The professional progressive world is a great paradox of outward optimism and internal cynicism. Well-endowed nonprofits post glossy graphics and pictures of their smiling leadership on social media, while low-level staff toil away for long hours and little pay to wage seemingly endless fights for justice. How does anyone do this work and not go crazy? And these people talk a big game, but are they as observant of progressive values and equality in their own offices?
In the hopes of getting an unvarnished look into liberal workplaces, Blue Tent has reviewed more than 200 recent Glassdoor postings from some two-dozen progressive advocacy groups, think tanks and foundations. The reviews, which include a rating of one to five stars and a list of pros and cons, are written by people claiming to be former employees, with each poster given discretion about how much to disclose.
Glassdoor is a far-from-perfect system for rating a workplace: Like all internet reviews, Glassdoor’s are likely to come from either the most enthusiastic or the most disillusioned, while their anonymous nature makes them difficult to verify. Some of the reviews contain suspiciously similar complaints and writing styles, while at least one organization has been accused of asking employees to write positive reviews. But the anonymity is vital, as few other forums that don’t serve alcohol are likely to elicit such honest evaluations.
A few other caveats: Smaller nonprofits were harder to judge because they don’t have as many reviews, while posts about larger groups with satellite offices and siloed-off programs may not reflect accurately on the entire organization, as reviewers often don’t specify their location or specific job. While Glassdoor filters out suspect posts for quality control, it’s also possible that some of its redactions were genuine reviews.
Because of the many Glassdoor shortcomings, the goal here is not to draw conclusions about which workplaces are bad and which are good. Instead, the reviews taken as a whole reflect many common experiences among nonprofit workers, from the positive to the negative. Moreover, many of the groups Blue Tent examined have posted responses to the reviews, showing that at the very least, employers themselves take these posts seriously enough to monitor them.
Here’s what we learned:
The Good
The most common positive note about progressive nonprofits involved the people. Well, certain people — usually those on the same level as the person writing the post: They care about their jobs, they’re hardworking, dedicated and oftentimes “brilliant.” The work itself is also a frequently cited high point, though not always. But those who get jobs at prestigious nonprofits, even those who leave with a bad taste in their mouth, are generally proud of the mission they were pursuing and some of the work they did.
Reviews of progressive nonprofits examined by Blue Tent often cited great benefits for their staffs, primarily in the areas of health insurance and “perks.” For instance, the Open Society Foundations regularly provides free lunch for workers (a rumor that has penetrated many a D.C. office and happy hour) while New America employees cite its hip and swanky offices. At labor groups, staffers say they get great pay (for a nonprofit), healthcare, and in the case of the AFL-CIO, even a pension.
Speaking of unions, many nonprofit staffs have organized in recent years, winning better benefits, wages and job security for their members. While the unions themselves are almost universally mentioned in a positive frame, reviewers often link the formation of a bargaining unit to some darker workplace issues — but more on that later.
Interns provide many extremely positive, if brief, reviews for their time at the nation’s most prestigious nonprofits, often with one to three-word pros and cons like “great organization!” or “kind of boring.” The glass-half-full interpretation here is that most of these organizations treat interns with respect and train them with meaningful, educational assignments; realistically, interns have typically had little previous professional experience, work on a shorter, defined timeline, and aren’t party to the same issues of compensation and work/life balance as full-timers. In a handful of posts, low-level staffers complain that interns are actually given better treatment. Were we to slice out all intern reviews from this analysis, the overall rating for many of the groups examined would drop.
The Bad
Like Yelp, Glassdoor can be a great place for the disgruntled to channel their frustration, and — surprise, surprise — there are a lot of frustrated people at liberal nonprofits.
For some current and former workers, the positive and negative often blend together, as their passion has driven them to work for the biggest names in progressive advocacy and research. To be at the top, people have to work long hours, travel extensively and accept pay rates lower than their friends who got jobs at banks and law firms. This is the kind of thing that often appears in “positive” or “neutral” Glassdoor reviews, a tough reality that their prospective colleagues will need to accept.
Other reviews in the “this was a problem but I still liked my job” category include issues like lack of diversity in leadership, high turnover, and little room for advancement. Anyone who has worked in the nonprofit world can probably tick off most of those boxes.
The advocacy and think-tank world in D.C. and New York is run on the backs of low paid, idealistic 22- to 25-year-olds, commanded by a small number of slightly older holdovers who decided against law school (the legal groups are staffed by their peers with good enough LSAT scores to jump ship). The structure of these nonprofits encourages young workers to seek promotions elsewhere, usually within a couple of years, while those who ride out the low pay to make middle management are more likely to come from richer white families who subsidized their work.
Top brass at these organizations are even less diverse, and their staffers notice it. They also notice the big pay discrepancies between them (people who feel that they run the organization and make it actually do things every day) and their bosses (people who appear on TV, get quoted in articles and raise money to pay for everything). These divides often become untenable, and now many of these nonprofit staffs have formed unions.
The unions are seen mostly as good, as far as Glassdoor indicates; but their reasons for existing, not so much. Many reviews claim lack of job stability, unspecified mistreatment by upper management, and unlivable wages as the imperative for organizing. Many reviews also claim those problems are now less apparent, though the divide between management and the staff persists.
The Ugly
Outside of the complaints that are common in even the best-rated workplaces examined by Blue Tent, the most striking and disappointingly typical refrain was some version of “they don’t practice what they preach.”
This is not the kind of problem likely to appear in the “cons” section of an otherwise good review, but usually in the preamble to an extensive airing of grievances. The most damning accusations include racism, gender pay gaps, union busting, and creating a toxic work environment. Like the problems discussed above, these are not atypical in any workplace; the fact that seemingly progressive organizations deal with the exact same problems, however, is damning to them and their stated goals.
“This place is incredibly toxic,” wrote one reviewer about a prominent reproductive rights group (Blue Tent has chosen not to name names as the anecdotes are unconfirmed). “There is basically every toxic thing you thing [sic] of: verbal abuse against race, class, ability, body size, sexual harassment via quid pro quo dealings of older senior management with younger female staff.”
“Nepotism,” declares another negative reviewer, this one for a large liberal research and rapid-response group. “There are people who work there who you have no idea what it is they do while the plebes make substance [sic] wages; If Trump didn't kill the Obama overtime rules, this place would have had to shutter its doors.”
Little on Glassdoor can be taken at face value, but reports confirm that the worst accusations can’t simply be dismissed, either. In 2019, the New York Times reported that Planned Parenthood was accused of mistreating its pregnant staffers; in 2018, Buzzfeed reported both sexual harassment and retaliation at the Center for American Progress; and in 2017, New America fired a scholar for his criticism of Google, a major donor.
In sum, progressive organizations don’t always live up to their purported missions, and often fail in a way that harms their staffs. People also derive intense joy from working for a good cause, and many of the surveyed groups have been major players in huge legal, political and cultural advances of the past decade. Perhaps the best way to summarize Blue Tent’s findings is that prospective employees should take Glassdoor reviews seriously, if not literally.
Employers, that goes for you, too.
