Program Assistant

Open Philanthropy — an ambitious grantmaker tackling some of the world’s most important, neglected problems — is looking for an organized, service-oriented Program Assistant to join our Farm Animal Welfare team. In this role, you will provide administrative and operational support as we identify the most promising opportunities for grantmaking to help animals confined on factory farms. The FAW team has over 100 grantees based around the world, and is working to improve animal welfare using a variety of tactics, including corporate campaigns, legislative advocacy, and reducing barriers to the adoption of animal product alternatives. You can read more about our program’s strategy and past grantmaking here.

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 in funding to high-impact causes, and we’ve recommended over $4 billion in grants since our formation.

About the role

In this entry-level role, you will immediately contribute to the team’s work by facilitating our day-to-day operations. Your core responsibilities will include: 

• Operational tasks to boost the program’s efficiency, such as collecting materials from grantees, maintaining our grants tracker, running team meetings, tracking grantee compliance with our policies and expectations, and assessing and reporting on the progress of team goals.

• Check-ins with grantees around the world to learn more about how their work is progressing.

• Data collection to help our research team assess the impact of grantees’ work.

• Special projects and one-off requests from program staff. This type of work would range from making travel accommodations to creating bimonthly updates for the leadership team on our grantees’ progress.

• The above responsibilities will constitute approximately 50% of your workload, with the other 50% being dependent on your skills, interests, and the evolving needs of the team.

• Our small team of eight — with you, nine! — is distributed across Canada, India, the U.K., and the U.S., and our grantees are even more globally dispersed. Consequently, your work hours may fluctuate to accommodate time zone differences, but you can expect to work hours that largely overlap with the typical U.S. business day.

Who might be a good fit

While there are no degree or work experience requirements for this position, we think this role could be an especially good fit if you:

• Are very well-organized. You will be responsible for handling a lot of small, time-sensitive tasks, while keeping track of many details in larger projects. Excellent organizational skills are required to flourish in this role.  

• Are detail-oriented and conscientious. Much of your work will involve tracking data and processes, and making sure details are entered correctly and nothing gets dropped.

• Are very efficient in your work. We have high expectations for team members’ output, and think it will be a lot easier to meet those expectations if you are highly efficient at basic tasks (including emails, data input, and task tracking). 

• Are particularly interested in an operations role and would be happy to remain in an operations role for at least a couple of years. Operations staff at Open Philanthropy have occasionally transitioned into roles that include grantmaking and strategy, but this isn’t a common or expected path.

• Are passionate about, and have demonstrated interest in, farm animal welfare work (past work experience in the movement is not necessary).

• Are service-minded, and comfortable with a support role that involves some repetition; you are motivated by the idea of contributing to what Open Philanthropy needs most, even if it’s not glamorous.

• Have excellent written and oral communication skills, especially the ability to explain your views clearly. Your role may involve building rapport and relationships with grantees, and sometimes communicating about sensitive topics. 

Across roles, we value staff who are able to communicate clearly and honestly about what they think, are comfortable giving and receiving feedback (including upward feedback for their manager or the organization), and are interested in taking ownership of their work and proactively seeking ways to help Open Philanthropy meet its goals. For more information about the qualities we look for in employees, see here.

The ideal candidate for this position will possess many of the skills and experiences described above. However, there is no such thing as a “perfect” candidate. If you are on the fence about applying because you are unsure whether you are qualified, we would strongly encourage you to apply. 

Role details & benefits

• Compensation: The baseline compensation for this role is $96,488.73, which would be distributed as a base salary of $83,903.24 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $12,585.49 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: We offer remote work in many countries. While we are not able to sponsor visas for this role, we are open to hires outside the U.S. Please note that hires outside of the U.S. will need to have at least some working hours overlap with EST and PST.  Moreover, this role will involve checking in with grantees around the globe, so will require the candidate to be able to regularly take calls outside of normal business hours.

• 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 enables 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 Philanthropy 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, but can be somewhat flexible on the exact timing. 

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 Sunday, May 4, 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.