20 June 2025
Stiftung Mercator Reviews
4.2
77% would recommend to a friend
Winfried Kneip
Not enough data to show CEO approval
22% positive business outlook
Reviews by job title
3 reviews
5.0
3 Sept 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Very flexible fellowship program for young professionals in the area of international relations.
Cons
A very competitive assessment process.
2.0
12 Sept 2013
One of the better non-profit jobs, but still not that great.
Anonymous employee
Current employee, more than 1 year
Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook
Pros
Colleagues mostly fun and great to work with (depends on the dpt. you enter), salary competitive, good perks (food, drinks, social events), some of the project work is meaningful and interesting. Also a decent amount of travel, depending on your specialization and specific projects. Few opportunities to climb the ladder.
Cons
CEO tries to control everything, despite promulgating "flat hierarchies". Projects you manage have to align with CEOs demands, which are often silly and do not align with foundation's overall strategy. Administrative tasks in project management far outweigh interesting, content-oriented work. You will often feel more like a bureaucrat who needs to ensure that every penny of every project is spend accordingly, creating budgets and dealing with general paperwork (mails, internal forms, drafting notes, papers etc.). Disenchants non-profit work quickly. Foundation does not live up to its hands-on, enterpreneurial values.