Pros
You will feel like you are doing something good in the beginning of your time at CTL.
Cons
All of the following is, in some way, related to Nancy Lublin, the CEO and Founder. Because she gives no true ownership to her employees, and runs her organization according to a culture of fear and emotional abuse, every "con" listed is going to relate to her. If you are lucky enough to be mostly shielded from Nancy by your direct manager (a common practice by the good middle managers that remain at this company), you are still at risk for traumatic emotional abuse, and are still contributing to the ethically questionable practices that occur here on the daily. CTL is morally and ethically corrupt: - Volunteer crisis counselors are incentivized with gift cards and other rewards to take more conversations than they are equipped for. This is an extremely concerning practice for the people in crisis. It is also concerning for the crisis counselors who will deal (and do deal) with the trauma of being pushed to take more conversations, and therefore, are unable to counsel these people safely. - Nancy encourages misleading data. For example, she instructs staff and counselors to log into the crisis counseling platform simply to increase the number of "active crisis counselors." - Nancy takes conversations with people in crisis--an ethically questionable practice considering her skill as a counselor. She often tells these individuals in crisis to "just go to sleep" or "listen to Taylor Swift." Though Nancy claims her counseling skills are good, and above the average, they are not. Her data team tells her that is higher than most people on staff, and it is not. It is below the organization's average. - Her for-profit company (Loris) has more access to CTL's data than Nancy is letting on. She claims that no identifiable information is shared across companies--but her for-profit data team has access to CTL's data team. Nancy leads a culture of toxicity and fear: - Nancy runs her organization like the president of the U.S. runs his administration. Like Trump, Nancy throws tantrums when she doesn't get her way. Like Trump, when she is challenged, she responds with yelling, or name-calling, or a campaign of gossiping and badmouthing that person. - Nancy often publicly shaming employees in staff meetings-banging on furniture, or screaming and interrupting. People are afraid to speak up. - Nancy is insensitive and bigoted, and makes racist comments frequently. Nancy (at work, in front of her staff), has said things like, "our supervision team has too many fat people," and refers to staff by their ethnicity, race, gender or sexual orientation. - Most staff members that work regularly with Nancy have required therapy to cope with the emotionally abusive cycle they are a part of. I urge you to be careful about working here: for your physiological and emotional health, for your mental sanity, for your values and ethics. Pay attention to the reviews that seem thorough, and real ("Ethical does not exist here," from April 2018; "Dictatorship" from May 2017; "What Happened If Donald Trump [sic] A Nonprofit" from August 2016, to name only a few) versus the short and incomplete-seeming reviews that are mostly written by crisis counselors (who are part time volunteers, and who are almost never at their office). CTL may eventually respond to this review with something trite and glib. Please trust your gut, and stay away.