Apply to join Rethink Priorities’ board of directors.

By abrahamrowe, kierangreig🔸 @ 2022-11-29T18:43 (+96)

Right now (through January 13th 20th), you can apply to join RP’s board of directors in an unpaid (3-10 hours per month) or paid (5-10 hours per week) capacity.

Rethink Priorities (RP) has grown quickly, is now large, and remains ambitious (see our recent post for more details). We're looking for people to join our board who can help RP really secure its foundations, and scale in the next several years. While we had been planning on opening these roles prior to FTX’s collapse because we recognized governance as an area of growth for our organization, the recent events help in highlighting why these roles are important. We want to ensure that RP is healthy and sustainable, and thinking about risk and success well in the long-run. 

Our board of directors plays an active role in ensuring that our senior management is making responsible, legal, and risk-aware decisions for the organization in the long-run. They evaluate things like our financial controls, the performance of our Co-CEOs, and budgets and fundraising to help ensure the organization is acting legally and ethically. They also advise our senior management to help ensure the organization stays on track, and continues to target high-level goals for itself.

If you have any questions about these positions, please contact careers@rethinkpriorities.org. If you have questions about RP’s governance generally, contact abraham@rethinkpriorities.org.
 

What does the board of directors do?

Our board’s primary functions are:

• Providing long-term financial oversight to the organization including:
  • Reviewing and approving the annual budget, and spending controls for the Co-CEOs
  • Reviewing annual audits of financial statements and financial controls
• Providing oversight for the Co-CEOs including:
  • Performance evaluations of senior management
  • Serving as contacts for staff outside the chain of commands
  • Providing feedback on Co-CEOs strategic plans
• Providing legal oversight for the organization, such as:
  • Helping assess risky and complicated situations, and providing feedback on plans to navigate those situations
  • Ensuring that RP is compliant with its charitable purposes
• Advising on RP’s long-term strategy and direction
   

What qualifications are you looking for in board members?

We are particularly interested in adding individuals who have knowledge/experience within longtermism, launching/supporting new ventures, and/or scaling organizations. We’d also be excited for candidates with professional legal or nonprofit finance experience.

Do I have to be an American to join the board?

No! Though we are a US-based organization, these roles do not require US residency. However, we’d like the majority of our board to be made up of US residents (including non-US citizens), and some board functions may require US residency, so while location wouldn’t be disqualifying, it may be a consideration.

What’s the difference between paid and unpaid roles?

The majority of our board is required by our bylaws to be unpaid. However, we think that there is significant value in our board being more engaged than many members are able to be in a voluntary capacity, so we’d like to pay up to 2 members of the board to provide administrative assistance to the other members, and to tackle some of the more work intensive tasks (such as performance evaluations of senior management). In our view, a failure for many nonprofit boards is they select for skills but not time, and that contributes towards a tendency for boards to not do a very thorough job. We're excited to experiment with one to two people who are designated to spend 5-10 hrs/week on board duties. Right now we have some idea of how this will work, but it will be a first for us. We hope to find candidates excited about innovating to figure out how this time could best be allocated. Because this is essentially a part-time job, it seems reasonable to pay for it accordingly.
 

Who is on the current board?

Ozzie Gooen — President of the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute

Vicky Bond — President of The Humane League

Cameron Meyer Shorb — Executive Director of Wild Animal Initiative

Marcus Davis — Co-CEO of Rethink Priorities
 

How large is RP and affiliated entities?

In 2023, RP expects to spend over $10M on its core research projects and fiscally sponsored projects. In total, around 100 staff and long-term collaborators work on these projects.

What’s the legal structure of Rethink Priorities?

RP is a California-incorporated 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation in the US. We are currently in the process of opening a wholly-owned UK subsidiary. These roles are on the board of the 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Ozzie Gooen @ 2022-11-30T05:27 (+27)

I just want to flag that I'm particularly excited about the paid board member positions. I think that having a designated board member or two be formally responsible to spend a solid chunk of time each month going through a list of check-ups, maintenance, and other sorts of duties, could be really promising. I look forward to working with whoever takes these roles to try to figure out how we think strong nonprofit boards should really work, when assisted with regular ongoing work. 

There clearly is a lot to figure out in how to make charity boards go very well. If we can make this happen, I'd feel more confident in the future of RP. We could also take some of the lessons learned and recommend them to other EA organizations. 

Jason @ 2022-11-30T14:14 (+19)

Strong upvote. I'd add that organizations should aim to have at least one -- preferably two or even three -- board members who are not "full-time" EAs. Diversity of perspectives is important -- for instance, a tech company's board should include people outside tech. It's an important way to mitigate the risk of groupthink that is inevitable in any tightly-knit community.

To be stuck inside of Mobile @ 2022-11-30T21:52 (+3)

I trust your intentions and your ideas seem extremely valuable

It would be good to get a description with deep understanding or causal relationships for how a larger board, board quality, or governance in general would have prevented the FTX collapse, especially in a deceptive environment, like FTX, where low quality efforts can be coopted. Famously, such cooption probably happened at Theranos. 

I'd add that organizations should aim to have at least one -- preferably two or even three -- board members who are not "full-time" EAs.

Just as importantly, it would be good to have a detailed understanding of how boards would be involved in improving EA org operation. 

Diversity of perspectives is important

It's an important way to mitigate the risk of groupthink that is inevitable in any tightly-knit community.

Frankly, this recent governance thread on the forum, has traits that, from the outside, seem to reflect local online trends instead of substance. This can produce "the wrong hill to climb", wasting effort, disillusioning people, or be coopted.

To give a concrete sense of this issue, there is currently a post on the EA forum from an EA org looking for board members. 

One of the commentators does object level work orthogonal to EA efforts, and seems to be one of the few people who understood to some degree the risks of FTX, and did not seek FTX funding or associations. Another commentor is a longtime EA, associated with the org, and like almost everyone else, did less to avoid FTX funding.

The person who avoided FTX gave a detailed comment that added in depth considerations to changing governance, and mentioned creating a novel new think tank. 

On the other hand, the person more associated with the organization, gave a fairly generic positive comment. This is the response to the two comments.

In the past, I’m lucky to have had to chance to speak to Ozzie, who is one of the strongest and most principled people in EA, about his view of increasing board activity. If I understood and recall correctly, like him I imagined using boards as a device to seat and empower talent and provide institutional governance. 

However, much of the response to these ideas about boards was negative from other people, including senior people. The general view is that boards can be negative and easy to poorly executed. I think I now agree with both views.

Ozzie Gooen @ 2022-11-30T22:06 (+4)

Thanks for the thoughts here. (And the kind words!)

There's a lot going on here. I'm finding it a bit terse and subtle.

Maybe it would help to discuss some of this privately? (That might help with directness a bit). Feel free to send me a PM to chat there, or have a call, if that could be useful.

Ozzie Gooen @ 2022-11-30T22:14 (+2)

Quick things:

>  It would be good to get a description with deep understanding or causal relationships for how a larger board, board quality, or governance in general would have prevented the FTX collapse, especially in a deceptive environment, like FTX, where low quality efforts can be coopted.

I think it would have been tough for a non-FTX board to have fixed the issue. However, if the boards of EA orgs that heavily interacted with FTX were really on their game, maybe they could have realized that EA should have been more cautious around FTX, and taken corresponding actions. I think FTX itself basically didn't have a board, and if it did, it could have been much better too. 

> Just as importantly, it would be good to have a detailed understanding of how boards would be involved in improving EA org operation. 

I think of the board as the ED's boss. If the org isn't doing a great job, it's kind of the ED's  responsibility. If the ED isn't doing a good job, it's sort of the board's responsibility. Boards do have limited abilities in practice (it's a huge pain to actually fire an ED), but I they definitely have some power. I think good boards help prevent corruption, align incentives from EDs, and help choose new EDs when needed.

> Frankly, this recent governance thread on the forum, has traits that, from the outside, seem to reflect local online trends instead of substance. This can produce "the wrong hill to climb", wasting effort, disillusioning people, or be coopted.

I see it a bit more like a "window of opportunity/interest". My hunch is that a lot of EA orgs have struggled a bit with middle/upper management (this is very common for orgs!), and the board seems like a good place to help improve things.