Thanks for the detailed engagement! I am going to respond to each with a separate reply.
Rethink’s cost per researcher year on average, (i.e. the total org cost divided by total researcher years, not salary).
I think the best way to look at this is marginal cost. A new researcher hire costs us ~$87K USD in salary (this is a median, there is of course variation by title level here) and ~$28K in other costs (e.g., taxes, employment fees, benefits, equipment, employee travel). We then need to spend ~$31K in marginal spending on operations and ~$28K in marginal spending on management to support a new researcher. So the total cost for one new FTE year of research ends up being ~$174K.
You could take total org cost (~$11.4M in 2023 for RP core) and divide by total researcher years (~47 FTE in 2023 for RP core research, getting ~$242K per research year) but I don’t think you should do that because it ignores the fact that we spend a fairly significant amount of operations on things other than research, such as supporting work via our Special Projects program as well as running multiple coordination events (e.g., this animal strategy forum) and doing other organizational incubation work. We also use money to support contractors not counted in the FTE figure I gave.
Hi Sam,
Thanks for the detailed engagement! I am going to respond to each with a separate reply.
I think the best way to look at this is marginal cost. A new researcher hire costs us ~$87K USD in salary (this is a median, there is of course variation by title level here) and ~$28K in other costs (e.g., taxes, employment fees, benefits, equipment, employee travel). We then need to spend ~$31K in marginal spending on operations and ~$28K in marginal spending on management to support a new researcher. So the total cost for one new FTE year of research ends up being ~$174K.
You could take total org cost (~$11.4M in 2023 for RP core) and divide by total researcher years (~47 FTE in 2023 for RP core research, getting ~$242K per research year) but I don’t think you should do that because it ignores the fact that we spend a fairly significant amount of operations on things other than research, such as supporting work via our Special Projects program as well as running multiple coordination events (e.g., this animal strategy forum) and doing other organizational incubation work. We also use money to support contractors not counted in the FTE figure I gave.