Coefficient Giving’s “Day in the Life” series showcases the wide-ranging work of our staff, spotlighting individual team members as they navigate a typical workday. We hope these posts provide an inside look into what working at Coefficient is really like. If you’re interested in joining our team, we encourage you to check out our open roles.
Olivia Larsen is a Program Officer on Coefficient Giving’s Global Health & Wellbeing (GHW) Partnerships team. She works with donors to help them understand and use Coefficient’s research to give as effectively as possible. Olivia holds an MBA from Yale School of Management and a BA in English and Economics from Williams College. Outside of work, her strengths include having a near-encyclopedic knowledge of CBS’s Survivor and co-captaining her kickball team; her weaknesses include really surviving in the wild and actually playing kickball.
I was the second hire on Coefficient’s GHW Partnerships team, which was created in 2024. I was drawn to the role because it blends two things I care about: rigorous research into high-impact giving and building relationships with donors who want to put that research to use. Before Coefficient, I spent six years at GiveWell, primarily as a philanthropy advisor on their outreach team. As I dug into the weeds of GiveWell’s research, I was continually struck by just how thoughtful the work was. I kept coming back to the question of how to communicate that rigor to busy donors who can’t dedicate 40 hours a week to understanding how you can save a life for $5,000. My role at Coefficient has similar goals, and I love sharing the breadth of our work with donors who are interested in giving across a range of causes.
I work from our San Francisco office every day, so my mornings usually start with a mix of in-person and virtual conversations. A typical day might start with a call with a prospective donor who reached out over email. On calls like these, I ask a lot of questions to understand what elements of our work might be most interesting to them. One person I spoke with recently was passionate about innovation and improving broken peer-review processes, so I shared details about our Abundance & Growth Fund. Another was drawn to our giving philosophy more than any particular fund, so I walked him through our full range of opportunities, from global health to farm animal welfare. (Note: if you’re a prospective donor considering giving over six figures annually to high-impact causes, we’d love to hear from you.)
On Tuesdays, the Partnerships team gathers for our weekly meeting. We open with celebrations of wins from the past week and then go around with personal updates. One recent win was a flurry of productive conversations that came out of a major donor convening, which our team supported by coordinating speeches, investment cases, and background materials. After that, we each talk through what we’re each working on and bring questions to the group.
Then, I might eat lunch with the SF office crew. Working from the office is one of my great joys: I love to connect with my coworkers, and I’m weirdly attached to our water dispenser, which displays seasonal animations. For Easter, our ops team hid Easter eggs around the office. I’m very competitive, so I found the most and now have eleven miniature 3D-printed animals at my desk.
After lunch, I’ll often spend time on focused work. Recently, I was working on a donor report for the Lead Exposure Action Fund (LEAF). LEAF is one of several funds where we pool contributions from multiple donors, and we want to keep those donors up to date on what their gifts have accomplished. Creating this report means interviewing program team leads, distilling their insights into key takeaways, gathering updates from grantees on their successes and challenges, and sharing how the fund is tracking toward its targets. One thing I appreciate about working at Coefficient is that I’m expected to tell donors where we’re falling short, not share a highlight reel. That kind of candor isn’t universal, and I think it builds real trust.
As the LEAF team’s Partnerships liaison, I got to visit Ghana last summer to do a site visit for one of our grantees, Pure Earth. We observed a randomized control trial where researchers were swapping out families’ cooking pots — often made from scrap metal containing lead — for lead-free alternatives, and then measuring the effect on children’s blood lead levels. One detail that stuck with me was how the team had to design the replacement pots to look and feel exactly like the informal ones families were already using, so the swap wouldn’t introduce extra variables into the study.
Later in the afternoon, I might scan our grants database in Salesforce for opportunities that have recently progressed through our internal approval process, looking for ones that might be a good fit for the donors I work with. Could any of these partners co-fund a grant with us? Is there something here that aligns with a specific donor’s interests?
About once a month, I get to attend a happy hour or dinner with donors, which is one of the most fun parts of the role for an extrovert like me. At a recent happy hour, we brought together donors, Coefficient staff, colleagues from GiveWell, and some of our grantees, including the leaders of Project Unleaded. I learned about their work through LEAF and have become a big fan, so I was a bit starstruck to meet them. I was also glad they got the chance to connect with donors. It’s meaningful when donors get to hear directly from people doing the work, and grantees get to meet people who care about what they’re building.
My work changes a lot week over week and month over month. Sometimes I’m deep in report-writing mode; other times, I’m designing a learning journey for a donor who wants to go deeper on a specific cause area. That variety is one of the things I love most about my role: getting to collaborate with donors directly and help them find the best ways to give, even if that involves building something new.