Strategic Capacity Group Reviews

The ‘leadership’ acts with impunity and will fire someone for no reason (other than they feel like it.) Employees are terminated without any warning and SCG refuses to pay out unused vacation; referring to a ‘policy’. They have no conscience! Those who are not fired do not stick around very long. Employees, even those with decades of experience, are treated like children. Employees must quickly learn that the CEO/President is the only one allowed to have ideas or solutions. The turnover is ridiculously high – even the founder’s husband did not stay. Long hours are required to accomplish the work (which is paid for by taxpayers) and employees are unable take time off which is how SCG is able to steal the unused vacation time. There have been poor reviews here from the start and while the C-suite member over Finance responds, there was/is failure at every level to take corrective action to solve the actual problems. The CEO/President repeatedly called a WOC lazy (she was not) in three consecutive meetings and the only action taken - the WOC was fired.

Leadership talks the talk, but does not walk the walk. Entire leadership team has no idea what they're doing in development work or how to manage people or develop and retain staff (mostly academics or people who worked for mom and pop non-profits before, oh, wait, this is a mom and pop non-profit, literally). They create a toxic work environment by micro-managing and picking favorites who are not necessarily qualified over people who are actually doing a good job. One senior manager did not know what 2CFR200 was, although 99% of the funding is USG grants and cooperative agreements. Implementation model is a complete waste of taxpayers' money and out of step with the prevailing wisdom of participatory design and partner-led programming. 99% turnover over the last 3 years, and everyone I know is looking for another job so they can leave before they get fired, which inevitably happens when you fall out of favor with the leadership for some reason that has nothing to do with the quality of your work. Or before someone else gets promoted for no reason when you work your butt off and can't get promoted. And there is no performance management system -- going back to talk the talk and not walk the walk. Governance of the organization is totally out of line with accepted non-profit practices with at least two members of upper management also serving on the Board. Bottom line, unless you're desperate and need a stepping stone to somewhere else, if you're a development professional with some degree of self-respect and pride in your profession or someone looking to get into it, stay away. If I could give it negative stars I would.