An innovative social enterprise and a great place to work!
Pros
Sama is one of the best young, innovative social enterprises to work at today, having been one of major organizations contributing to the early growth of impact sourcing as an industry. Unlike other organizations in the space, the leadership is truly working to create a sustainable, break even business that has a huge social impact globally. The team is fun and passionate - all with diverse, unique world views, and most with previous experience working in developing countries in the field. The Founder and CEO, Leila Janah, is able to clearly and passionately communicate her vision and mission in a way that compels people from all backgrounds to contribute to the cause: providing opportunity to those born into poverty. I highly recommend working at Sama, especially if you want to have a career in social enterprise or social entrepreneurship.
Cons
Because the organization is still relatively young, it operates like a startup. For some from big corporate and traditional non-profit backgrounds, this can be a little shocking not having a lot of established processes or certainty in strategy. For others, it's a dream. You need to have a complete sense of accountability and transparency with your work to be able to fit in with the culture, and for some, that can be an adjustment. Because the organization is still firmly registered non-profit legally, salary packages are not reflective of the for-profit rates, although they're able to recruit some of the best talent from the for-profit world regardless. The organization has a tough application and interview process, and has a tendency to offer contract to hire positions instead of immediately providing a job offer. This works well to find a good cultural match internally for the longer term, but can be stressful and irritating to new hires initially.
