Pros
The mission of the Center is critical, and it's incredible that in the late 80's/early 90's the founders worked to reform a broken system and pull together different agencies/organizations to help reduce trauma to kids and stop child abuse reports from falling through the cracks. They were ahead of their time creating such an innovative network/campus. There is lots of potential for the Center to become a household name throughout Austin, because so much of the community is inspired when they learn about the services the Center offers to families. There are also incredible staff working in the therapy, forensic interview, family advocate, education, and data departments.
Cons
While the Center's mission is amazing and supporters are great, the overall culture of the workplace is concerning. Leadership lacks transparency and struggles managing employees well, and they are highly resistant to change, even in light of COVID-19. Because the Center chose not to adjust messaging and outreach methods in 2020, they received less funding and laid off 10 employees in November 2020. Note: Before the layoff the Center had already been having org culture issues especially relating to communication/transparency issues with leadership and between departments. A consultant was hired to help address these but was suspended in March/April and brought back after the layoff. Leadership did a very poor job handling the layoff process, and hurt a lot of people who cared about and sacrificed for the Center. Here are a few of the main damaging examples (so you can consider details without less bias): - Each employee was informed of a Friday HR meeting, 24 hours in advance, but were not allowed any info about what the meeting was regarding. Most staff were made to come into the office for their layoff, despite the recent upgrade in Austin's COVID-19 alert level. - Leadership said layoff was only due to COVID-19 funding cuts, but treated all employees as if they couldn't be trusted. After each layoff, employees were escorted off campus and not allowed to offer any support with handover of their projects. - Layoffs were scripted and little appreciation/encouragement was given to any employees - Supervisors did NOT attend most of the layoff meetings - Supervisors didn't contact those laid off or offer references to employees Overall, it was very cold, corporate and disrespectful way to treat nonprofit employees, who deserved better. From my experience, there is a great deal of disfunction in the way the Development department in particular is being managed. For instance: - Development & Volunteer Departments do not actively outreach to gain new supporters, they react to donations/requests from existing donors/supporters and try to build their fundraising event connections only through the Board/Guild/major donors. - The only remaining Development staff are database managers or event planners (and the major gift Chief of Development). If you are considering joining this team, the only fundraising you are allowed to do is relationship management with existing supporters in response to event planning/logistics. Many people in Austin don't know about the Center's name/mission, even though they've been around for 30 years and have very popular fundraising events. This is due to a poor Development strategy focused almost exclusively on event promotion and nurturing relationships with a limited population targeted for outreach. They would raise more funding if the org management wasn't solely focused on maintaining extravagant, annual events during COVID-19.