Great Mission. Frustrating/Toxic Work Environment - Director Local First Employee Review

Founder Syndrome. No accountability or structure. Leadership deflects blame. Staff overworked and underpaid. Positive mission, but scattered execution to chase $$$. One of the main reasons I finally left my job was that leadership failed to understand how to implement a basic organizational structure to help the organization grow in a sustainable manner. We had very few systems and structures in place due to "bootstrapping" it for many years. As we became a full-fledged nonprofit organization, leadership made excuses for not wanting to make changes that were so necessary for the ultimate future success of the organization. It was incredibly frustrating and I felt like my input on this matter was never listened to. There are definitely issues of founder syndrome that inhibited any major changes. If you did not have the same behavior or personality style as leadership, then they "othered" you. If you were different in this manner, you were not considered for promotion or advancement in the organization. On a similar note, I heard leadership discuss abilities of some staff members as if they did not have any faith in them to do the jobs they were hired to do. These staff were consistently put down and put in situations to fail without any support until they were ultimately pushed out or fired. Leadership takes things incredibly personally if anyone goes against them. When issues were brought to leadership (particularly related to how we can provide better benefits to staff), most of the time the response was to say that we were "bringing problems without solutions" and the conversation was dismissed. The board of directors is at the whim of the executive director. Board members are only on a "need to know" basis and do not have any real power over the organization. While the organization has a great singular mission, the programming and events got out of control to chase grant and sponsorship dollars with no clear vision, ultimately causing staff to be overworked by being stretched in too many different directions. People often asked... "What does LFA actually do?"