Physicians for Human Rights Reviews

Where to start? A complete lack of expertise at the leadership level has lead to the organization hemorrhaging staff, in particular from the program side. And when I say a lack of expertise, I mean substantively (no one at the leadership level has human rights expertise), but also in terms of fundraising, management know-how, financial processes, and basic how-to-run a not-for-profit know-how. The place is running on fumes. If anyone were to start digging, they'd find unorthodox (unethical?) accounting, dangerously fluid budgets with enormous sums mysteriously disappearing mostly because of incompetence, opaque decision-making processes (or essentially top-down decision-making on the most minute details), a huge pay differential between leadership and those who actually do the work (we pay more for our executive director's monthly parking bill than junior staff are offered for a raise to bring them up to industry standard), and deep warranted mistrust and tension between various parts of the organization. Everyone is pretty much in a dysfunctional relationship with the ED, including the rest of the mangement team who seem to tip-toe around her whims and refuse to take responsibility for throwing junior staff under the bus to save their own skin. People are (unsurprisingly) leaving in droves. I can't wait to get out myself.

Those wonderful colleagues never stay for long, and external partners are often left in the dark and disrespected. This is a human rights organization that doesn't much care about human rights work unless it brings money or attention, and even then the work itself is seen as a means to the end ($$), not the end itself. This is depressing for staff, who would all be embarrassed if their partners found out how little management really cares about the work they do. It's hard to accurately convey how terribly run the organization is. There is no vision at all because there is no one with the requisite experience or knowledge at the top. Instead, staff are micromanaged by leadership who refuse to take responsibility or delegate authority, and so decisions are basically never made, which means that nothing can get done. It starts at the top with the ED, whose management skills and knowledge of the issues are nonexistent. Practically, there are basic problems like lack of decision-making & budget clarity, and no transparency on salaries and promotions. These are not impossible problems to solve, but they have endured because the ED actually prefers this state of affairs: opacity and lack of clear standards means that there is zero accountability (someone should also take a close look at the books!). While staff have been pointing out these problems and suggesting solutions for years, there is no expectation that the toxic culture will change. Because of all of this, morale is extremely low and turnover is high. At this point almost 50% of the org leaves in a year. The high turnover rate seriously damages program work, but the ED has explicitly stated that she is unconcerned with it, and believes it to be normal. Meanwhile, partners get whiplash as staff are constantly coming and going, and the organization is forever re-making the same decisions and the same mistakes. It's not uncommon here for people to stay for less than a year, which is really astounding. Problems with exploitation of staff (as noted in other reviews) are also very real. PHR burns through junior staff who are expected to work far outside their job descriptions, take on traumatizing material with little credit or control, and who are unable to afford the health interventions the job requires. Then these people leave and the cycle starts again. Finally, there is a disturbing lack of racial diversity at PHR, and zero commitment from management to address or even acknowledge the problem, despite multiple staff having raised it.