Pros
• Great mission (though I cannot say they are effective in almost any of it, aside from fulfilling fellowships & grants) • Fancy new office space (we used to have people come in to dust the orchids) • I worked overtime, but at the time, that was rare organizationally - mostly just the Policy team. Everyone else has a pretty comfy 9-5pm without any weekend work (mostly be there isn't really any rapid response work)
Cons
• Intense in-fighting from executive leadership, with outright malice often getting in the way of effective workflow for junior staff. For example, regularly, VPs would say cruel and petty remarks about other VPs, including in front of their own staff and the staff of others. Around early 2018, the CEO tried powerfully to fix this by firing and hiring an entirely new slate of leadership, but reviews from the time since I Ieft (as well as from folks I know who have since left or are still there) make clear these issues have not ceased. •Lack of racial justice lens. In June 220, the Washington Post ran an expose on this. Former colleagues and I were honestly impressed on how easily AAUW got off in this piece, as we could share worse stories of injustice and microaggressions. (In fact, when we named the issue of racist and ageist "microaggressions" after a particularly terrible episode under the former CEO, we were laughed at by executive leadership, who didn't take seriously the concept.)I have since noticed that AAUW has been highlighting racial justice work over web and email, but I was disappointed that there was never a public statement directly addressing the WaPo piece. If these newly shown values are real, they would have to come with an understanding of transparency and accountability.•The association/membership model is dying. Literally, AAUW members are dying. The org's funding is a mess, since funds come from dues, legacy gifts (people's wills), and corporate and foundational giving that they have never been able to crack. They went after STEM bc that was where all the money (funding) was, and then they totally abandoned AAUW STEM programs. In my 3 years there, they kept sunsetting programs over and over. (AAUW Tech Trek and Tech Saavy are gone; college student org program is gone; even NCCWSL was always on the chopping block since a cost/benefit analysis showed it lost HUGE amounts of money.) Constant struggle to get funding for salary negotiation programs as well, which it seems still haven't taken off. There is nothing AAUW does really well. •Unclear audience. Who are you trying to reach? Young women? Older AAUW members? Women in grad programs? The org's direction is very unclear from the outset, and this needs to be determined in order to be effective and successful at gaining supporters, funding, membership, you name it. When I was there, for ex, colleagues and I invested deeply in fostering younger audiences (college women, young professionals), since we wanted to build a pipeline for a dying membership model. But with some of those programs jettisoned since, who are they here for? Then there's balancing AAUW members, who themselves are typically 70-80-year-old white women, whose goals and interests (like passing the ERA) do not align with national's priorities. It's basically like there's national HQ with a completely different grassroots body.