Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Writing about my job on Open Philanthropy's Global Aid Policy program + related career opportunities, published by Sam Anschell on April 13, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.

Last year I wrote this post on my first year at Open Philanthropy as an entry-level operations generalist. ~9 months ago I switched teams to work on Open Philanthropy's Global Aid Policy program, and I want to write about my experience in the new role for a few reasons:

Aid policy wasn't an area I was familiar with before working on this program at Open Philanthropy, and I still don't see much written about aid policy in EA spaces these days.

I appreciate when people write about their jobs. I think it's a great way to learn about a field or function and consider whether I could be a good fit.

Now is an exciting time to get involved in aid advocacy and policy! Probably Good just updated their cause area page for impactful aid policy and advocacy careers, and Open Philanthropy is hiring for our Global Aid Policy team.

This post is divided into two broad sections

Background on the field of aid policy

My experience working on aid policy at Open Philanthropy

What is aid policy?

Aid policy is a broad term that refers to the field working on the size of a country's foreign assistance budget, where this budget is spent (both programmatically and geographically), and any related legislation that guides the impact of this budget.

What is the theory of change behind working on aid policy?

Per OECD, DAC countries gave 211 billion dollars in grant-equivalent official development assistance (ODA) in 2022. That's approximately 279 times the total that GiveWell, Open Philanthropy, and EA funds directed to be disbursed in 2022[1].

Global ODA supports projects across a variety of sectors such as global health, humanitarian efforts (refugee support, natural disaster support, etc.), climate, education, agriculture, water & sanitation, and infrastructure (roads, hospitals, power, etc.). Each donor country has unique priorities that shape where its aid goes, which are informed by geopolitics, national values, historical precedent, and requests from recipient countries and the international community.

My personal estimate is that the best interventions in an aid sector are 5+ times more effective than the average intervention, and that programs in certain sectors, like global health, increase recipient wellbeing by more than twice as much per dollar as the average sector. By working in government or at an organization that informs government, like a think tank or CSO engaged in advocacy, you may be able to grow the size and/or shift the allocation of a wealthy country's aid budget.

As an example, Korea's aid agency, KOICA, has 379 employees and is set to disburse 3.93 billion dollars[2] in 2024, which comes out to a little over $10M per employee - almost triple the ratio of the Gates Foundation.

It seems possible for a KOICA staff member to improve the effectiveness of millions of dollars per year in expectation - both by doing excellent work so that KOICA's existing programs run efficiently, and by presenting evidence to KOICA leadership on the value for money of new strategies.

I don't think most aid programs avert as many DALYs per dollar as GiveWell's top charities, but I think they do a huge amount of good.

It's rare for donor countries to contribute to GiveWell-recommended charities directly, but by working at or giving to organizations focused on aid policy, your resources may have sufficient leverage (in growing countries' contributions to cost-effective programs) that their overall impact is competitive with "traditional EA" direct service delivery (like buying bed nets).

What drives differences in cost-effectiveness between aid programs?

Three factors that influence how impactful a given aid project may ...