas include potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, global health and development, scientific research, global public health policy, farm animal welfare, and biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. In 2024, we recommended $650 million to high-impact causes, and we’ve recommended over $4 billion in grants since our formation.

About the Abundance and Growth Fund

We are launching the Abundance and Growth Fund to accelerate frontier economic growth and technological progress while addressing cost-of-living challenges and policy barriers. Over the past two centuries, scientific and technological advances — alongside the policies and institutions that enable their adoption — have driven sustained economic growth. This has led to remarkable increases in global wealth and life expectancy while significantly reducing poverty. We believe there are major opportunities to further accelerate this progress and remove barriers that lead to artificial scarcity and high costs. 

Building on our successful initiatives in Land Use Reform and Innovation Policy, which will now fall under the Abundance and Growth umbrella, this program will expand those areas as well as explore additional high-impact areas that align with our mission, such as energy policy (permitting, interconnection, etc.), clinical trial reform, limiting non-competes, and improving state capacity, among others. With at least $120 million in committed funding from multiple donors over the next three years, this program represents a significant expansion of our existing work in this space. Our announcement blog post has more information on why we’re starting this program now.

The Abundance and Growth Program will be one of the largest grantmakers in this space, helping to shape the agenda and fund the development of high-impact organizations that do not yet exist. We see this as an opportunity to be a major catalyst in building the nascent abundance and progress field — creating the infrastructure and communities needed to drive key policy areas forward.

While we have identified some promising directions, the Senior Program Officer will play a critical role in shaping and executing the program’s strategy to maximize social impact. We remain flexible on the precise strategy we pursue and will discuss candidates’ potential approaches as part of the hiring process.

About the role

Open Philanthropy is seeking an experienced leader to build and lead our Abundance and Growth Fund. The Senior Program Officer will play a pivotal role in shaping the program’s strategy, identifying and funding high-impact opportunities, and cultivating a growing ecosystem of stakeholders — including researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs, and other funders.

This role will report to Otis Reid, Managing Director of the Global Health and Wellbeing team, and will oversee our Innovation Policy team as well as any other related grantmaking (e.g., Land Use Reform) under the Abundance and Growth umbrella. We currently spend about $15M/year, with $10M/year on Innovation Policy and $5M/year on Land Use Reform, but expect to spend a minimum of $40M/year in total on the expanded Abundance and Growth Program.

Key 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).

We believe this role will have a significant opportunity to shape the abundance and growth landscape over the coming years. 

Who might be a good fit

You might be a great fit for this role if you have:

• 5+ years of experience in growth-focused areas, such as progress studies, innovation policy, land use reform, metascience, or related fields. 

  • Our ideal candidate will likely have experience and/or demonstrated interests across multiple sub-areas rather than depth in one sub-area.

  • We recognize that several of these are relatively “young” fields, though when more broadly defined, successful applicants are likely to have longer careers in related areas.

• 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.

We think the following experiences are likely to be a plus, but aren’t strictly necessary for the position:

• Engaging with policymakers.

• Working on policy analysis, policy reform, or advocacy efforts.

• Managing a small team, or working in leadership roles at relevant organizations.

Above all, we are looking for people motivated to contribute to our mission. Whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day.

Application process and timelines

Our application process will include:

• An initial application that consists of answering a series of questions along with a short exercise.

• An initial 30-minute interview and a paid work test, tentatively to be completed between April 11 and April 23. 

  • We expect the work test to take 6-8 hours and plan to give candidates 9 days (including two weekends) to complete the test. 

• Shortlisted candidates will then be invited to interview with Otis Reid, to take place early to mid-May.

• A series of final interviews with several Open Philanthropy team members beginning mid-May, followed by reference checks.

We expect to make offers in late May, and strongly encourage candidates to let us know if they need to hear back from us sooner at any point during the process.

Please note that due to time constraints, we cannot give feedback during the early stages of the process, including on work tests. Thank you for your understanding.

Role details & benefits

• 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.

  • These compensation figures assume a remote location; there would be geographic adjustments upwards for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Washington, D.C.

• 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.

  • We are happy to consider sponsoring U.S. work authorization. However, we don’t control who is and isn’t eligible for a visa and can’t guarantee visa approval.  

• Benefits:
  Our benefits package includes: 

  • 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.

  • We can’t always provide every benefit we offer U.S. staff to international hires, but we’re working on it (and will usually provide cash equivalents of any benefits we can’t offer in your country). 

• Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer — and preferably no later than early July, though ideally sooner. 

We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.

If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact jobs@openphilanthropy.org.

Please apply by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Monday, March 31, 2025 to be considered.

US-based Program staff are typically employed by Open Philanthropy Project LLC, which is not a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. As such, this role is unlikely to be eligible for public service loan forgiveness programs.