Description
About the Foundation
The Rauch Family Foundation is a private family foundation with a substantial global health portfolio in the areas of infectious disease and nutrition. The Foundation currently supports five global health grantees with $10 to $20 million in total annual giving and manages a global health corpus of approximately $225 million. The Foundation anticipates a significant partial spend-down (~$100 million) over the next twelve months and is evaluating further spend-down over the coming years.
Role Overview
The Senior Program Officer, Global Health (Contract) will manage and advance the Foundation’s global health portfolio during a period of strategic reassessment and anticipated spend-down. This senior advisory role emphasizes cost-effective deployment of philanthropic capital, disciplined analysis, and thoughtful positioning of private philanthropy within a rapidly changing global health landscape.
The Program Officer will identify, develop, and refine grant proposals that demonstrate strong evidence of impact, clear theories of change, and high leverage relative to cost. The Program Officer will be expected to assess where private philanthropic funding can achieve outcomes that are unlikely to be realized through government, multilateral, or market-based actors alone.
The role requires an understanding of current shifts in global health policy and funding—particularly changes driven by the U.S. federal government—and the implications of those shifts for global health systems, NGOs, and implementing partners. The Program Officer will help the Board understand where gaps are emerging, where philanthropic capital can be most catalytic, and how the Foundation’s resources can be used in ways that are both distinctive and time-sensitive.
This is an advisory role with no grant-approval authority. The Program Officer will shape giving through grantee relationship management and proposal development, and will make recommendations to the Board for all funding decisions.
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as primary point of contact for existing global health grantees
- Develop funding recommendations, renewal analyses, and proposal materials for board review
- In support of the spend-down, develop an initial landscape of 6–10 fundable concepts and advance 3–5 to full diligence, with the goal of recommending 1–2 anchor grants (or up to 4 total grants) totaling ~$100M.
- Present clear, decision-ready options that surface comparative impact and risk
- Support Board consensus by clarifying areas of alignment and disagreement
- Advise the Board on potential further spend-down of the global health corpus, including pacing scenarios and anticipated impact.
Compensation and Time Commitment
This is a twelve-month contractor engagement with a total project fee ranging from $132,000 to $150,000, depending on experience. Compensation will be paid in equal monthly installments. The contract is for a total of 780 hours. While the Rauch Family Foundation anticipates an average monthly time commitment of 65 hours, the workload may fluctuate between 50 and 80 hours depending on project milestones.
Requirements
Qualifications
- 7+ years of experience in global health philanthropy or a closely related field
- Experience working with significant capital deployment in global health contexts
- Strong analytical and writing skills; ability to translate complexity for non-expert boards
- Experience with foundation spend-downs or time-limited initiatives strongly preferred
- Experience working with or advising family foundations preferred
