Operations and Administration Officer

Rethink Charity is a rapidly growing Effective Altruism organization that uses evidence and reason to find innovative ways to do good. Our projects range in focus to include movement building, research, community outreach and fundraising for effective charities. Things have been moving fast in 2018! We have expanded our team significantly and we have ambitious growth plans underway for 2019.

80,000 Hours states that operations management is one of the biggest bottlenecks in Effective Altruism. One of the main reasons for this is that operations workers act as organizational multipliers – they enable other staff members to maximize productivity by ensuring the back-end functions of the organizations are taken care of. With this in mind, we are looking for an enthusiastic, creative team player to come onboard with Rethink Charity.

As a member of the operations team you will work closely with the directors and managers of each of our projects to ensure success, gaining a wide variety of diversified skills along the way. You will be given a large amount of autonomy and responsibility on a daily basis and will play a crucial role in shaping the success of our organization. You will be surrounded daily by dedicated, energized and passionate EAs from around the world working collaboratively to do good better!

This is a full-time entry-level position and you will work closely with the Manager of Operations to maintain and improve functional systems for Rethink Charity. We are willing to train fresh talent in this role, and we aim to nourish the skills needed to advance to a full-time managerial role in the future.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage day-to-day operations for staff, donors, and the organization

• Draft contracts and editing legal agreements for new hires, volunteers and partnerships

• Organizing and keeping track of employee Human Resource items (tax forms, time off requests, etc)

• Post organizational blogs and updating edits on all of our affiliated websites

• Assist in payroll processing

• Assist in budget monitoring and financial projection/runway analysis on a monthly basis

• Act as an organizational liaison to skilled professionals to fulfil accounting, legal, taxation and compliance requirements in ordnance with Canadian and US charitable registrations

• Complete operational research to improve and optimize organizational processes

• Variable and flexible tasks, which may include communications, education (SHIC), research, personal assistance and everything in between.

.  Qualifications

Required:

• Understanding of Effective Altruism concepts

• Experience working with Google Docs/Sheets and Excel

• Excellent time management skills and ability to multitask and prioritize work

• Attention to detail and problem solving skills

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Strong organizational and planning skills

• Financial literacy

• Ability to digest legal language

Desired:

• An understanding and willingness to learn about accounting systems (ie, Quickbooks)

• Familiarity with organizational platforms, like Asana and MailChimp

• Previous experience (paid or volunteer) in an administrative or operational role

• Experience optimizing organizational systems

• Willingness to engage in professional development

• Previous experience (paid or volunteer) in an EA organization

• Previous public speaking or education experience

Location and Salary

Most of our team is based in Vancouver, Canada, but remote work options can be arranged for the right candidate. Relocation and visa sponsorship may be provided to international hires after a probationary paid remote trial.

Salary is commensurate with experience and need.

How do I Apply?

Please fill out an initial application here. Applications will be open until October 26th, 2018. Successful applicants will be interviewed on a rolling basis, so apply now!

Successful applicants must be able to start work by early November. 

We are an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status. We are happy to make any reasonable accommodations necessary to welcome all to our workplace. Please contact us to discuss adjustments to the application process.

Donor Briefing 09/2018

Thanks for getting current with RC.

Project Headlines – Rethink Charity kicks off the 2018 EA Summit with the opening keynote, RC Forward passes through another >$1M donation, SHIC releases a mid-year update on the Vancouver workshop experiment, Rethink Priorities gets press, LEAN hires new team members, and the 2018 EA Survey begins publishing results this month.  

Full RC Briefing

Project Updates

Rethink Charity Overview

RC is building out the infrastructure for long-term operation after seeing encouraging performance across several fronts. Our projects appear to be growing in community relevance, thanks in no small part to being better resourced than ever. LEAN was an active participant in the (un)precedented 2018 EA Summit, where several RC staff members delivered talks on SHIC, the 2018 EA Survey, local EA groups, and the opening keynote that doubled as a commentary on the shifting memetic landscape of EA. We should be seeing even tighter associations with other movement building organizations.

Flashback – In the June edition, we wrote, “Rethink Charity projects are attracting interest from major institutional funders. Watch this space for more developments.” This has thus far materialized into an $85,000 grant to RP from Lewis Bollard at EA Funds and an $50,000 grant to LEAN from CEA.

Reversal – In June we also mentioned, “Current [SHIC] plans include training an educator in Toronto to deliver the workshop in the fall.” SHIC chose instead to double down on demonstrating continued engagement from workshop students in Vancouver.

RC Forward

– Within the next week or so, RC Forward will be releasing our Mid-2018 Update detailing the $3.6m CAD we have disbursed to high impact charities in 2018.

– Completed “the largest single donation by an individual in MIRI’s history” of $1.33m CAD.

Crypto for good – We also referred a second cryptocurrency donation, totaling nearly $1.6m CAD, to the Against Malaria Foundation. This is RC Forward’s single largest donation to date.

Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)

– SHIC published early results on the first semester of 2018’s workshop experiment that reached 855 students across 16 schools in the Vancouver area.

– The analysis of the student pre- and post-workshop surveys showed significant improvements in knowledge, attitudes and values about high-impact charity.

– The primary focus for the fall term is to test ways of further engaging interested students through advanced workshops, community building and coaching.

The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)

– LEAN welcomed new staff members to the project.

– Development work is now being undertaken on the new EA Hub.

Rethink Priorities (RP)

– The RP cause prioritization wiki, PriortyWiki, was featured in a Fast Company article.  

– The project is currently investigating the potential for consciousness-indicating features of invertebrates.– RP will be hiring researchers soon and a job ad will be up in early September.

What’s Next

Our current organizational model is trending toward increased project-level autonomy and further consolidation of supporting administrative systems. For example, Rethink Priorities launched early this year, requiring very little from RC beyond administrative assistance, eventually producing quality research that attracted substantial funding. The latest LEAN hiring round could be seen as an attempt to replicate this approach, with the expectation that the project will carve out its own identity as a largely autonomous movement building organization.

It was great to catch up with you again.

Donor Briefing 06/2018

It’s been awhile. Thanks for having a look at this special edition of the Briefing before Effective Altruism Global 2018 in San Francisco.

One-sentence RC breakdown – In summary, RC Forward has passed through ~$2M CAD (~1.5M USD) for effective charities thus far, Rethink Priorities launched publicly, the EA survey team broke the survey submissions record, LEAN is hiring, and SHIC will soon report on the workshop results collected from ~850 students.

Your full RC Briefing
Read time: 3 minutes

Project Updates

Rethink Charity Overview

RC threw the brakes on expansionary efforts across all of the projects, electing instead to await the results of performance indicators as Q2 of 2018 draws to a close. Among the projects considered for expansion in the second half of 2018 and early 2019, SHIC is the most viable candidate based on early indicators. Current plans include training an educator in Toronto to deliver the workshop in the fall. (See workshop overview)

Results and analysis on the EA survey will begin coming out in the next couple of months on the ~3,500 submissions mustered by the community, which is roughly 1,000 more submissions than the previous record set in 2015.

Situational Awareness – Rethink Charity projects are attracting interest from major institutional funders. Watch this space for more developments.

RC Forward

– A $1.35M CAD donation to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) was recently processed, bringing the total amount passed through to effective charities at roughly $2M CAD.

Flashback: Readers might recall our forecast for money moved in 2018 was only $1M USD (~1.3M CAD).

Rethink Priorities (RP)

– RP launched their official website in May.

– The project published analysis on both the benefits of vaccines and the cost-effectiveness of vaccines.

– Reanalysis of the Animal Equality video and virtual reality study will be published soon.

Go deeper: More on the RP research agenda here, and you can find a breakdown of articles published by cause area here.

The Local Effective Altruism Network (LEAN)

– We’re currently hiring for the LEAN Manager position! Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis, though priority will be given to those who submitted prior to May 28.

– A LEAN article on why local groups should consider direct work scored decent karma on the EA Forum.

Would you agree? From the latest LEAN article, “Available group actions may fall short of embodying the very highest impact intervention that humans could take, but might instead still constitute the highest impact intervention that the group in question could deliver.”

Students for High-Impact Charity (SHIC)

– An update on our current workshop experiment is slated for release in July after an initial analysis of our data. By that time, SHIC will have worked with approximately 850 students across 16 schools around Greater Vancouver.

– SHIC workshops will be continuing over summer, working with the University of British Columbia to deliver the SHIC program to elite high school students attending an academic summer school.

What’s Next

RC is currently fundraising for 2019! If you’d like to continue being a key part of our growth in EA community building, simply reply to this, or email Tee at [email protected] to chat about it! Most of the full-time RC staff will also be at EA Global, so please reach out if you’d like to connect!

Hope this was a good read. Thanks for taking the time.