Sama Reviews

Sorry to hear you disapproved of my leadership and our management dynamic. In the last two years, I think our results have demonstrated some really remarkable impact: we've now helped 35,000 people help themselves out of poverty, became profitable from our earned revenue, had almost zero attrition (both in our staff and our workforce of people formerly living in poverty), and hit records for customer service and growth of our technology platform. We've overshot our targets in virtually every area, and communicated this externally via quarterly impact calls (something that very few private companies, let alone nonprofits, do). We also had a record high in our internal employee feedback score (just over 4 out of 5 stars, which I'm proud of given that we are a nonprofit competing on benefits and salaries in the most expensive city in America. Finally, we completed the first-ever third party impact audit from a group of development economists called ImpactMatters, and scored an 8 out of 9, which I am super proud of (I had almost nothing to do with this -- it was driven by our CFO, who runs our financial and impact audits). Always open to feedback on concrete ways to improve, but our management team and board seem aligned and highly responsive (I get a lot of feedback, which I take very seriously, from both groups of people). One perspective I will share here: it's not easy to build an entirely new way of fighting poverty from the ground up, and there will always be staff, board members, and many other people who disapprove of me and the way I run things -- I've been told by some amazing mentors and coaches that this is par for the course as an entrepreneur. But I do hope we are judged as an organization by our real, measurable results for people living in poverty more than anything else :)

The concerns raised by this former employee include unsubstantiated and libelous claims of financial misdealings. As CFO of Sama Group I am well positioned to respond with facts to each one of these: First, Samasource is unique for non-profit it that it has an earned revenue business that generates unrestricted funding. Our organization uses these unrestricted funds for projects that we feel are imparative in furthering our mission; including funding consumer outreach and donor events of which the Samabus is a key component. We also receive donations and grants for specific programs and purposes; we clearly segregate, account and disburse these amounts for the exact purpose they were intended and report this activity rigorously and frequently. We are subject to external audits at least annually, from both a certified public accounting firm and our grantors to ensure expenditures are appropriately accounted for and the records show we have never had anything but an "unqualification opinion" (clean bill of accounting health) from our audits. Second, the Laxmi cosmetics line is run by a subsidiary for-profit public benefit company with a mission aligned purpose, that has been entirely financed by private 3rd party investors. Sama contributed nothing save negligible legal fees for its ownership stake, and stands to gain access to more unrestricted funds with future success of this venture. Third, every penny of the funds raised for SamaHope at the Gala was distributed to the doctors named within weeks of the 2014 Gala and the doctors in turn were able to perform the lifesaving surgeries and treatments on hundreds of patients. The CEO does not use company funds for personal expenses - she is a well known and extremely sought after public speaker and has a signficant social media presence but that does not imply the company is paying for her personal activities. Our organization holds transparency and accountability in the highest regard; we invite this commentor to seek substantiation of these claims beyond speculation towards a public retraction of these comments.