A sad relic - Anonymous employee United Way Employee Review

1.0
10 Sept 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free tea and coffee in the break room.

Cons

I worked in marketing. Every few months, some marketing fad would be bruited about the office as the thing that was going to save United Way. Middle management would fly to DC for meetings with absurd names like "Tiger Team." We would have meetings and a half-assed implementation and then little would happen to change the sense of encroaching irrelevance, and then onward to the next big strategy. Someone was hired to fill the long-vacant position above me (he was a hilariously inept writer with very strange interpersonal skills) and when I asked for direction, because he was my supervisor, I was told "I'm not doing your job for you." I expressed my distress to someone a rung higher who eliminated my position as an end-run against our union defending me, then dumped my work on a colleague who already had her own responsibilities. It was, oh but truly, a shitshow.

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United Way Response
7y
In today's disrupted business world, the organization that doesn't change, doesn't survive. That brutal fact is nowhere better understood than in the resource-constrained world of nonprofits. We're sorry that our ongoing efforts to build a resilient, responsive organization were so uncomfortable for you. Given our 85% employee retention rate and an average staff tenure of 13 years (2018) , we often hear from other companies and nonprofits about how much they envy our stability. We know that building a positive workplace culture is never-ending work, but we are proud that our efforts to do so result in already high--and improving--scores for job "enjoyability" on our annual, anonymous climate survey. We're even more pleased to see that survey show that optimism about the future of UWBA is one of the most improved scores this year. With our 100 year anniversary coming up, we are working hard to ensure that United Way Bay Area will be here to serve the region for another hundred years.

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5.0
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Pros

People were very nice and cooperative

Cons

Not any that I would speak of

2.0
18 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The mission is meaningful and the work itself can be deeply rewarding. Colleagues are talented, dedicated, and genuinely care about the community they serve. For the right person, that camaraderie carries a lot of weight.

Cons

Over the past two years, this organization has undergone significant and painful change. A revolving door of senior leadership, including the abrupt loss of key executives, created instability that trickled down to every level of staff. Layoffs followed, and then a steady stream of voluntary departures that leadership appeared either unable or unwilling to address meaningfully. Under new leadership, nearly every quality-of-life benefit that made nonprofit-level salaries feel worth it has been reduced or eliminated: fewer sick days, increased healthcare costs, loss of Summer Fridays, loss of Thanksgiving week, and a shift to more required in-office days. The cumulative effect is an organization that asks a great deal of its staff, in salary sacrifice and mission commitment, while systematically withdrawing what made that trade-off feel fair.

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