AFS Intercultural Programs Reviews

In the >5 years that I have worked for AFS, staff was completely restructured twice without much if any notice to the employees who were affected - promoted, fired, or otherwise. This is in addition to other smaller scale, strategic lay-offs. This approach, along with money problems, and problems meeting important internal and external goals has led to an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust, especially among those not in the NY office; volunteers and field staff are generally skeptical of the decisions made "in NY" as they feel out of touch with what the heart of the organization needs and wants. For example, almost everyone outside of the NY office finds it bemusing that the office is located on Wall St. Why would a non-profit spend so much money on this location, in a city where the local staff can barely afford to live? There is a strong tendency to overwork field staff, or any exempt workers, especially during "peak" months. I'm talking 50, 60, 70 hour weeks with no overtime pay for months at a time. There is high turnover both in the field and in NY, this leads to a lot of confusion and lack of progression as people who know how things work try to leave when they can. Pay is low, and expectations (for most) are high. Favoritism is a real problem; some high contributors have been pushed out because they were not popular, while there are others who you can count on to "fail up" at every crossroads thanks to their skill at bootlicking. The gender divide is askew with how many men are managing things in an organization largely run by women. Certain departments (...Organizational Development) are given vast amounts of resources while others who desperately need more resources (everyone else...) get less each year. Management expects too much of volunteers and tries to "empower" them to take on work that would be better suited for staff, leading to volunteer burnout. There is a lot of asking, and not a lot of giving. Kind of a "party culture" at the NY office and that you can observe at conferences, some of that is expected with a younger workforce but it can sometimes trend toward excessive.

AFS relies way too heavily on their "Seasonal" employees, who basically have almost all of the same responsibilities as the full timers, except they get paid $14 hourly and are somewhat treated as a "less than" employee for being only a temporary hire. AFS constantly has seasonals, but I assume they do not want to hire full-time employees to avoid paying those benefits. Hiring and training seasonals every 6 months or less is a huge time suck. Management wise, everything was very disorganized, and I don't think a lot of the people higher up had any idea what was going on "on the ground" most of the time.