GiveWell is a research organization that identifies and funds cost-effective giving opportunities, focusing on global health and well-being. Our work is funded by tens of thousands of donors who rely on our research to inform their giving. We’ve grown from directing $1.5 million in 2010 to directing nearly $400 million in 2024.

The Role

We're hiring a Philanthropy Associate to manage and cultivate relationships with a portfolio of our six-figure donors. This is a critical role in expanding GiveWell's personalized, one-on-one support for major donors, helping us direct more funding to cost-effective programs that save and improve lives. You'll own 1:1 relationships with approximately 100 donors. You'll serve as their advisor, understanding their charitable goals and values to help determine how GiveWell's researched and vetted high-impact opportunities align with their giving priorities. In close collaboration with our philanthropy team, you’ll design personalized stewardship experiences that help donors better understand and trust our research, deepening their connection to GiveWell’s mission and the impact their giving can have.

Why We're Hiring Now: We're scaling our donor advisory services to reach more major donors with the same thoughtful, personalized approach that has made our philanthropy work successful. Building deep donor relationships takes time, and we're investing now to ensure this person can help us expand our capacity for individualized donor support as we work toward our multi-year goals.

Specific duties will include:

Donor Relationship Management

Manage and grow a portfolio of ~100 six-figure donors, building trust-based relationships that increase donor confidence and knowledge in our work, ultimately leading to increased retention and giving levels
Hold regular calls and in-person meetings to understand donors' values, interests, and goals
Offer personalized giving advice and help donors see how GiveWell’s recommendations align with their priorities
Create and carry out individualized stewardship plans
Share tailored updates that highlight GiveWell’s work and show donors the impact of their support
Support donors through giving decisions, helping them feel confident and informed
Identify and coordinate opportunities for deeper engagement, including exposure to our research and in-person and virtual events

Cross-team collaboration

Work closely with communications, research, and other teams to enhance donor experience and ensure our messaging is both accurate and compelling
Share insights from donor conversations to help inform broader team planning and strategy
Support initiatives across teams that strengthen GiveWell's donor relationships and overall fundraising effectiveness

Database and Process Management

Maintain comprehensive donor information and interaction history in our CRM system
Track donor engagement and stewardship activities to ensure consistent, high-quality relationship management
Maintain and improve systems and processes that support effective donor relationship management, contributing to the continuous improvement and scaling of GiveWell's philanthropy function

About You

The strongest candidates will bring at least 3 years of professional experience in fundraising, donor relations, customer success, high-net-worth client management, or similar relationship-building roles. You're a trusted advisor. You have experience helping individuals think through decisions and can guide donors in exploring their philanthropic goals while presenting relevant opportunities that align with their interests. Prior experience working with six-figure donors or clients is preferred. In addition to the right experience, we'll be looking for someone with the following characteristics:

You genuinely enjoy building relationships. You have authentic interest in fundraising and donor stewardship, with natural curiosity about what motivates people. You've successfully retained and grown donor or client relationships over multiple years through strategic, advisory approaches.
You connect well with sophisticated audiences. You tailor your communication style to discerning stakeholders and navigate complex relationship dynamics with emotional intelligence and interpersonal intuition.
You take ownership of your work. You're self-driven and proactive, independently managing projects from start to finish while balancing tact with persistence when advancing relationships. You value both efficiency and a high-touch experience, spotting bottlenecks and leveraging tools like templates and AI to scale what works while keeping the personal touch that donors expect.
You thrive in collaborative environments. You're energized by startup-like settings with changing priorities, demonstrating adaptability and a willingness to roll up your sleeves alongside your teammates.
You're curious about complex ideas. You have natural interest in analytical frameworks and can quickly grasp technical material to effectively share it with others, especially in global health and development contexts.
You're aligned with GiveWell's mission and values. You're passionate about GiveWell's work and impact, and you personally resonate with our values. Experience in global health and development, philanthropy, or adjacent mission-driven sectors is a plus.

Key Questions & Information

What does success look like in this role? Success means retaining and growing your donor portfolio by building strong, trust-based relationships and deeply understanding donor goals. Top performers will combine excellent relationship skills with the ability to translate GiveWell’s complex research into clear, compelling narratives that support donors’ philanthropic decision-making.

What does the current team look like? You'll be joining GiveWell's approximately 10 person philanthropy team, which is part of our broader 15-person outreach function alongside communications. The philanthropy team includes frontline fundraisers and operations staff supporting donor relationships and database management. This role reports to the Manager, Philanthropy, and offers significant opportunity for learning from experienced advisors and fundraisers while contributing to systems and processes that support GiveWell's growth goals.

How is this different from traditional fundraising roles? This role is centered on genuine advisory work, grounded in our values of truth-seeking and transparency rather than traditional sales tactics. You'll primarily work with existing donors, helping them understand our work and think through their charitable goals. We're not driven by donation numbers alone: if a donor decides to give elsewhere because it better aligns with their values, and you helped them reach that decision with clarity, that's a success in our book. You'll build strong relationships focused on maximizing long-term impact rather than using high-pressure tactics. This approach is intellectually demanding—you'll need to master complex global health research, navigate nuanced donor conversations with high emotional intelligence, and communicate both our impact and our limitations with honesty and clarity. It's a thoughtful, high-context role that blends analytical rigor and strong interpersonal judgement.

What are some reasons this role might not be a good fit? This role requires genuine enthusiasm for fundraising and relationship building—specifically donor-facing work that demands you genuinely enjoy connecting with people. You'll need drive and persistence to push initiatives forward, combined with the tact and interpersonal skills to navigate sensitive donor conversations with care. The role requires being quick on your feet as donor needs and priorities shift, and you'll need to quickly master complex global health topics to engage credibly with sophisticated, analytical philanthropists. You should thrive in an environment with frequent feedback, high standards, and ambitious, measurable goals. You'll also need to be comfortable with ambiguity and change as our philanthropy team continues to grow and evolve our approaches.

Details

Team: You'll report to the Manager, Philanthropy (along with three other Philanthropy Associates). Your manager reports to the Head of Philanthropy.
Compensation:
- NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $129,200
- All other U.S. locations: $117,000
Location: This position is eligible to work fully remotely within the U.S.
- Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California or Brooklyn, NYC. We'll cover relocation expenses for candidates who wish to move to our physical office locations.
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.

Benefits: Our benefits include:
- Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
- Four weeks of paid time off per year
- 16 weeks of paid parental leave
- Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
- 403(b) retirement plan
Travel: You’ll be expected to attend two whole-organization Visit Weeks in Oakland, a weeklong in-person Outreach retreat, and a Frontline subteam retreat, with the latter two events taking place at locations throughout the United States. We’ll fully cover your travel expenses for required travel events, including childcare if you need it.
Start date: We'd like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer, but we'll offer flexibility for candidates whose personal or professional circumstances require them to moderately delay their start date.

About GiveWell

GiveWell is dedicated to finding and funding outstanding giving opportunities in global health and development, sharing the full details of our analysis with everyone for free. Our giving funds enable donors to contribute to the most impactful and cost-effective programs our researchers identify.

Since 2007, we’ve directed over $2.6 billion to cost-effective programs and interventions. In the last two years, we’ve made more than $500 million in grants. GiveWell is one of the world’s largest private funders of global development efforts, and we estimate that the funding we’ve directed will save more than 340,000 lives.

GiveWell is most well-known for recommending a small number of Top Charities, which currently support seasonal malaria chemoprevention, antimalarial nets, vaccine incentivization, and vitamin A supplementation. However, most of our research capacity is devoted to finding cost-effective opportunities outside of those programs.

GiveWell grants have:

Helped governments to implement high-impact health programs, like in-line chlorination of drinking water in India and HIV/syphilis screening and treatment for pregnant people in Zambia and Cameroon.
Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation, as in our grants to support treatment of clubfoot and to evaluate the program.
Sought to scope and scale promising interventions that don’t have clear existing implementers. We are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Incubator and Evidence Action’s Accelerator to identify potentially cost-effective interventions and create programs that we would be excited to support in the future. For example, we funded a program to provide diarrhea treatment to children in Nigeria that we co-designed with CHAI through the Incubator program.
Tested our assumptions through further research, including studies on the effect of water chlorination on mortality, the impact of a tree-planting program on farmers’ income, and the effects of combining the RTS,S malaria vaccine and perennial malaria chemoprevention.

We never take for granted that GiveWell’s work is good for the world. We make our reasoning public and transparent so others can challenge it (sometimes we even pay people to point out our errors). We go to unusual lengths to check our assumptions and assess our impact, including funding research and external analysis to address our uncertainties and insisting that our grantees conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation. We change our minds when the evidence demands it.

Additional information

We don’t want to miss candidates that could do great things at GiveWell. Practically, that means a GiveWell staff member reviews every application carefully, considering the whole picture of your background and potential. If you’re on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications (some studies suggest this hesitation is especially common for women and people of color), we encourage you to apply anyway.

GiveWell is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer by choice. At minimum, this means that we comply with all federal, state, and local EEO and employment laws. Beyond the requirements of those laws, we value our team’s diversity in all respects, and we desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination—we want our team members to thrive at GiveWell. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, contact us at careers@givewell.org. We will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

By submitting an application, you acknowledge that you have read and consent to GiveWell’s Privacy Statement for Applicants. By completing an application exercise, you acknowledge and assent to GiveWell’s Work Trial Policy.

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