Join us
Careers & volunteering
National Cancer Information Foundation is a small, mission-driven team working to make cancer information easier to understand. Free plain-language cancer education for patients, caregivers, and the public
We’re a lean organization. Most of the people who work with us today are volunteers, contributing a few hours a week around other commitments; we bring on paid help as the organization’s funding allows. Whichever applies to a given role, we’ll say so plainly before you commit any time.
See the tools and accounts we provide to full-time, part-time, and volunteer team members →
Why people work with us
Work that matters
Everything we ship reaches someone who just heard the word "cancer" about themselves or someone they love, at a moment when clear information genuinely helps.
Flexible, remote, async-first
We're distributed and asynchronous by default. Contribute on the schedule that works for you — a few hours a week is a real contribution here.
Real experience, real references
Volunteers work on a live, public-facing product used by real patients and caregivers — concrete, citable experience, and we're glad to serve as a reference.
A small, direct team
We're lean on purpose. No layers to go through — your work ships, and you'll see the effect of it.
Where we could use help
We don’t keep a running list of open, titled positions — we’re too small for that to mean much yet. Instead, here’s where we most need people, and what each one actually involves:
Clinical & content reviewers
Nurses, physicians (including retired), NPs, PAs, pharmacists, genetic counselors, and trained patient advocates who can check a page against its cited source. Pages are not clinician-reviewed and nothing waits for it; a volunteer who reviews a page is named on it.
Editorial & writing
Plain-language writing and editing, fact-checking claims against primary sources (NCI, CDC, FDA, ACS), and reviewing content for tone, accuracy, and reading level.
Engineering
Frontend (Next.js/React/TypeScript), content tooling and validators, accessibility, and site performance. See the stack below.
Design
Visual design, illustration, and the social/share assets that carry our content off-site.
Partnerships & outreach
Relationships with hospitals, patient-advocacy organizations, libraries, and other nonprofits who could put this resource in front of the people who need it.
How we work
We’re remote and asynchronous by default, coordinating over Slack and Google Workspace rather than a fixed schedule of meetings. Work moves in small, reviewable pieces — a page, a fix, a source check — rather than large, opaque projects. Published changes follow our editorial process, and clinical content is only marked reviewed once a qualified person has actually checked it against its source.
What we build with
Site & content
Next.js (App Router) and TypeScript, statically exported and served from Cloudflare Pages. Content lives as version-controlled Markdown/MDX in the same repository as the code.
Version control & CI
GitHub, with automated regression checks for listed patterns only (such as schema, reading-level, sourcing, accessibility and link checks). They do not catch all unsafe or inaccurate text.
AI-assisted, openly disclosed
We use Claude (Anthropic) extensively across drafting, editing, and engineering — disclosed on our AI-use page. AI assistance never substitutes for the sourcing and review standards in our editorial process.
Payments & communications
Stripe for donations, Resend for transactional email, Google Workspace and Slack for team communication, and Canva for lightweight design work.
How to reach out
Email info@cancerexplained.org and tell us a little about yourself: what you’d like to work on, any relevant background, and how much time you realistically have. There’s no formal application to fill out.
Applying specifically as a clinical or content reviewer? You can go straight to review@cancerexplained.org.