MaxFund Reviews

Pros

The mission is admirable and the animals need good people to be advocates for them, no matter what. They are a no kill shelter, which is great. But in my opinion they need to be more proactive about marketing themselves for both funding and adoptions!

Cons

Maxfund has tons of volunteers and people who truly care about the animals there.
It also has a severe case of "founders Syndrome":
(from wikipedia)Founder's syndrome is a label normally used to refer to a pattern of negative or undesirable behavior on the part of the founder(s) of an organization. The term is anecdotal/unofficial and does not actually refer to a medical syndrome. It is particularly common where there has only been one person leading the organization or the board of directors since its inception [1] and is common in non-profit and commercial organizations that grow beyond their early stages.[2]

The organization faces founder's syndrome as the scope of activities widen and number of stakeholders increase. Without an effective decentralized decision making process there will be growing conflict between the newcomers, who want a say in how the organization develops and the founder who continues to dominate the decision making process. This can be very destructive, both to the organization to the individuals concerned and should be dealt with quickly and decisively[1].

There are a number of negative dynamics that can occur when an original CEO stays on beyond the initial growth period of an organization.

    * The first is that the CEO's passion and charisma that initially created the successful organization starts to become a negative rather than a positive force. As the organization moves in to a more mature phase additional, professionally-trained and talented people are engaged and the board is expanded. The founder's domination of the decision making process can frustrate effective group decision making.[3].

    * The organization can, over time, come to be overly identified with the person or personality of the founder and a loss of public trust.

    * During the early phases of the organization the board tends to be selected by the founder and are either like-minded individuals or people who can be trusted to 'rubber stamp' the founder's decisions rather than offering a more representative view.[3]

Advice to Senior Management

Let someone new and with experience outside of non profit manage it. The founder needs to stop 'meddling'.