Chief Development Officer

About Evidence Action 

Evidence Action is a non-profit dedicated to identifying neglected global health issues and scaling proven solutions - adding years of healthy life for entire generations. Deworm the World, our foundational program, has delivered over 2B deworming treatments, driving dramatic reductions in worm prevalence and generating over $23 billion in lifetime productivity gains. 

Our model operationalizes top academic research (including from Nobel-winning economists) and uses experts across global health, supply chain, and infrastructure to develop and implement health interventions at national scale. Our team of 700+ has reached over 500M people, working hand-in-hand with national governments to scale our approach across nine countries. Measurement and evaluation are embedded in every stage of our work - from idea validation in our Accelerator; to coverage validation upon rollout (quantifying uptake of interventions). 

The Evidence Action Accelerator, founded in 2019, researches and identifies the next unicorns of development - to date we have found five programs with potential to transform the health outcomes of millions, including: 

• Preventing stillbirths and neonatal deaths through testing and treating maternal syphilis - which today causes more deaths than pediatric HIV, and is treatable for just $0.50 a dose
• Reducing under-five child mortality by ~25% through scaling safe water access to hundreds of millions, which can add a year of healthy life for just $40
• Fighting leading causes of childhood disability through delivering iron and folic acid supplements to prevent anemia, applying our innovative school-based delivery model 

With these untapped opportunities now identified, we are at an inflection point in our capacity to create sector-wide impact - and improve health outcomes for hundreds of millions of people globally.

The Role 

We are hiring an innovative Chief Development Officer to drive a step-change increase in Evidence Action’s impact - generating years of health for hundreds of millions of people globally. This full-time role reports directly to the CEO.  

In this capacity, you will oversee fundraising across retail and major individual donors, strategic foundations, and institutions, in close partnership with our programmatic and operations teams. Your team will build on our existing strong growth trajectory, while driving further transformative growth and impact. Since 2017 we’ve raised $230M+ from GiveWell alone, and in parallel have roughly doubled our other sources of funding. 

We are seeking candidates excited by blue sky thinking, with a strong track record in people management and development, and experienced at defining ambitious vision and translating into tactical execution. Your team will take our growth to the next level, leveraging untapped donor opportunities in new programmatic areas. The right candidate is excited by the opportunity to drive and build pipelines across multiple programmatic portfolios. You are analytical and a strong communicator, with the ability to translate complex research into clear, compelling narratives. 

This role will be crucial to developing new funding models for first-of-their-kind government assistance projects - ranging from delivering safe water at scale across India, to scaling life-saving maternal syphilis treatment across Africa- in turn, transforming outcomes for entire generations. In addition, they’ll lead how we define and tell the story of this work through major media placements, talks, and content - helping to further build a movement in evidence-based aid. 

Position Location

This role can be hybrid or remote within the United States; our US office is in Washington DC. This role will require ~30% travel nationally and internationally as needed.

Responsibilities

• Own  the roadmap, vision, and execution of scaling annual donations across: 
• Individuals fundraising: Lead the end-to-end funnel of individual donors (both retail and high net worth) - reaching new audiences with the story of Evidence Action’s impact, strengthening ties with our existing community of supporters, leveraging advocates, testing new forms of insight-based storytelling, personalizing updates, and more.
• Institutional fundraising: Partner with program teams on scaling our work across strategic foundations and major institutions, and advocate across the sector for evidence-based aid.
• Communications, press, & website: Own Evidence Action’s brand voice and narrative, finding the most interesting and differentiating operational content - from work with fluid dynamics engineers in India to partnering with Nobel Prize-winning Economists.
• Donor analytics: Oversee analytics infrastructure and reporting.
• Manage existing team of 7 employees, scaling to ~10.
• Serve on leadership team of 800+ person organization.
• Be a passionate advocate and spokesperson for Evidence Action's mission and approach, in meetings with donors and partners, press interviews, and conferences.
• Drive communications strategy, defining and owning the Evidence Action brand.
• Drive organization transformation, training team members on best practices in fundraising and relationship management.
• Establish systems to ensure meaningful scale, including analytics infrastructure, donor pipelines, Salesforce tooling, and more.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience, with 5+ years in fundraising and/or resource mobilization

• Experience growing pipelines of $30M+
• Experience leading top performing teams (5+) and developing team members
• Creativity in execution - you see opportunities that others don’t, iterative approach to testing and validating tactics
• Curiosity with a passion for “the close" (persistence in converting prospects into donors)
• Utilizes a strong prioritization framework
• Provide timely and actionable feedback to others; proactively solicit feedback and iterate
• Comfort with data analysis and Excel (can perform complex functions)
• Willing to travel 10-20% of the time

Benefits

We consider multiple factors when determining the base salary for a role, including but not limited to: role scope, program budgets, internal equity, and a candidate’s qualifications and/or prior experience. Pay and benefits will be commensurate with the role specifications, local statutory requirements, and the cost of labor in the markets where we operate. 

For US based roles, Evidence Action provides comprehensive benefits including international health care, HSA/FSA options, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement plans with a matching component, generous and flexible leave options, as well as other employee perks on a reimbursement basis. For more information visit our  or ask our recruiting team!

The pay range for this role: $225,000 - $275,000

Evidence Action is an Equal Opportunity Employer with a commitment to diversity. All individuals, regardless of personal characteristics, are encouraged to apply.