*Technically it's called "Philanthropy Officer," but you don't actually have to have any fundraising experience -- and EAs without fundraising experience tend to drastically underestimate how fun it is to fundraise for an EA org. This post is an attempt to correct that. Forum guidelines explicitly ask that job posts not be sales pitches, but I think it would be a greater epistemic injustice to hide how cool I personally think this job is and how fun many folks here might find it.
 

Key details

Wild Animal Initiative has extended the deadline for our Philanthropy Officer job listing. Applications are now due by by 9:00 AM (EDT) on Wednesday, October 21. 

Main responsibilities: Making sure that major donors have what they need to understand what Wild Animal Initiative has been up to, what we're planning to do next, and whether we're worth donating to. 

Main requirements:

1. Enthusiasm for Wild Animal Initiative's mission: reducing wild animal suffering by building a scientific community dedicated to making new interventions possible.
2. Ability to go deep in the weeds to make well-calibrated claims about WAI's impact.
    

Why I call it “live-action EA Forum commenting”

Fundraising at Wild Animal Initiative (WAI) is way more fun for me than I thought it would be, and I think many EAs would feel similarly.

WAI was born out of EAs asking hard questions about how to do the most good, and fundraising for WAI basically means having more of those conversations. But now there’s lots more to talk about: wild animal welfare science is starting to emerge as a field of its own; our strategy has been evolving; we’ve got a lot more ideas for near- and medium-term interventions…

And because our donors are mostly EAs — or similarly wonderfully wonky people who care about evidence, impact, and transparency — the incentives and norms are a lot like those on the EA Forum. Scout Mindset is the name of the game. We only make arguments we believe in, we’re open about our uncertainties, we thank people for pointing out where we’re wrong.

I call it “live-action” EA Forum commenting because it’s not all Forum-like conversations. It’s also about making those conversations happen in the real world, and making sure they have an impact. That entails a lot of project management, scheduling, emails back and forth, etc. So this job would be best for someone who likes both the more open-ended thinking/writing/talking work and the more bounded, game-like challenge of setting annual goals and taking lots of little steps to continually make progress toward them.

If you know anyone like that, please pass this on. For anyone who’s interested, I’m happy to answer any questions here or by email: [email protected].