1. Corrupt organisation down to its core. From funding groups that Soros' friends run, or friends of management, to just plain laziness when it comes to grant-making in funding the same groups over and over and over again for decades.
2. Hypocrisy at all levels. From claiming to be bastions of human rights defenders while not finding new, smaller, grassroots, activist groups instead because it's too much work to evaluate them - all the way to deep-rooted institutional sexual harassment, racism and sexism. Everyone talks the talk but it's all hot air.
3. No one cares about diversity. Be prepared to be paraded out as a token minority if you are one, as a token sexual minority, or a gender hire. Be prepared to be made to feel like the only reason you were hired was your biology.
4. Management receives barely any training, and certainly not on an ongoing basis. Managers are promoted if they're friends with the right people or have enough years of experience - whether or not they're good managers.
5. Despite funding whistleblowers, OSF has a toxic attitude towards its own transparency. You can't even see a list of organisations it funds. Any complaints about transparency issues, management, personnel abuse and harassment, gaslighting, manipulation or bullying are instantly dismissed in favour of management.
6. It's a boy's club. Just ask how many men are at senior positions, and how many women in supporting roles. If you're not a manager, you are thought of and treated as a secretary.
7. Depending on your location, your salary will not match your experience and your value. Prepare for that. The US offices get paid well, everyone else is paid peanuts. Benefits packages are only available in the US. Everywhere else, it ends at healthcare.
8. Sexual harassment is rife. From managers drunkenly attacking junior staff at informal staff retreats to religious-based harassment on the grounds of sexuality, this is an appalling place to work if you are a woman with an ounce of self respect. I counted more than three dozen colleagues who were silenced with money or threats of dismissal when they dared speak up. This for a human rights organisation is unacceptable.
9. Once management is installed at OSF, their only escape is death or retirement. The old dogs rule, and it's an old-fashioned, behemoth of an institution without any desire to innovate or modernise - and that's down to even the tech used by employees.
10. Salaries are minimal, but lavish annual staff retreats are thrown which is basically a giant week-long party. If your program's manager is friends with the right people, you can hold this party in Bali several times a year, on the company's dime of course. If you know who to talk to, you can even get your entire team to travel for several weeks to Brazil to 'attend conferences' rather than connecting via videoconference and spending that money on the nonprofit work that matters.
11. Embezzlement of funds for private use. This happens all the time when managers skim off the top of their travel budget to get a long weekend in their home countries, or to add on a personal trip to a work trip and have it paid for by OSF. Bringing this to HR's attention is met with a blind eye or a reprimand.
