Pros
For the past century, United Way has sought to serve the needs of metro Detroit's human service agencies and the increasingly needy populations they serve. The people who work for UWSEM tend to be highly motivated to serve others, willing to put in long hours and do whatever it takes to get the job done. Whether working to support the logistics of the annual fundraising campaign, or to help maximize the value of dollars raised for the agencies supported by United Way, the people who work in United Way are the best of colleagues.
Cons
There seems to be a sizable gap between the management's ability to talk a good game and actually deliver results. Judging from his demeanor at all-staff meetings, the CEO is a personable guy with an attractive self-deprecatory manner. Unfortunately this impression does not stand up to close scrutiny, especially over the long term. The term "management by walking around" seems to have escaped him. He prefers to engage with problems in theoretical fashion, rather than by realistically assessing the human (and other) resources available to him and going from there. As a result, staff are asked to get behind one grandiose plan after another - but none of them ever quite work out because the guy loses interest and moves on to something new. A further symptom of this malaise is the management structure, which is byzantine in its complexity: new titles for departments (and department heads), juggling of staff from one management silo to another, failure to define people's responsibilities (or even the jargon used in job descriptions) - no wonder people outside the organization tend to say "chaos" when asked their opinion of the organization. Finally, there is the sense that UWSEM (like many other United Ways across the country) has outlived its usefulness in some ways. The days when corporations saw an advantage in working with United Way on a corporate in-house campaign are, if not over, surely numbered. The organization needs to redefine itself in some way that makes its survival essential to the well-being of the non-profit sector in metro Detroit. Although efforts continue to be made in this direction, the "essential" element is still missing.
