Changes to Rethink Charity’s strategy and staff roles

Rethink Charity has changed significantly since our last update in June. This update provides a brief overview of our current strategy and staff roles, and accompanies our announcement about Rethink Charity’s leadership transition. 

Strategy update

Rethink Charity is now focusing solely on RC Forward. We aim to foster a culture of giving effectively among many more people in Canada, and to be an active contributor to wider efforts to contribute to effective giving across the world. RC Forward has already been trusted by thousands of donors in Canada to forward over $18 million CAD of their donations to high-impact charities since 2017. 

We believe we could optimize significantly by focusing our team’s bandwidth on this project, identifying and filling our gaps in expertise, and by closely collaborating with other effective giving organizations. 

We’ve been winding down projects less aligned with our current strategy and comparative advantage since August of this year. We handed off EA Giving Tuesday to Giving What We Can (with the support of One for the World). Since September we have been winding down our fiscal sponsorship program. 

Staff roles update 

Rethink Charity currently has three staff (3 FTE total). Our organization is fully remote, with our team dispersed across British Columbia, Canada. 

SK OwYong: Our previous post introduced SK as Executive Director and bids a fond farewell to Baxter Bullock after five years of service. As Executive Director, SK oversees our team, people and projects. His particular current focus areas include building key partnerships, improving RC Forward’s donation platform, improving our task management processes, and setting KPIs for 2023. 

Siobhan Brenton: Siobhan has worked across most of Rethink Charity’s core functions in her five years at the organization. She is now serving as Project Manager on initiatives to help us streamline according to our new strategy, including fiscal sponsorship wind-down, improving our accounting support, and advising on strategic initiatives. 

Megan Jamer: Megan has worked in communications and operations roles across Rethink Charity’s projects, with particular focus on RC Forward and EA Giving Tuesday. Megan served as Acting Executive Director from July to November 2022, working to develop a new strategy and leadership plan for Rethink Charity. She is now serving as Project Manager for RC Forward, as well as fulfilling some of Rethink Charity’s more general operational needs.

Looking ahead

In 2022 Rethink Charity navigated changes to staff and strategy that were challenging for our team. We welcome 2023 equipped with more stability and clarity. This progress is due in no small part to the support we’ve received this year from Rethink Charity’s Board of Directors, from our community of partner charities, our wonderful donors, and from other effective giving organizations, particularly Effektiv Spenden, Giving What We Can, and One for the World. 

We’re passionate about driving more support to organizations doing high-impact work on pressing problems. On a day-to-day basis, what drives us is our ongoing work to improve the efficiency of RC Forward and to help more Canadians take action to do more good with their charitable giving. We look forward to seeing what we can achieve in 2023 and beyond. Thank you for your interest and support of Rethink Charity. 

– The Rethink Charity Team

Changes to Rethink Charity's board of directors

Colm Ó Riain moved on from Rethink Charity’s board of directors in November 2022 after over three years of service, having joined as part of our board expansion in 2019. Colm also served on the board’s fundraising subcommittee.  

Rethink Charity benefited from Colm’s wide-ranging experience in philanthropic strategy and recruitment, as well as his substantial knowledge of the effective altruism community. Colm offered valuable, perceptive ideas and advice across all of Rethink Charity’s projects, and on  organization-wide fundraising initiatives. 

As much as we will miss having him as a board member, we are happy to free up his bandwidth for his varied professional and personal goals. Not only does Colm work to support growth at Machine Intelligence Research Institute, he’s also an accomplished violinist and composer. 

Colm’s contributions to Rethink Charity these last three years are deeply appreciated and we wish him all the best!

Introducing Rethink Charity’s new Executive Director

The Rethink Charity team is excited to share that SoonKhen (“SK”) OwYong has been confirmed by the Board of Directors as Executive Director. SK brings to Rethink Charity a passion for positive social impact, a dedication to improving efficiency, and technical and leadership experience gained as a software engineer in fintech startups. He is based in Vancouver, Canada.

Rethink Charity’s team shrank significantly and unexpectedly this year, a change we shared in June. SK joined amidst these changes, starting as Operations Engineer in May. His immediate refinements to our CRM and bookkeeping systems improved the fidelity of our data and accelerated our regranting and operations work. He played a key role in fulfilling several of Rethink Charity’s essential responsibilities amidst greatly reduced staff bandwidth. 

Over the last few months Baxter Bullock has been transitioning out of his staff role, after five years of service as Co-Founder and Executive Director. Rethink Charity made significant progress under Baxter’s leadership: Rethink Priorities was incubated until it was ready to launch as an independent entity. Students for High-Impact Charity was launched, and then wound down when continuing the project no longer made sense. Rethink Charity navigated periods of financial uncertainty through efforts to diversify funding sources. RC Forward grew from a small program in 2017 into a successful donation platform; it’s so far moved over $18 million CAD to high-impact charities, thanks to improved operations as well as the generosity of thousands of donors across Canada. Baxter also fostered a balanced and supportive culture within our remote team–for example, through employee engagement and effectively hiring. 

Although Baxter has stepped down from his role as Executive Director, he will remain involved with the organization as a board member, actively supporting SK in his new role. We are grateful for Baxter’s service and dedication over the past five years, and for his work to co-found Rethink Charity. We will miss his presence on the core team, and wish him the best of luck in all of his future endeavors.

Our team is indebted to Rethink Charity’s Board of Directors for their dedicated support and guidance through this transition. The Board collaborated with our team to consider multiple options for leadership. The Executive Director role was offered to SK based on his abilities, values, understanding of our projects, and his ambition to lead an organization that fulfills a need in the effective altruism community. 

This change in leadership and staff coincides with changes to Rethink Charity’s strategy, which we will share in a forthcoming announcement. We are excited for SK to lead our team to grow Rethink Charity’s positive impact.

— The Rethink Charity Team