The EA Animal Welfare Fund is looking for guest fund managers

By Neil_Dullaghan🔹 , KarolinaSarek, Zoë Sigle @ 2023-11-04T22:37 (+84)

This is a linkpost to https://www.notion.so/AWF-Guest-Fund-Manager-2c8a08c0fda14521af6e6952bd2fcd0f

You can apply by filling out this form by the 26th of November.

EA Animal Welfare Fund (AWF) is currently looking to hire additional guest fund managers.

AWF is one of the largest funding sources for small- and medium-sized animal welfare projects. In the last twelve months, the Animal Welfare Fund made more than $6.5 million worth of grants to high-impact organizations and talented individuals.

To allocate this funding effectively, we are looking for guest fund managers with careful judgment in the relevant subject areas and an interest in effective grantmaking.

As a guest fund manager, you will evaluate grant applications, proactively help new projects get off the ground (‘active grantmaking’), publish grant reports, and contribute to the fund’s strategy.

Terms of employment:

• We are offering paid part-time, and volunteer positions.
• Compensation for part-time contractors is $60 per hour.
• You will be hired for a period of 3-6 months after which you may have an opportunity to join the team as a permanent fund manager.

If you are interested in the guest fund manager role - please apply here.

If you know of anyone who might be a good fit for this role, please forward this document to them and encourage them to apply. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to Karolina via karolina@effectivealtruismfunds.org

Applications are open now until the 26th of November.

We look forward to hearing from you!

About the role

In this role, you will have a tangible impact by helping to direct millions of dollars to high-impact funding opportunities each year, all the while building your grantmaking skills and expanding your knowledge about animal welfare.

By communicating your reasoning to the community, you will indirectly contribute to the culture and epistemics of the EA and effective animal advocacy (EAA) community. By providing feedback, you will help existing projects improve. In the longer term, your work will help the EA community develop the capacity to allocate a potentially much greater volume of funding each year. While doing so, you will interact with other intellectually curious, experienced, and welcoming fund managers, all of whom share a profound drive to make the biggest difference they can.

As a guest fund manager, your primary goal will be to increase the fund’s capacity to source and investigate more grant applications. Your responsibilities will include:

• Investigating grants assigned to you, and assessing other fund managers’ grant recommendations
• Voting on grant recommendations (each fund manager has a vote)
• Sourcing high-quality applications based on your ideas through your network (‘active grantmaking’)
• Communicating your thinking to the community in writing, e.g., feedback to grantees, grant reports, EA Forum posts and comments
• Providing input on the overall strategic direction of the fund

About you

We are interested in experienced grantmakers, researchers and people with experience in direct work as well as junior applicants who are looking to build experience in grantmaking.

You might be a good fit for guest fund manager if:

• You are familiar with work on farmed animal welfare, wild animal welfare and animal advocacy, and have detailed, independent opinions on what constitutes good work in those areas and how you would like these areas and communities to develop over the coming years.
• You have strong analytic skills and experience assessing others’ work.
• You have a strong network in these areas.
• You can communicate your reasoning articulately, transparently, and cordially, and you can convey complex ideas to a lay audience in simple language.
• You are organized and reliable.
• You act with integrity and adhere to policies and cooperative norms.
• You like to take ownership and proactively think through how to accomplish the fund’s goals instead of merely reacting to incoming funding applications.

Further information

• For part-time roles, we offer to compensate you as a contractor at a rate of 60 USD per hour. Some fund managers choose to volunteer their time, but it is entirely up to you whether you would like to accept payment or work pro bono.
• We are committed to promoting an inclusive culture, and we encourage people with diverse backgrounds and experiences to apply.
• Fund consists of approximately 3–6 fund managers. We think this number leads to a good tradeoff between keeping coordination overhead sufficiently low and being able to make contrarian bets on the one hand, and benefitting from diverse networks and opinions and robust decision-making on the other hand.
• This is a remote position, open to candidates residing anywhere in the world
• You can find out more about EA Funds on EA Funds website and through the “EA Funds” tag on the EA Forum where you will find relevant posts such as recent Ask Me Anything.
• If you have any feedback for us, please let us know here. We are always keen to improve.

Application process

The application process will take up to seven hours for applicants.

1. Application form. Please fill in the application form by the 26th of November.
2. Work sample.
   • Successful applicants will be asked to complete a work sample.
   • You will be compensated at $60/h for your work on the work samples.
   • You may also be asked to provide references, ideally by people who the current fund managers are likely to know.
   • Your submission will be evaluated and we plan to inform you by the 24th of December whether you have been admitted to the final stage.
3. Resolving uncertainties. At the last stage, we will resolve remaining uncertainties through a combination of interviews conducted via video call, further references, and other methods. We plan to appoint the guest fund managers by the 14th of January, or possibly sooner. The decision will be made by the current EA AWF team with the approval of some the EA Funds Project Lead, with input from and advisors.

Additional information

What does a fund manager’s job look like very concretely, in practice?

• Every month, you’ll commit a total of 6–20 hours (depending on how good a use of your time you consider this to be) to:
  • review grant applications that have been assigned to you,
  • write a quick evaluation and recommendation for the other fund managers,
  • join 0–2 calls that each take ~1 hour to discuss key uncertainties and final decisions,
  • write payout reports for the approved grants that had been assigned to you, and
  • provide feedback to promising grantees and grantseekers.
• In addition, you’ll spend another 0–200 hours on active grantmaking at whichever time of the year suits you best.
• With another 10–30 hours per year, you will help out in other ways, e.g., evaluating time-sensitive out-of-cycle grants or participating in an AMA.
• We expect less experienced fund managers to commit more time (on the upper end of the range), and experienced grantmakers to commit less time (on the low end of the range), though it can make sense to deviate based on individual circumstances.