GiveWell is a research organization that identifies and funds cost-effective giving opportunities, focusing on global health and well-being. Our work is funded by thousands of donors who rely on our research to inform their giving. We’ve grown from raising $1.5 million annually in 2010 to raising over $300 million in 2023.

The Role

We are hiring a Salesforce Administrator to support internal users, continuously improve user experience and data quality, and ensure data reliability and consistency across our Salesforce instance. The Salesforce Administrator will fully own the support, maintenance, and roadmap of core products leveraging Salesforce NPSP, and provide front-line support for our custom Salesforce app.

Why we’re hiring this role right now: As GiveWell grows, so does our need for robust, scalable systems and top-tier support. We’re hiring for our Salesforce team to support this growth and our expanding user base.

As our Salesforce Administrator, you’ll support and eventually own:

• Outreach CRM 
• Gift/Donation Processing System
• Service Console/Case Management 
• Reports & Dashboards 

Note: Your journey will begin with a focus on support and system familiarization before assuming full ownership. You’ll collaborate closely with our Salesforce team as you build context and expand your scope of ownership over the first three to six months.

Specific duties will include: 

Salesforce Support

• Serve as the primary point of contact for all Salesforce support requests, resolving issues in a timely manner and/or routing requests for products maintained by other teammates
• Proactively monitor Salesforce performance and initiate troubleshooting when necessary
• Manage onboarding/offboarding and permission modifications
• Support teams with reporting and dashboards
• Design and deliver walkthroughs and training to educate staff
• Escalate bugs and larger process issues to senior SF teammates
• Create and share documentation to help teammates use SF effectively
• Identify and suggest areas for improvement

Database maintenance

• Own data quality including setting up monitoring systems to identify problematic data streams/automations and eliminate errors
• Perform data uploads using tools like DataLoader
• Perform exploratory data analysis to expose data quality problems and resolve them
• Drive duplicate management in partnership with our fundraising team
• Handle and manage data with an eye to upholding our privacy, security, and data management standards

About You

The strongest candidates will have one to three years of professional experience as a dedicated Salesforce Administrator along with some prior professional experience in customer-facing roles. In addition to relevant experience with the responsibilities listed above, we’ll be looking for someone with:

• A strong technical understanding of Salesforce, especially as deployed in NPSP
• Familiarity with integrations and packages used with NPSP (e.g., Form Assembly, G-Connector, Zapier, Cirrus, and donation payment platforms)
• Extensive experience providing support to all kinds of users (e.g., from entry-level staff to senior leadership)
• Prior experience working on a small, collaborative team with a high ownership culture, preferably in a non-profit organization
• Knowledge of data integrity within Salesforce and familiarity with strategies to drive data quality
• Skills in report building and dashboard development
• Experience helping users improve how they use Salesforce through training and tutorials
• Proven ability to put together effective and engaging enablement resources like videos, guides, and other forms of documentation  
• A clear prioritization framework and ability to meet deadlines, act with urgency, and manage trade-offs with great judgement
• Experience working within project management software (we use Asana)

We also think these qualities will help you do well in the role and at GiveWell: 

• Customer service excellence: You feel like you’ve done a good job when your teammates are served quickly, fully, and with thoughtfulness.
• Sense of stewardship: You feel responsible for the outcomes of the work that you do. As a result, you act proactively and actively model the level of care and discretion required of someone in a tech admin role. 
• Listening skills: You are able to translate a user’s description of the issue into something you can take action on from a technical perspective. You have empathy for various staff needs and challenges. 
• Communication skills: You are really good at asking effective clarifying questions, you convey statuses and updates across the team when needed, you give users clear guidance and instructions, and you excel at conveying technical concepts to non-technical audiences.  
• Problem-solving skills: You have honed the art of troubleshooting user issues, and have a good sense of when to dive in and figure it out and when to escalate and reach out for help. 
• Organizational skills: You have great attention to detail, thrive on creating systems and scalable workflows, and keep meticulous records of your work. You properly utilize our collaboration and project management tools.
• Prioritization skills: You maintain your composure and structure even when juggling multiple high-priority demands and have excellent judgment in figuring out what’s most important.

Key Questions & Information

What does success look like in this role?

• The primary responsibilities of this role are to deliver exceptional support to our internal users, enhance user enablement, and maintain high data quality within Salesforce. Success in this role will be evaluated based on these key areas.

What is the structure of the team I’d be joining?

• You will report directly to our Head of Tech. You’ll be part of a team of Salesforce professionals, each owning distinct Salesforce applications, products, and lifecycle stages. You will be focused on the most mature core products we use. Naturally, your work will intersect with that of your colleagues, so coordination and communication will be key.  

Do I need certifications to apply?

• For this role, we value experience over certifications. If you are a Salesforce Certified Administrator, you could be a good fit with the right applicable experience, but we don’t require this certification for the role. 

Would I be responsible for gift processing?

• We know that at some organizations Salesforce Administrators are responsible for processing gifts of donations. At GiveWell, we have a dedicated gift processing team who you will work with and support, but this role won’t be directly responsible for those tasks. 

What are some of the reasons I might not like this role?

• The majority of the needed work in Salesforce will focus on support, training, and data quality. If you are looking for a role where building Salesforce apps is the majority of what you do day-to-day, this role may not be the best fit. 

What is the hiring process like?

The steps in the hiring process are described below. Please note that we could choose not to move forward at any stage after application review. We plan to devote significant staff effort to reviewing applications, and we’ll respond to everyone who applies. 

• Application
• Interview with our Manager of Talent Acquisition
• Work sample submission and review
• Technical interview with two senior members of our Tech Team
• Interview with our Head of Tech
• Values based interview
• Reference checks
• Offer

Details

Team: You’ll report to the Head of Technology and will be part of our Salesforce team which includes two other Salesforce Developers/Admins.

Compensation:

• NYC or the San Francisco Bay Area: $105,800
• All other US locations: $95,900

Location: GiveWell’s staff work primarily remotely within the US and abroad.

• Offices: You are welcome but not required to work from our offices in Oakland, California, or Brooklyn, NYC.
• International work: We are happy to employ staff internationally on a case-by-case basis. Given the nature of this role, a successful candidate will need to work hours that have a certain minimum overlap with American working hours and the schedules of key coworkers.

Flexibility: We support and encourage flexible working, including flexible hours, working remotely, and working from the office when you choose. The majority of our staff, including senior management, work flexibly in one way or another.

Visa Sponsorship: If you want to work in the United States and need a work visa, we’ll do our best to sponsor it (and also cover up to 100% of relocation expenses on a case-by-case basis). Please note that government entities ultimately dictate our ability to sponsor visas.

Benefits: Our benefits include:

• Fully funded health, dental, vision, and life insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the US for you and any dependents)
• Four weeks of paid time off per year
• 16 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Ergonomic home workstations or coworking space memberships
• 403(b) retirement plan

Travel: GiveWell hosts “Visit Weeks” twice a year in our Oakland, California, office and up to two annual departmental retreats. Attending these in-person opportunities will be important to fulfilling the goals of this role. Otherwise no travel is expected for this role. 

Start date: We are seeking to fill the role immediately, and we’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer.

About GiveWell

GiveWell makes grants to support cost-effective programs that save and improve lives. We focus on global health and poverty alleviation in the lowest-income parts of the world because that is where we've found we can have the greatest impact.

Since 2007, we’ve directed over $2 billion to cost-effective programs and interventions. In the last two years, we’ve made more than $500 million in grants. GiveWell is one of the world’s largest private funders of global development efforts, and we estimate that the funding we've directed will save more than 200,000 lives.

GiveWell is most well-known for recommending a small number of top charities, which currently support seasonal malaria chemoprevention, antimalarial nets, vaccine incentivization, and vitamin A supplementation. However, most of our research capacity is devoted to finding cost-effective opportunities outside of those programs. 

Recent grants have:

• Helped governments to implement high-impact health programs, like in-line chlorination of drinking water in India and HIV/syphilis screening and treatment for pregnant people in Zambia and Cameroon.
• Funded program delivery alongside strengthened monitoring and evaluation, as in our recent grants to support treatment of clubfoot and to evaluate the program.   
• Sought to scope and scale promising interventions that don't have clear existing implementers. We are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative's Incubator and Evidence Action's Accelerator to identify potentially cost-effective interventions and create programs that we would be excited to support in the future. For example, we recently funded a program to provide diarrhea treatment to children in Nigeria that we co-designed with CHAI through the Incubator program.
• Tested our assumptions through further research, including studies on the effect of water chlorination on mortality, the impact of a tree-planting program on farmers' income, and the effects of combining the RTS,S malaria vaccine and perennial malaria chemoprevention.

We never take for granted that GiveWell's work is good for the world. We make our reasoning public and transparent so others can challenge it (sometimes we even pay people to point out our errors). We go to unusual lengths to check our assumptions and assess our impact, including funding research and external analysis to address our uncertainties and insisting that our grantees conduct rigorous monitoring and evaluation. We change our minds when the evidence demands it.

Additional information

We don’t want to miss candidates that could do great things at GiveWell. Practically, that means a GiveWell staff member reads all components of every application carefully and considers the whole picture of your background and potential. If you’re on the fence about applying because you meet some but not 100% of our preferred qualifications (some studies suggest this hesitation is especially common for women and people of color), we encourage you to apply anyway.

GiveWell is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer by choice. At minimum, this means that we comply with all federal, state, and local EEO and employment laws. Beyond the requirements of those laws, we value our team’s diversity in all respects, and we desire to maintain a work environment free of harassment or discrimination—we want our team members to thrive at GiveWell. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, contact us at jobs@givewell.org. We will consider employment for qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

By submitting an application, you acknowledge that you have read and consent to GiveWell's privacy statement for job applicants. By completing an application exercise, you acknowledge and assent to GiveWell's Work Trial Policy.