Ashoka reviews

3.2

48% would recommend to a friend

(251 total reviews)
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Bill Drayton

44% approve of CEO

34% positive business outlook

Ashoka has an employee rating of 3.2 out of 5 stars, based on 251 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Ashoka employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the ONG y Organizaciones sin fines de lucro industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

251 reviews
3.0
Jul 24, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Amazing, amazing people. Ashoka staff are super smart, curious, and values-oriented. The work itself can at times be really exciting. I had the chance to work with a range of interesting partners, and learned a lot through them. I felt I was given a lot of responsibility and opportunities to grow my skills. Team culture can, on some teams, be incredibly dynamic and supportive - I was lucky enough to be on one of those teams.

Cons

Overall Ashoka culture is tough. There is a lot of distrust of upper-level management and a lot of frustration about issues ranging from pay to the hiring process to not feeling heard. In my opinion, this distrust is earned. The strategy that Ashoka uses build an "Everyone a Changemaker world" is always changing, usually at the whim of those at the top. This dynamism can feel exciting or extremely frustrating, depending on your point of view. Over-valuing entrepreneurialism leads to some strange outcomes. Despite the emphasis on empathy, people are incentivized to play politics and "own" strategic projects, sometimes cutting out members of their own, or other, teams. If you don't learn to toot your own horn, you get left behind. Additionally, key parts of Ashoka's infrastructure have been less-than-professionally managed because of a reliance on non-experts. Finally, sometimes entrepreneur-types who are terrible to work with make it through the hiring process. When they do, they're beloved by the management for their ideas, but drive everyone else nuts because they are difficult to work with, and oftentimes very self-serving.

3.0
Jan 14, 2016

Brilliance and impact, but crazy

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Brilliant colleagues, amazing fellows who are realizing genuine impact, cool projects with high-profile partners, widely recognized brand in the nonprofit world. Lots of opportunities to take on substantive work and high-level responsibilities for those who prove themselves.

Cons

Emphasis on hiring "entrepreneurs" and "changemakers" means staff is heavy on visionaries and high-level thinkers but often short on doers -- the operational people who actually get things done. Flat organizational structure means minimal upward mobility for early-to-mid-career people in their late 20s and early 30s. The organization is crazy even by nonprofit standards. Some days it's a wonder it holds together at all.

1.0
Feb 12, 2019

No Idea how Ashoka doesn't self implode

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Friendly coworkers who seemed to have an interest in you

Cons

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.

Viewing 10 - 12 of 251 Reviews

Glassdoor has 433 Ashoka reviews submitted anonymously by Ashoka employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Ashoka is right for you.