Summary
Over the course of a year, the Fieldshaper program develops you into a field-leading grantmaker. You’ll steward $1,000,000 in grant capital, receive a $125,000 annual stipend, and deploy that capital within a sub-field of one of three key areas (farmed animals, global health, or philanthropic infrastructure); building the track record to become a grantmaker who can shape a field.
Role Details
Title: Grantmaker-In-Residence (Leader of the X fund or Grantmaker in Y area also possible options)
Location: Hybrid: Remote with four mandatory in-person weeks (London; New York; San Francisco; a cause-track conference (London, Oxford or Mexico depending on cause area).
Compensation: A living stipend of ~$125,000 for the year
Duration: 12 months, full-time, February 2027 – January 2028
Focus areas: Farmed animal welfare, Philanthropic infrastructure, Global health, Global aid policy
Goal: To create the next generation of fieldshapers and active grantmakers
How to Apply: Visit elevatephilanthropy.com/fieldshaperprogram (Deadline: October 30)
Program
The Elevate Philanthropy fieldshaper program is a one-year training program that turns generalist, high-agency professionals into active grantmakers and general managers of problems. After 6 weeks of intensive training, each resident will deploy $1,000,000 of grant capital across the rest of the year, similar to a program officer role at a foundation or the leader of a philanthropic fund. The program aims to create a pathway into philanthropy and to develop the next generation of grantmakers, with an emphasis on active deployment and ecosystem thinking.
An active grantmaker sources and builds funding opportunities, rather than passively processing grant requests, and a fieldshaper owns an entire problem and aims to do whatever it takes to solve it. Developed by the co-founder of Ambitious Impact’s Charity Entrepreneurship program, an incubator behind 50+ high-impact charities, the program will train grantmakers who grow and affect the broader field they operate in.
Residents join one of three cause tracks (Animal Welfare, Global Health, or Philanthropic Infrastructure) and complete a six-week bootcamp before deploying capital into a specific sub-area within their chosen track (e.g. effective careers, or fish welfare in Asia). After this, five months of weekly structured sessions will run alongside live grantmaking. In the second half of the year, this tapers to weekly coaching as residents scale their deployment.
The program includes four in-person weeks: kick-off in London; one each at conferences in San Francisco and New York, and one at a cause-relevant conference (the AVA Summit or EAG London). These give fieldshapers time to get to know one another and to meet other grantmakers, funders, and actors in their field.
The year closes with a published piece of thought leadership, a one-year grant portfolio, and a demo-day-style event where residents present how they deployed their funding. Each pool is structured as a fund, with ongoing opportunities (though not guarantees) for top-ups and increased funding volume.
What you will do
The key goal is to deploy $1,000,000 in grant capital over the year impactfully.
Deploy this capital in a way that builds up the specific sub-field your granting is in, and in a way that is cost-effective in terms of the amount good done per $.
Deploy the majority of capital actively, e.g. creating opportunities or finding funding options that other grantmakers would miss.
Build a pipeline of ~20 funding opportunities in your cause track, run due diligence scaled to grant size, and make the case for or against funding to a review process.
Long-term, you will also consider assessing grant opportunities beyond single organizations; looking at fund managers and pooled vehicles, as well as actively co-building new projects in the field.
As you demonstrate your grantmaking ability, you will build out your portfolio and potentially fundraise with your new funder network, to further develop the area.
What you will learn
There is some basic learning about how to be a grantmaker (e.g. areas covered in this book), but the program is primarily focused on building active grantmaking and fieldshaping tools. This is broken down into 4 subsections:
Ecosystem-level thinking: For example, being able to analyze an area and determine where a marginal funder should deploy more capital to increase the total impact in the field.
Creating opportunities: For example, finding talented individuals and providing them with the necessary capital and support to advance an intervention in an area that would have not otherwise progressed.
Complex judgment: For example, being able to weigh off factors like the talent counterfactuals of a grant, and how a given project connects to the broader ecosystem.
Coordination: For example, if it makes sense to build up a donor collaboration in your area, and if so, which actors would be best positioned to join it.
What you leave with
A full year’s grantmaking track record, $1,000,000 deployed, a clear explanation for your theory of change for your field improving, published thought leadership under your name, introductions to grantmaking organisations, and working relationships with other highly talented fieldshapers you’ve learned and worked alongside.
We think anyone who goes through the program will be in a good place to be hired by existing and new foundations, launch their own fund, or kick off a career in active grantmaking in general. The reason we are running this program is that we believe there is a shortage of great grantmakers relative to funding and the hiring needs of growing foundations. Currently, there is no clear pathway for someone to get started into the field, and we see this long-term career impact as the primary driver of this program’s impact.
What we are looking for
Traits
Rigor and intellectual honesty under ambiguity; decision-making grounded in evidence.
Clear decision-making grounded in evidence and logic.
Comfort with the responsibility of directing large amounts of capital.
Ability to do high-quality self-directed work and gain knowledge quickly in a field.
No prior grantmaking experience required (we are equally excited about applicants who have none).
Example Target Demographics
Mid-career Professionals
Profile: Mid-career, currently in an adjacent sector (consulting, entrepreneurship, tech, policy) and looking for a structured route into philanthropy. This program appeals because it compresses the learning of years of on-the-job grantmaking into twelve months, backed by capital and warm introductions to grantmakers.
Concrete example: An ex-consultant who did three years of consulting and then founded her own firm. She is exceptional at the work and disappointed by its lack of impact. She has been filling evenings and weekends with volunteering and reading about social issues online. She has not picked a cause area and grantmaking feels like the best nonprofit role that would check boxes she has in terms of risk, intellectual challenge and impact at the same time. However, the path to get there is completely unclear.
Nonprofit Founders and Operators
Profile: People who have founded, run, or held senior operating roles at high-impact, evidence-based nonprofits and now want to move to the funding side. They arrive with grantee-side experience and a working knowledge of what organizations need from funders, which gives them an advantage in matching funders to the right grantees.
Example: A founder who spent seven years building an NGO. He wants more leverage than a single organisation can offer and has a deep sense of how the ecosystem he operates in works.
Philanthropic Actors without Fieldshaping Experience
Profile: People who have done grantmaking or philanthropic advisory before and are looking to increase their ability to do active grantmaking and more intentional fieldshaping.
Example: Someone who currently works at a classic foundation, but has found that even actors at the top of their field leave a lot of gaps in the ecosystem that are hard to fill, despite significant capital to deploy. They want their next grantmaking role to be more directly connected to building up the field.
Recruitment Process
The recruitment vetting is an intense process, but we aim to make each of the steps useful for the candidates in accessing their fit with grantmaking as a career path. Applications are open now, and close October 30th. We aim to have acceptance offers out to candidates by mid-December, with the program starting in February.
Online application
Online video screening
Two interviews
Two test tasks
References
Can you spell out what you mean by "philanthropic infrastructure" here?
Very interesting