United Way reviews

When you see where your donations go it is very disheartening. So much money is used to pay for rich board members (taking them to nice restaurants, conferences, etc.). I also saw a huge disrespect for the poor, the people they supposedly want to help. The whole experience made me not want to donate to any non-profits ever again.

Although we are a relatively small organization, many people don't know each other who should and others have never met our leadership at all. There is no sense of team, no on-boarding for employees, and much time is wasted because of this. Some teams in UWSEM are more organized than others and some teams don't even have regular meetings at all so the work can feel very isolating. Many projects are not staffed at appropriate levels and many promises are made that more staff are being hired, but that rarely happens so burnout is very high. Leadership doesn't usually give time to listen, they just talk at us. We work remotely, but our servers and remote access is often not working which is very frustrating and never seems to get better. StrengthsFinder is highly valued by the organization, but it is often used incorrectly against staff to focus on their weaknesses. I often see that making something "look good" is more highly valued by leadership than making something that has the most positive impact on community. The "leadership" team makes promises to donors and funders without knowing what is possible on the ground and it gets us into some very tough situations. Evaluation is talked about a lot, but an afterthought.