Want to challenge yourself at a high-growth startup AND make a difference in the world?

A bit about us:

Hi, we’re Who Gives a Crap! We make eco-friendly toilet paper (as well as tissues and paper towels) and donate 50% of our profits to help build toilets for the 2.3 billion people in need.

We absolutely love doing good, but we’re also exceptionally good at it. To date, we’ve donated over AUD$8.3 million (roughly USD$5.9 million) to fund sanitation projects around the globe. We’ve grown quickly – selling directly to customers across three continents and establishing a strong B2B business in Australia that’s expanding to the UK market this year.

Our team is made up of over 80 amazing humans working out of Melbourne, Los Angeles, China, and Manila. We’re working hard to reach our ambitious goals and diversify our product range to ensure we can have the greatest impact possible – both for the planet and its people. With your help, we’re hoping to increase our annual donation 10-fold in the next couple of years and continue to make the most beautiful, eco-friendly goods around.

A bit about the role:

As our Head of Impact, you will lead the defining and executing of our social impact strategy, ensuring we’re making as much impact as possible with our donations. Reporting to and collaborating closely with our Chief of Product and Purpose, you’ll also be working directly with people across the business to identify and bring to life new approaches to impact storytelling, and be the advocate for our impact initiatives in business-wide strategic decisions. We donate 50% of our profits every year, and you’ll be in charge of evolving and improving the way in which we select partners and make our donations.

Speaking of partners, you’ll also be actively keeping your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the worlds of international development, social enterprise and WASH, and you’ll be working to cultivate a network of advisors, partners and potential recipients of funding. You’ll manage the relationships with our existing partners and make sure we’re consistently supporting them as best we can, both with our time and our donations.

You’ll bring your deep knowledge of our partners’ work and the broader world of WASH to our team, as well. As the impact expert, you’ll be the go-to person for all questions related to impact and you will lead initiatives to connect our team and customers to our impact in new and meaningful ways. You’ll also help us scope what the future of impact looks like for our business, including growing a team that you’ll lead directly and identifying ways for us to push our impact beyond our monetary donations. And lastly, we can’t forget that you’ll also be committing a significant percentage of your time coming up with toilet-related puns. Just because we’re doing serious work doesn’t mean we need to be serious people!

We’re hiring for this role to be based in our Los Angeles hub. However, if you live outside of LA (maybe you're closer to our Melbourne hub, maybe you're somewhere else in the US...) but think you are the perfect fit and just can’t help yourself from applying, we are welcoming applications from other locations, as well. We’ll expect that, as much as possible, you'll work in line with the LA timezone and working hours, though, and that you’ll be willing to spend quality time in LA with our team here once travel is safe and approved again. Until then, enjoy working from your couch, the beach, your front porch… wherever you please!

If you worked here this past month here are some things you might have been involved in:

• Created a first draft of a donation strategy and partner selection criteria, working closely with our Impact Committee - that you’ve helped create - and co-founders to ensure it integrates our business needs and general philosophy on impact.
• Spoken with 4 amazing organizations about the potential of donating to them, and built a formal recommendation about whether we should consider them in our next round of donations.
• Written a blog article (nailing our brand tone of voice while you’re at it) about our approach to philanthropy and why we’re committed to ‘growing the pie’ of donations, and then collaborated with the Creative Team to bake a toilet-shaped pie and photograph it.
• Selected 2 new advisors to add to our network that you’re confident will help us improve our donation strategy and pipeline
• Presented our “Impact 101” to all 6 of our new employees onboarding this month
• Drafted a handy deck of guidelines to ensure that our Creative and Marketing teams know how and when they can use photos from our impact partners, making sure we’re protecting the subjects of those photos and avoiding creating ‘poverty porn.’
• Reached out to two of our existing donation partners to ask for an update to share at the next Impact brown-bag session, and connected one of them to our Head of Digital Product for advice on hiring a developer.
• Worked closely with People and Culture to kick off the scoping out of a potential Sustainability Manager role
• Created and hosted a ‘What the heck is a latrine?” video presentation to kick off a monthly impact education presentation for our teams.
• Worked with our Finance Team to brainstorm the pros and cons of creating a separate charitable entity to process our donations, and committed to leading the follow-up research and planning of the project.
• Brainstormed ridiculous campaign ideas for World Toilet Day and joined our Creative Team on set to film an artist sculpting a toilet.
• Piloted our first tool for measuring the success of our impact efforts, opening up the doors for us to iterate and improve them over time.
• Joined the planning of our next company-wide retreat and led the conversations with our impact partners to figure out the best way to bring 130 people together to visit toilets in Asia next year.

Let’s talk about you

You’re a professional optimist

But really. You have deep professional experience in International Development, and have committed your career (or part of it, at least) to making the world a better place. You know what CLTS is, for better or worse, and know what it takes to improve living conditions in the furthest stretches of the globe.

...but you know we could be doing better

Just because you know how the system works doesn’t mean you don’t see room for improvement. In fact, you’re passionate about reimagining the way we distribute resources and make change in the world. And you’ve got your finger on the pulse of all the promising innovations in international development and social enterprise.

You’re passionate about teaching and inspiring others

You love the idea of writing a monthly “toilet facts” column on our blog, and speaking at conferences about our work. You’re clear, concise and knowledgeable when explaining international development and sanitation, and find ways of making it inspiring and fun.

You secretly (or not so secretly) dream of being a TED speaker

You’re a natural storyteller, and you’ve mastered the art of public speaking. Even better, you can’t stop imagining new and creative ways to tell the story of global impact that will engage and inspire your audience to write you follow up letters just to thank you, or to find out more.

You’re a champion for ethics

You’re not afraid to call us out on things we can be doing better, and you help us ensure that we’re having the most impact possible, while never forgetting our ethics (or our manners).

You’re an amazing collaborator

You take ownership and accountability but aren’t afraid to ask for and offer help. You’re comfortable working with our Finance Team to coordinate donations, our lawyers to reimagine our donation structure, and our Creative Team to brainstorm campaign ideas.

You’re as comfortable in rural Kenya and New Delhi as you are exploring the shops in Silverlake or strolling Central Park.

You’re comfortable leading trips to the field, even with people who have never been. You navigate foreign environments confidently, even under stress, and you’re a pro at knowing what not to eat while on the road to avoid getting sick. And, when you land back at home you’re comfortable with showering after the flight, turning around, and going straight back out to back a donor gala.

You give a crap

Yep. We’re all here because we genuinely want to make the world a better place with our work, and we want you to want that too! Awwww.

Why you should work with us

Every minute you spend working with us, you’re making a difference. The more we grow, the bigger an impact we’ll have.

If you have a great idea, we’ll do everything we can to make it happen. This is the kind of role that will be hard to find anywhere else: you’ll work with an incredible bunch of passionate people to grow a fast-paced startup at a crucial point in its trajectory.

The job is also amazingly flexible, something we’re working hard to hold onto even as we grow super quickly. We started the business remotely, and now have hubs in 4 cities around the world. While (pre-covid times!) the team spends a few days of the week together in our coworking spaces, you can also mix it up and work in your PJs from home or set up office at the beach but, up to you! And while we don’t have a Friday drinks cart (yet), you will get free toilet paper. A lot of it. And nothing beats that.

Lastly, you get to say the word ‘crap’ more than in any other job. Guaranteed.

Salary

This depends on your experience but just because we’re a social enterprise doesn’t mean you’ll get paid peanuts. Think chocolate covered macadamia nuts with some extra perks thrown in. In other words, we pay competitively and are determined to make this the best job you'll ever have – you won’t ever want to leave!

On top of the normal perks like annual leave, we also provide flexibility to take extra unpaid leave or travel while working, we provide a health insurance stipend, generous parental leave, training and development budget and a whole lot of other stuff. And did we mention the free toilet paper?