Role overview

Start date: As soon as possible
Hours: 1 FTE (~40h/week)
Location: Global remote, with a preference for UTC-6 to UTC+3
Travel: Roughly three to four times per year for in-person retreats
Salary: Up to 76,000 USD, dependent on experience and location (read more about how we approach pay). Some example ranges for this role:
London, UK: 46,000 - 53,000 GBP
Brooklyn, New York, US: 65,000 - 76,000 USD
Barcelona, Spain: 39,000 - 45,000 EUR
Vancouver, Canada: 71,000- 81,000 CAD
Warsaw, Poland: 169,000 - 194,000 PLN
For all other locations, see our salary calculator or reach out.
Contract: 12-month contract with 3 months probation and intent to offer a permanent contract after the first year
Reporting to: Zou Xinyi, Senior Grants & Operations Manager

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is seeking a Grants & Operations Associate to help our grantmaking and operations flourish as we scale. You will help move tens of millions of dollars to address some of the world's most pressing problems, including extreme poverty, the suffering of animals in factory farms, and global catastrophic risks that current and future generations face.

This is a high-leverage role, helping to shape a fast-growing organisation. In the beginning, grantmaking operations will be the main focus. Last year, with around 1 FTE of grants capacity, our team processed over $50M in grants across three currencies and two entities to a range of highly effective charities. That volume is set to grow, and we're scaling the grantee and donor experience alongside it. We have solid foundations already; you'll run them first, then help build them to the next level. In addition, you will support the team with general operational support and help to build the systems and tooling to make the organisation more efficient.

The opportunity

If the 1% richest in the world would donate 10% of their income, we could within years end extreme poverty, end hunger and malnutrition, massively reduce factory farming and much, much more. Research-backed, scalable, but grossly underfunded ways to make progress on these problems exist. And whilst every donation towards a high-impact organisation might be small in comparison to the entirety of the problem, every donation can make an extremely meaningful difference in the lives of the individual humans or animals that benefit from it.

That's the idea behind Giving What We Can (GWWC). Founded in 2009, we are best known for the 🔸10% Pledge, where over 11,000 people have committed to donating at least 10% of their lifetime income to highly effective charities. Our larger community of ~20,000 pledgers and donors currently gives ~$80M USD annually, of which GWWC processes and grants roughly half yearly through our own donation platform.

We're just getting started.

We've set ourselves the audacious goal of 1 million pledgers giving $3 billion a year to high-impact charities. To get there, we've assembled a lean, remote, performance-focused global team, committed to transparency, and our team and community values. And through this growth, we hold ourselves to a high multiplier: our latest impact evaluation shows that in 2025, with a team of ~16 FTE, GWWC caused an additional $16M to be donated to highly effective charities at a cost of $2.3M to our funders. This means every $1 spent on GWWC generates $7 in donations to highly effective charities.

We are now a team of ~20 FTE, aiming to grow 40% across our key metrics (e.g. aiming for roughly 1500 new 🔸10% Pledges in 2026). As part of our operations team, you'll be the backbone that ensures we are able to deliver ~$40M per year (and growing) to highly effective charities.

What you'll do

Grantmaking operations (50%)

Run our grant cycles end to end: moving tens of millions of dollars a year to high-impact charities accurately, securely, and on time
Own the routine grantmaking processes end to end: due diligence, compliance checks, onboarding and offboarding, and grant reporting
Be the first point of contact for our supported programs, coordinating all grantee communications
Increase the frequency of our grant cycles
Shape the systems that will sustain our next order of magnitude of grantmaking

General operations (20%)

Support general operations: joining the operations team rotation and supporting key projects such as events and hiring rounds

Systems & tooling (20%)

Find what slows the team down and fix it: better tooling, sharper policies, smoother processes
Keep an eye on new tools and developments, proactively scoping and building the right-sized solutions to make the organisation more efficient
Champion effective use of AI and automation across operations and the wider organisation. You have the judgment to know where it adds real value, and where it does not

Legal & compliance (10%)

Help keep our multi-entity structure (US, UK, Netherlands, Canada) compliant, such as completing statutory and regulatory filings, conducting due diligence on large donors
Scoping the compliance side of new programmes, helping to turn our external counsel’s advice into action

What we're looking for

While our ideal candidate brings 2-5 years of operations experience (with grants and/or compliance experience as a bonus), at Giving What We Can we hire for your ability to deliver. What matters are the traits below and your ability to rapidly learn the specifics on the job, including making the most of tools like AI to work better.

We are looking for someone who is:

An exceptional operator. You run high-stakes processes without errors. You review your own work carefully and catch problems before they happen. You will be moving tens of millions in grants, so preventing a single error is essential
Highly agentic. A self-starter with good judgement. You move fast to fix things, and you know when speed matters more and when care matters more
A great communicator. You communicate clearly and effectively, with an ability to adapt your communication to different stakeholders, whether it's an internal note or a message to a grantee or a major donor
A fast learner who builds systems. You pick up new processes and tools quickly, and develop the right-sized solution for the task at hand. You're especially excited by what AI now makes possible, always exploring new ways to apply it, with the judgment to know when and how to use it
Excited about our mission. You don't need to be an effective giving expert on day one, but you care deeply about creating a world without extreme poverty, animal suffering and existential risk - a world where everyone can flourish. And you are excited to be part of the movement that makes it happen. You have deep moral ambition.

If you're unsure whether you meet our criteria, we'd strongly encourage you to apply. Giving What We Can is committed to building a diverse team and strongly encourages applications from people of all backgrounds. We evaluate candidates based on their potential to excel in the role.

A day in the life

You start the morning at your desk - wherever that is, since GWWC is fully remote, and we'll help you kit it out properly. Tea in hand, you catch up on overnight messages: a couple of queries from grantees, and a few from colleagues in other time zones. Today is your rotation day as first responder for ops requests from the wider team, so you start triaging what's come in - making sure each request has a clear owner and nothing urgent is sitting unattended. At the daily ops stand-up with your teammates (Felicia, Casey and Zou), you flag two items, talk through your proposed next steps, and get their input.

It's the midway point of a grant cycle: over $20M across three currencies and two entities, scheduled to reach 15 high-impact charities. You move into a focus block to keep it on track. You check each team is hitting the timeline, then finish building a small automation you've been working on - it posts a digest to the team channel and tags the right people, so everyone can see the milestones coming up and who needs what by when. You run it for the first time and watch it land cleanly. One less thing anyone has to chase.

A ticket comes in from the community inbox that needs your attention: a donor wants to make a $1M gift. That triggers due diligence, so you reach out for the essential information you'll need. Knowing the sensitivity of donor details, you're careful to explain how GWWC handles and safeguards their data. The donor replies quickly, so you kick off the checks. With that running in the background, you step away for lunch. After your walk, you're back at your desk for the afternoon. Reviewing the results, you run a few extra searches - and something's off. It looks like the tool has confused this donor with someone else who shares their name and has a big social media presence. You strip out the information that doesn't belong, double-check the rest, and make the corrections. Then you pass the final report to James (who approves due diligence), noting what you found and how you handled it.

Next up is your weekly 1-1 with Zou, your manager. You talk through the onboarding process for new grantees and pitch a few improvements: how to make it smoother for the grantee while still gathering everything GWWC needs to stay compliant. It's a balance you're getting sharper at - keeping the experience smooth without cutting the checks that matter.

Then you switch gears to an initial scope of the compliance side of a new integration the community team is keen on - one that could double the employer-matching donations from donors' payroll giving. In your 1-hour focus block, you map what it would take to do this properly across our entities, note the open questions for external counsel, and write up a short recommendation for Zou on whether and how to proceed.

Benefits

We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, budgets for wellbeing and professional development, flexible working arrangements, parental leave and support, and pension. There is some variation in the benefits depending on your location, to be confirmed in the offer letter.

How to apply

To apply, please complete the application form by 3 August, 2026 23:59 UTC.

Here are the preliminary stages and timeline of this hiring process (subject to change)

Application form: Aug. 3 (deadline)
Screening call with Zou: Aug. 13-17
Paid 4-hour work test: Aug. 20-24
Interview with Zou: Aug. 27-Sept. 1
COO Interview: Sept. 4-8
Reference checks + CEO interview: Sept. 10-17

For questions about the role, contact grants-ops-associate-hiring@givingwhatwecan.org

We want to build a team that brings a wide range of experiences, perspectives and backgrounds to our mission, with a shared passion to do as much good as we can. We know that factors like gender, race and socioeconomic background can shape whether someone applies for a role they're a strong but not perfect fit for. So if you meet many of the criteria but not every one, we'd still love to hear from you, and we'd particularly encourage applications from people of underrepresented backgrounds.

We may use AI to help with parts of the hiring process, including checking whether applications were written by AI. Every decision is made by a human on our team.

Giving What We Can

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