Giving What We Can (GWWC) is seeking a Research Associate to strengthen the research that underpins our work as we grow towards our goal of 1 million pledgers donating $3 billion USD to high-impact charities annually.
You will join a small but growing research team responsible for helping a growing community of over 10,500 pledgers give as effectively as possible. Your work will be vital in ensuring we continue to offer high-quality giving opportunities that concretely address some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as extreme poverty, the suffering of animals in factory farms, and global catastrophic risks facing current and future generations.
Your impact in this role
Your work will help inform where a growing ~$80 million USD in annual charitable donations made by our community are directed, so that they most effectively improve the lives of others. You will add critical capacity to a small research team: stress-testing our work, deepening our evaluations, and helping ensure that our communications are held to the same standards of reliability and integrity, even as our output grows. Thousands of donors rely on GWWC for high-quality giving recommendations and effective giving guidance — your work to improve our research decisions could ultimately improve the lives of millions of sentient beings.
Key responsibilities
Co-determine which programmes we include on our donation platform and recommend to donors (~55%)
Guard the epistemic quality of GWWC's content (~25%)
Contribute to internal monitoring and evaluation (~20%)
- Conduct specific analyses that support GWWC’s regular internal impact evaluations and ongoing impact monitoring.
- Support the writing and review process for our public impact evaluation reports.
- Provide other GWWC teams with high-quality research outputs that can inform their strategic decisions.
We expect a successful applicant to develop quickly within the role over time and take on increasing responsibility for specific work streams within the GWWC research team such as a specific cause area.
A day in the life…
You start by catching up on overnight messages from colleagues in other timezones and flagging items that need urgent attention, then join a weekly research check-in with your manager Aidan. You discuss an open question from your current evaluator evaluation: you've been investigating whether a quantitative model an evaluator uses to assess grant applications reasonably tracks marginal cost-effectiveness, and you've found what looks like an important flaw in the calculations, which could have major implications for the quality of the evaluator’s decisions. Together you work through whether this is a genuine concern that could influence the outcome of your evaluation, agree on next steps, and book a meeting to discuss the issue with the evaluator later in the week.
Next you jump on a check-in call with another evaluator that the research team may evaluate later in the year. On this call, you learn about various changes that the evaluator made since GWWC’s last evaluation. The evaluator shares they are especially excited about an improvement you personally suggested in the last evaluation because they think it will meaningfully improve the impact of the grants they make. After the meeting you write a short internal memo summarising your updated views on whether we should prioritise evaluating this evaluator or defer this evaluation and share it with your manager.
In the afternoon, you switch context to review an early draft outline for a long-form video on vitamin A supplementation prepared by the growth team. With some digging you catch that the academic literature doesn’t support the narrative arc as currently presented in the outline. You flag your concerns and note how you think the narrative could be made more accurate, while remaining resonant.
You spend the last few hours of your day on focused analytical work. You analyse the results of a survey that you helped design to understand GWWC’s actual influence on the giving of different groups of pledgers. You notice some surprisingly large differences between different pledger groups and — realising that your findings could have significant implications for how GWWC prioritises pledge growth work — you write out your findings to share with the team.
Ideal candidate profile
We know that confidence can sometimes hold people back from applying. There's no such thing as a "perfect" candidate. If you're excited about this role and think you could be a great fit, we strongly encourage you to apply.
While we expect a successful candidate would have some prior research experience (e.g., academic research projects, research fellowships, policy analysis), we are open to a wide variety of profiles. We are open to entry level candidates (0-2 years of experience), who would be placed within the first half of the salary range, but also to more senior hires (e.g. up to 4-5 years of experience), who would be placed within the second half of the salary range. What we truly care about is your ability to perform effectively in the role.
This means having the following essential skills and traits:
- Evidence integration and judgement under uncertainty. You can weigh different types of evidence — quantitative estimates, qualitative assessments, expert opinion — and reach a considered view even when the picture is incomplete or conflicting. You're comfortable saying "I think X, with these caveats" rather than deferring indefinitely.
- Conceptual thinking. You can step back from the details and evaluate whether an argument, model, or framework hangs together as a whole — whether the pieces are internally consistent and whether the approach actually tracks what it claims to. You think at the level of "does this make sense?" not just "is this number right?"
- Strong analytical skills. You're comfortable working with quantitative data — whether that's interrogating a spreadsheet model, interpreting a cost-effectiveness estimate, or spotting where numbers don't add up. You also notice when an argument relies on a hidden assumption or when a claim doesn't quite follow from the evidence presented.
- Strategic prioritisation. When faced with a sticky research question and limited time, you zoom out, identify what matters most for the decision at hand, and focus there — rather than getting lost in every detail.
- Clear reasoning and communication. You can summarise complex evidence concisely, explain your reasoning transparently, and flag your uncertainties. Your written work is something others can build on because they can see why you reached your conclusions.
- Alignment with GWWC’s mission and values. You have a strong motivation to make the world a better place and a clear alignment with GWWC's mission, team values, and community values. You care more about finding the truth than defending a position, and you change your mind when the evidence points that way.
Beneficial skills and experience (we expect you to bring some of these, not all of them):
- Comfort with key research concepts in effective giving — such as marginal cost-effectiveness, counterfactuality, and quantitative models of charitable impact — whether through formal training (e.g., the Ambitious Impact Research Training Programme, an EA fellowship, or similar), prior work in impact-focused charity evaluation or grantmaking, or self-directed study
- Academic or professional research experience — particularly involving evidence synthesis or evaluating the quality of others' research
- Experience with monitoring and evaluation or impact assessment (e.g., in a non-profit, government, or development context)
- Editorial judgement: experience identifying where written content oversimplifies or goes beyond what the evidence supports — not just surface-level fact-checking
- Experience querying and analysing data using programming languages such as SQL, R, or Python
- Familiarity with GWWC's existing research, the effective giving ecosystem, or specific cause areas (e.g., global health and development, animal welfare, existential risk reduction)
Benefits
We offer a comprehensive benefits package, including health insurance, budgets for mental health and 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.
Role overview
- Start date: 22 June 2026 or as soon as possible thereafter
- Hours: 1.0 FTE (~40 hours/week)
- Location: Global/Remote
- Please note, you will meet regularly with our researcher in Canberra, Australia and work with colleagues across UK/Central Europe/US timezones
- Salary: Up to 84,000 USD, depending on experience and location (see how we approach pay) Some example ranges:
- 65,000–84,000 USD in New York City, United States
- 46,000–59,000 GBP in London, United Kingdom
- 39,000–50,000 EUR in Barcelona, Spain
- 80,000–102,000 AUD in Sydney, Australia
- Contract: 12-month contract with 3 months probation and intent to offer a permanent contract after 12 months
- Reporting to: Researcher (Aidan Whitfield)
- Application deadline: 27 April 2026 23:59 UTC
- Contact: research-associate-hiring@givingwhatwecan.org
About GWWC
Giving What We Can (GWWC) is working towards a world without preventable suffering or existential risk, where everyone is able to flourish. We do this by making giving effectively and significantly a norm.
Founded in 2009, we are best known for the 🔸10% Pledge, where over 10,500 people have committed to donating at least 10% of their lifetime income to highly effective charities. Our larger community of pledgers and donors currently gives ~$80M USD annually, of which GWWC processes and grants ~$40M through our own donation platform.
We've set ourselves the audacious goal of reaching 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD annually to high-impact charities, and we’re currently growing at ~40% every year. The current ~17 FTE global team is mission-focused, with strong commitment to our team and community values.
About the research team
Reporting directly to the CEO, the research team functions as Giving What We Can’s organisational ‘conscience’; ensuring we remain a high-impact organisation that makes highly cost-effective recommendations and communicates about effective giving in a high-quality and high-integrity way. The research team’s work covers:
- Internal monitoring and evaluation, which improves GWWC’s organisational strategic decision-making and ensures we “practise what we preach” when it comes to cost-effectiveness.
- Maintaining our recommended and supported programs, by identifying the highest-impact programs to recommend to GWWC’s community through evaluating evaluators, and determining which potentially high-impact programs should be hosted on GWWC’s donation platform.
- Maintaining the integrity of our communications, by reviewing content to ensure it meets our epistemic standards, and is in line with our organisational values and effective giving principles.
Application process
See below for the preliminary stages and timeline of this hiring process (please note these are subject to change):
- Stage 1:
- Complete this application form (closes 27 April 23:59 UTC)
- Stage 2:
- 20-minute interview with Aidan Whitfield, Researcher — (4–6 May)
- Stage 3:
- Approximately 2-hour paid work test* (8–12 May)
- Stage 4:
- Approximately 5-hour paid work trial* (15–20 May)
- Interviews (18–20 May)
- Stage 5:
- Reference checks + final interview with CEO (1–5 June)
- Start date of 22 June, 2026 (or as soon as possible thereafter)
*Candidates will be compensated for time spent on work tests and trials.
For questions about the role, contact research-associate-hiring@givingwhatwecan.org
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, not their credentials or career stage.
