Worried About Prestige, Not Growth
Pros
The Annenberg Foundation has a relatively small staff, making it easier to get to know everyone involved. Regular visitors from the general public and educated, thoughtful clientele. Space for Photography puts on great shows, great benefits for full-time employees
Cons
The Foundation is simply too concerned with prestige over growth and changing ideas. A high emphasis is placed on management, leaving many of the lower employees to be taken advantage of, ignored, or bullied. The pay rate for floor staff and interns is "competitive," meaning they pay exactly what others pay but with the additional negative of being located from any convenient locations in Los Angeles. The Space for Photography has lost 24 members since June 2013, an incredible amount of turnover for a division that only has 12 employees or so at any given time. There is extremely limited room for job growth, and the management has admitted that to past employees before. Few people move forward within the company, wages stagnate the longer you work there, and the increasing excesses of Foundation spending outweigh the growth within its own doors. While requiring basic customer service reps to do everything from Photoshop to photography to account management - all well beyond typically docent and retail work - without scaling compensation for those jobs, the company spent more than $2.3 million on a private event rental company in 2013 alone, according to its public tax records. The foundation preaches a concept of "One Annenberg" while leaving a huge divide in how it treats management and the "upstairs" staff and the floor staff and interns in the Foundation and the Space for Photography.