Pros
The cause is important and at the national level this organization leads the way in important research and legislation.
Cons
If your regional manager is crap, your experience will be horrible. AHA is one of those charities that does everything they can to cut overhead costs. It's admirable to see from the outside, but on the inside, as an employee, it creates a lot of stress and pressure to just do a TON of work with very limited resources. They rely heavily on volunteers. HEAVILY. If you don't have volunteers you can count on you're screwed. Very driven by the bottom line and finding information within their internal database is a nightmare. Their training is thorough to the point that it's almost like having a second job - someone in the company compared it to trying to drink water through a fire hose. Again, because you are intentionally short staffed, you need to be able to know and do EVERYTHING. It's insane. Events will run you down and exhaust you. I worked overtime SO MUCH, off the clock, just to get stuff done. Nobody else is there to do it. My job was one that had been left vacant for so long that nothing had been done and I had 2 months to pull a giant event together that normally requires a year of work. Did I have sympathy? Did I get any sense of support from my management? No. In fact, hearing them critique my event afterward was maddening seeing as it was 100% a miracle that it happened at all. Dealing with a lot of different managers will be maddening, depending upon which level you're at. I was tremendously happy when I was able to find another job and leave. If you are toward the bottom of the totem pole, be aware that a bad manager can blame crap on you and middle management will likely buy into it. CYA at all times.
