Hard work but enjoyable. - Engineer Reading Partners Employee Review

Great people, engaging work. Gets you involved in the community

Flexible, not any standout negatives

- Really good reality check into the toxicity that comes with corporate aligned non-profit work. - Solid opportunity to connect with youth from your own community Thats literally it

I am 3 years removed from participating as an Americorp volunteer. Over the course of the past three years, I have developed as a full time employee in a seperate professional field. To this day I still think back to how absolutely terribly I was treated over my 10 months with this organization. To make a long story short, Reading Partners Bay Area uses Americorp to prey on early 20 somethings coming out of college in order to exploit well meaning prospective public servants for cheap 'ground force' labor. While they are open about how little money they plan to give you, they sell young people on the potential sell-ability of developing managerial experience in the non-profit field (ie: 'You are young! This is an opportunity to develop people skill, and people management skills, while seeing how these skills directly impact results (in this case, increased scores among struggling students.) which is a massive opportunity to grow your resume coming out of college'). This all sounds great. The reality is that the full-time employee that you are assigned to as an Americorp is essentially using you (& your reading center) to promote their own career goals and movement (essentially, 'The reading centers managed by MY americorp volunteers has seen so much growth and success in chart-able test scores. This is directly reflective of MY management and proficency as a full time employee') & this directly creates an enviorment where Americorp volunteers are being pushed by full time representatives to work obscene amounts of hours (outside of managing your own tutoring center, expecation is that you work events on weekends and support others reading centers....), to hold tutoring sessions personally (despite a system in place dedicated to sourcing local volunteers separate from the americorp program), AND finally, if you are not seeing result at your center/ among your students, you are softly pushed to LIE about testing and sessions results, to frame a picture of growth that may or may not be a reality. As an americorp member, failure or resistance to this results in alienation from full-time members (who are ment to serve as a sort of professional mentor). As an americorp volunteer I signed a 10 month contract, with the expecation that I would work 1700 hours over the 10 months in order to recieve around 10k in grants that can be used toward college, upper edu, etc. 1700 hours comes out to 42.5 hours a week, 8.5 a day (sheesh). Of course, this 42.5 hours a week is going to be impacted by health (working arounds kids at the tale end of a global pandemic) & holiday (Americorp gives you hours per federal holiday. if you do the math on those numbers, they don't add up as you are only given 8 hours for a holiday) Expecation is essentially that you will work more hours the NEXT week after a holiday in order to keep on track to recieve your 10k educational grant. I flagged this very early into my 10 months and was told that I would easily hit my hours via volunteer opportunities on weekends. I, really wanting that 10k, signed up for every weekend opportunity that arose (which werent many because Americorp full-timers dropped the ball numerous times on arranging RP participation, or flat out refused to advertise these opportunities to part time volunteers). After 5 months of working 6 days a week every other week, I was MORTIFIED to find that there were members of my Americorp cohort that had MORE hours then me despite NEVER volunteering on weekends, and having similarly documented sick time. I, rightfully, flagged this. My flag was ignored for about a month., When finally addressed, I was essentially told by a DIRECTOR to mind my own buisness. Turns out that other americorps members were actively encouraged to exaggerate their work hours (by full time americorp managers) in order to hit the 1700 expectation. This was surprising to me, as my manager had been very strict about hours over the course of the now 6ish month. When I flagged all of this to my manager, she connected with the director (same one who told me to mind my own buisness a week or so before) to 'audit' my hours. After the audit I was sat down by my manager and the director and told that the audit found that I needed that I had submitted hours that needed to be REMOVED. Not only was I behind on hours despite being a frequent volunteer at others centers, my own center, and weekend events, I was now being told by full time leadership that I actually deserved LESS hours. On top of this, I was told that my participation in weekend volunteer opportunities would be 'restricted' in order to provide increased opportunity for my fellow americorp memebers...the same fellow americorp memeber that had more hours then me, and were being actively encouraged to over-document hours by their full-time manager) Cant help, especially in restrospect, but feel that all of this was done intentionally to 'punish' for not being willing to lie about testing and status results. I likely wasnt alone in this feeling of being intentionally misled and taken advantage of, by the time I quit the program (about 7 months in to my 10 month contract) of my 15 person cohort only 4 people remained) . In summary, dont volunteer with RP Bay Area. The opportunity to volunteer with youth is exciting, but the willingess to take advantage and msitreat you in the midst of that excitment, is painfully evident.