What is Manifund?
In What happened to impact markets? Austin laid out a brief history of Manifund and explanation of who and what we are. The perhaps grandiose goal of Manifund is to solve the problem of philanthropic capital allocation. In practice, over a few years, we’ve … done a little bit of that, with some interesting detours?
We run manifund.org, a platform for funding charitable endeavors. Manifund:
runs annual regranting programs
offers fiscal sponsorship for grantees
handles logistics for programs like ACX Grants and the Falcon Fund
Right now we’re running Surplus, a startup incubator.
We also incubated Manifest, now a separate organization.
And Mox—see below!
Read our Substack to get a sense of what we’re thinking about and what our aims are: right now it’s funding transparency, impact markets, and more.
What is Mox?
Mox is an incubator and community space in San Francisco. Our vision is to be a space in SF for AI safety, broad-tent EA, and other people doing cool stuff—somewhere people can meet, make connections, work together, learn new things, and feel a sense of community. We:
offer coworking in San Francisco, for individuals and startup teams
run events, from weekly clubs and members’ dinners to talks, movie nights, and mixers
host fellowships like Surplus, Frame, Arbor, and Global Experts Fellowship
Mox was incubated by Manifund and still runs out of the same entity, but is now a substantially separate team and operation.
Why work at Manifund or Mox?
The biggest reason to work here is excitement about what we’re doing! We want to hire people who are eager to make an impact on the world, whether by creating good communities or getting philanthropic money to the right places.
We have a small team that offers lots of independence, flexibility, and room for growth. Right now the Manifund team is 2ish FTE and the Mox team is 4ish, meaning that each new hire can have a lot of impact. And it’s a great way to quickly get a vantage point on the ecosystem and come into contact with interesting people and ideas, whether you’re working with donors and founders at Manifund or members at Mox.
Who are we looking for?
So what roles are we hiring for? We’re fairly flexible, both because we’re open to growing in different directions depending on who we hire, and because the current team is pretty flexible. We don’t have specific roles we need to hire for on any particular timeline—we’re more looking to hire exceptional talent and people we’re particularly excited about working with.
But to give an idea, here are some types of people we’d be interested in:
Mox event coordinator
Someone who loves creating great events. Job tasks could include:
brainstorming and planning events
coordinating with outside people hosting events at Mox
being responsible for event logistics
Mox office manager
Someone who is organized and cares about making spaces amazing to be in and work at. Job tasks could include:
coordinating with vendors and contractors: cleaning, internet, maintenance
buying and arranging furniture and equipment
handling logistics for food, office supplies, printing, and mail
responding to feedback from users
Mox director
Someone who shares the vision of Mox and wants to be responsible for driving it forward and managing the Mox team.
Manifund ops/finance person
Someone who is detail-oriented and likes spreadsheets and setting up systems—could be someone with experience in this stuff or someone who wants to learn. Job tasks could include:
being responsible for grant payouts and processing incoming donations
responding to customer support inquiries
reviewing projects
handling taxes and other required filings
bookkeeping, working with auditors
Manifund software engineer
Someone who’s excited to make our websites great. Job tasks could include:
improving the manifund.org site
working on side projects like trace.manifund.org, FundingBench, and Impact Exchange
making sites fast, beautiful, and user-friendly
automating more steps in the grant process
Manifund growth/outreach
Someone who’s happy talking to lots of people and asking them for things. Job tasks could include:
fundraising from donors
managing new grant programs
recruiting projects to post on Manifund
figuring out how to promote Manifund—Substack, Twitter, or whatever you come up with
Fill in your own
Someone who’s excited about some or all of the above, or something else we haven’t listed! If anything, being willing to take on many different types of tasks is a plus.
Logistics
For Mox, roles are based in SF; for Manifund, employees can be remote or work in our SF office. We pay competitively, with pay varying depending on the role, and prefer to make hiring decisions following a paid work trial—the length of the trial can be dependent on your availability. We’re open to visa sponsorship and relocation support.
To apply, fill out our expression of interest or email austin@manifund.org! Note that we don’t expect to be able to reply to everyone who reaches out.
Funny timing. I’m an independent researcher working on an open specification for warranted decision-making under uncertainty, with provenance, competing trajectories, and accountable resource allocation built into the architecture. Just today I found myself asking why research funding doesn’t work more like: open problem → competing approaches → small funded experiment → evidence → expanded funding if warranted, while preserving the failed branches also. And suddenly I am notified of this post.
I’m not sure I want a job, but I’m suddenly very curious whether there’s an experiment worth running together.