Chief Operating Officer (COO)

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is seeking a Chief Operating Officer to build an organization and operations division capable of handling significant growth while maintaining quality and upholding our values. The COO will put in place robust and reliable teams, systems and processes that will enable GWWC to grow significantly and in a multitude of ways over the coming few years, including from processing our current annual $30M+ in high-impact grants to $300M+, from serving a community of pledgers of 10,000 to 100,000+, and from a team of 10FTE to 30+ FTE.

Impact in this role

You'll be a key member of leadership helping ensure that we are successful in this scaleup, and overseeing finance, compliance, HR, and grantmaking across our 3 legal entities. This role is critical to our success in the future, and without the right person, we will not achieve our ambitious goals. Your work will directly cause significantly more money being raised and made available to solve the world's most pressing problems.

• Start date: As early as possible, ideally from June 2025
• Hours: Full-time
• Location: Global/Remote, with a preference for candidates based in the US, UK or Netherlands
• Salary: $120,000+ USD, depending on experience and location. We are open to making exceptions and stretching our guidelines for truly exceptional candidates or circumstances.
• Employment: Permanent with a 3-month probation period
• Application process: Applications will close in March, with the application process expected to run through April.

To apply: Apply here by March 16th, 2025. We will evaluate candidates on a rolling basis before that deadline.

The COO will be a key member of GWWC's executive team - alongside the CEO and the Chief Growth Officer (CGO) - during a critical organizational growth phase. As we lay the foundations to scale our organization, and as a multi-entity grantmaking organization, we need strong and reliable operational leadership to build the systems, processes, and teams that will enable this growth while staying true to our core values and high standards for effective giving.

GWWC's current operations capacity is 3-4 in-house FTE with the addition of 1FTE in contracting, and we expect capacity to need to grow significantly over the coming months and years to meet our ambitious goals. It will be the COO's key responsibility to hire for and develop the associated Operations Division, including grantmaking, finance, compliance, HR, and IT support functions.

Key responsibilities

• Build and lead GWWC's operations division
  • Manage and mentor our current team of 3 staff and several external contractors, and build out the division over the coming months and years.
• Put in place robust, reliable and compliant operational, financial and grantmaking systems for 10-100x scale
• Lead GWWC's operational strategy, planning, hiring and contracting
• Hire, line manage and develop operational team leads
• Ensure regulatory compliance and strong risk management across jurisdictions
• Create the systems, policies and other conditions for GWWC staff to grow, develop and thrive
• Support the CEO on budgeting, governance and board development
• Help build and maintain strong culture and value alignment during growth

Essential experience and skills

• Scaling operations and managing organizational growth (ideally experience growing a 10 FTE to a 30+ FTE organization)
• Building, leading and developing high-performing teams (particularly remote, international teams)
• Attention to detail and project management skills
• A drive to build processes and systems that improve both reliability and efficiency
• Professional judgment, especially for finance and compliance concerns.
  • As the person accountable for financial, compliance and legal matters, you'll need to have the ability to sense when something might be an issue and make a decision on how to handle it.
• Giving What We Can is looking to scale its impact 10-100x over the coming years by making giving effectively and significantly more of a norm. We're looking for a COO who is highly motivated to help us get there and who not only feels but also acts in strong alignment with our values.

Beneficial experience

• Non-profit compliance, legal, governance and risk management
  • Giving What We Can operates US, UK, and Canadian entities. We believe that experience with nonprofit legal and compliance in the US and UK in particular will be especially useful in this role.

Giving What We Can (GWWC) is on a mission to create a world in which giving effectively and significantly is a cultural norm. We envision a thriving global effective giving ecosystem which makes available the financial resources needed to solve the world's most pressing problems.

Founded in 2009, we are best known for the 10% Pledge, where nearly 10,000 people have committed to donating at least 10% of their lifetime income to highly effective charities. These 10% Pledgers and our broader community of pledgers are currently giving $30M+ USD to high-impact charities each year, of which $10M+ is donated through Giving What We Can's own donation platform, and granted onwards to our supported programs (in total, we move $30M USD through our platform each year, including from non-pledge donors).

There is potential for immense impact if we manage to bring our effective giving pledges to a wider audience, and so as of 2025, we are setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) to scale our impact 100x and reach 1 million pledgers donating $3B USD to high-impact charities annually. This would imply the equivalent of 1M lives being saved by our pledgers every year. On the road to this BHAG, we are aiming for 100,000 pledgers giving $300M USD to highly effective charities by the end of 2030.

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 and income protection.

Diversity & Inclusion

GWWC is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity in our organization. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability status. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to ensure an inclusive and accessible recruitment process for all candidates, and we comply with all applicable laws and regulations regarding equal employment opportunity and non-discrimination.

Application process

Applications close in March, with the application process expected to run through April, including at least a written application form, one or multiple work tests/trials, reference checks, and interviews with GWWC leadership and board members. We'll provide candidates with more details on the stages after screening initial applications.