Understood Reviews

I highly caution anyone against working here. - There is very little trust between leadership and general staff, leading to a lot of staff feeling on edge and stressed. Nobody feels safe to fail. People are fired without warning, leading many to feel nervous when it comes to job security. On top of that, a lot of people quit out of downright frustration with the experience of working there. It feels like very few people last more than 2 years. - The leadership team has strong opinions and preferences, and they very rarely compromise, admit fault, or show vulnerability. Their approach to leading the company felt very secretive, insular, and abnormally mean. Sometimes it felt they were much more concerned with optics and their own external reputations than actual results or impact, internally or externally - Understood.org is still figuring out its identity and cannot commit to a clear, achievable vision for its impact. This makes it very hard to prioritize, and as a result, everyone feels like they need to be doing everything all the time

After years at Understood it is hard not to conclude that the organization is anything more than a thinly veiled tax shelter and platform for raising the profiles of its nepo-baby senior leadership team. What passes for strategy shifts nearly every 90 days. Nothing is ever given any time to succeed before being killed in the cradle in service of the latest strategic shift. The culture is toxic, as compensation is high and results and tangible impact are low. Inevitably, it all devolves into a game of how well you play the office politics and appease the egos of the absurdly over-compensated and under-credentialed leadership team. Other reviews that have mentioned the starkly different treatment and opportunities for staff members of color vs. others are true, and leadership has repeatedly and publicly rejected this feedback. Leadership has no experience or background in social impact or the non-profit space, but is filled to the brim with marketing backgrounds. So, marketing Understood or more specifically, the senior leadership team is all the organization truly does. Succeeding in building the awareness that the leadership team wants for itself is difficult when you are a $35M+ organization, and have no actual programs or efficacy. So, inevitably it becomes time for yet another strategy shift and blame game where the hot potato of accountability is tossed around amongst everyone but the people making the actual strategic and tactical decisions. If working at a non-profit and even more incompetent version of Succession is your thing… Understood is the place for you.