Ashoka reviews

This is one of the worst places I have ever worked. From an out-of-touch, self important CEO/Founder who, despite his rhetoric about innovation refuses to innovate in any way, shape or form, to a bureaucracy that makes it take 2-4 weeks to get things like email accounts set-up, Ashoka is a nightmare of a place to work if you actually care. Many of the higher-up employees and managers seem to care about their jobs rather than making actual progress or telling the CEO when he is wrong (which he is continually). Compounding this situation is the micromanagement from people at the top, who want to micromanage even the most mundane of tasks. But the issue is that their micromanagement seldom makes sense logically, in terms of efficiency, and does not even reflect standard non-profit best practices. The only way Ahoka can be the organization it should be is by ditching its founder or standing up to him to end the soul crushing founderitis.

Ashoka was considered a groundbreaking organization back in the 80's when it brought management thinking into the non-profit sector to create social entrepreneurship. However, today Ashoka combines the worst aspects of the corporate world and the nonprofit sector. You will deal with all the invented jargon, unfulfilling work, and cold workplace culture of the corporate world with the disorganization, low pay, and directionless strategy of the nonprofit sector. Executive-level staff exhibit absolutely no leadership nor social-emotional intelligence, they have no accountability and "empower" junior and mid-level staff to be "entrepreneurial" so they can take credit for their work when the results are successful but have no problem throwing them under the bus to save themselves when it's not working out. You come to Ashoka believing that you'll be doing important work that will change the world, but within weeks you'll cruelly realize that you're only there to fulfill the disconnected CEO's utopian fantasy. There's a lot more which can be said about this organization: prominent 2-tier system of employees, inability to discover growth opportunities, lack of organizational vision, overpaid and underperforming senior staff. All this has been touched upon in prior reviews and doesn't need to be expounded upon.