Polaris Project Reviews

The CEO is a control freak who's been at the organization since he was 22 and as a result, doesn't know how to be a CEO of a 7 million dollar organization. He cares too much about the issue and often forces his opinion on the organization, even if the majority of others disagree with him. He is charismatic and friendly, but if you voice your opinion and it differs from his, you'll be immediately cut out of his good graces. There is a lack of strategy and structure at the organization due to an inability to create a plan and stick to it. Executive leadership is always saying "we're in a transition period," but that transition period lasted the entire time I was at the organization. Work is usually focused around major donors and what they want to see, or specific staff members and their skillsets. When the donor money dries up, or those staff members leave, they simply kill the work instead of trying to find ways to continue it. They suffer from diversity and inclusion issues, and they know it, but they continue to have an all cis het white executive team and mostly cis het white senior leadership team. The staff here are truly great, but these management issues, coupled with an emotionally taxing topic of work, lead to serious burnout. This happened throughout my entire time here and never seemed to change, despite the fact that departing staff made it clear they were partly leaving because of the CEO and strategic chaos. Somehow the board has heard all of this before, multiple times, and still hasn't made any moves to change leadership. The alarm bells have been sounded, but no one's putting the fire out. Lastly, be warned: senior leadership read these reviews and have planted a few positive ones on here to save face.