buildOn Reviews

-buildOn is a corporate company disguised as a non profit. The CEO, Jim, is the founder, and came from the corporate world, of which he still very much is a part. - This hurts the employees who want to make passion driven change. Most of the programming at buildOn is directed by where the donations are coming from. They are 100% privately funded by donors- no federal assistance- and therefore bend over backwards to make the donors happy. It oftentimes feels like the students are put on display, like a poverty parade, to make the donors feel like they're doing "good" by writing a check. -The upper management of the school based programs has their heart in the right place, but their hands are tied by all the other departments- development (fundraising) and marketing trump everything else. A development or marketing person makes split second decisions that rattle programming and often go back on whatever was promised (such as food being provided at a certain project, or having 10 additional adults at the project) -The relationship between the donors and students is shady, to say the least. The donors don't want to get their hands dirty going to where the students live and learn, the "poor" neighborhoods, so PCs must break their backs getting the students to large corporate functions. -The international trips "treks" are misguided and are pumped out as "white savior" trips to any donor willing to pay the price tag. Schools are being built in communities that don't need or didn't ask for them because buildOn doesn't want to miss out on a sale of another trek. There is absolutely ZERO monitoring and evaluation after the school and the photo op is done. -Your voice in buildOn doesn't matter. Even if they want to hear it, they can't due to ridiculous amounts of busy work and mundane tasks.

The Bad and Ugly The leadership team consists of corporate minded individuals who only care about reaching quantitative goals instead of quality. There is the exception of a few people on the leadership team who care but whos hands are tied due to the CEO not understanding what is happening on the ground and in the field. There is a huge disconnect between leadership and the rest of the staff. They almost dehumanize staff and treat them as machines just pumping out a product. There is no work-life balance and the leadership team often shows favoritism for some employees while treating others poorly. This is a "boys club" and and it is run like a corporate version of a frat house other than a responsible nonprofit. If you are someone who values having a family and life outside of buildOn this is not the job for you! Low level employees thoughts, feels and solutions to problems are all most never taken into consideration. If you offer suggestions or solutions it is often met with a defensive "oh well" attitude. Employees are not set up for success and are often let go very quickly even though they didn't have the tools, training or support to succeed which makes for a quickly moving revolving door.